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Understanding Google My Business & Local Search

Service Area Business with a verified social local Google+ page? Delete It

NOTE: The article is outdated.

Update 10/3/2013: The relationship between the social page and the new dashboard is different and Google’s rules about how they handle businesses with hidden addresses are different.

If the social + page is associated with a new dashboard listing, deleting the social page will delete the listing.

If you have a listing that was at one time suspended for not hiding the address then you need to call Google support and have them deal with it.

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From the rollout of the G+ Local Social merge and bugs showing up when service area businesses attempted to hide their address, Google has said that service area businesses (SABs) should NOT merge their Places listing with their G+ social page. Well, some SABs did not get the message (big surprise eh?) and the question is what should they do now. The answer: Delete the Merged page and rely solely on the dashboard to manage the listing.

Google posted this sticky in the forums:

Are you a Service Area Business (SAB) that has created and verified/merged a social local Google+ page for your business? Read on!

If you do not accept customers at your location, then your address should be hidden. At this time, Google+ currently does not support hidden addresses. You should delete your social local Google+ page from within Google+ (Click on Pages on the ribbon on the left, go to the Settings of your page, and scroll to the bottom and click Delete page).

Don’t worry! You can still manage your business’ presence on Google. Here’s how:

  • If you’re a verified business owner in Google Places for Business…
    • Manage the listing via the Google Places for Business dashboard. Be sure to hide your address.
  • If not, but a listing for your business exists…
    • Find the listing for your business and become a verified business owner by clicking on Manage this page on the right-hand side.
    • Then, manage the page via the Google Places for Business dashboard
  • If no listing for your business exists…

We’ll share updates with you on this thread when we have them.