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Understanding Google My Business & Local Search

Google+ Local: Moving Locations? New Procedure

Preparing-Move-Your-BusinessThe way that Google has been encouraging SMBs to move to a new location has long been a kludge. Last night Google announced a somewhat more intuitive procedure although it still has a touch of kludge about it.

From the forum post by Jade:

Verified business owner of a page, and is your business moving locations? Here’s what you do.

Edit your address in Google Places for Business or in the Google+ page admin area, whichever you are using to manage the page. This will either make a new page or edit the address on the existing page. It may take a week or two after editing your address before you see an update. At this point, you may need to go through a verification process again. Don’t worry — this is normal.
If you see a page that’s still got the old address, click on Report a problem and mark that location as closed. Provide the link to the new address or information about the new location if possible. You can find more instructions on closing a location here: http://goo.gl/YZIjq

Previously it was necessary to create a totally new listing in the dashboard, reverify it,  remove the old listing and then using the “report a problem” feature to report it as closed. Recently Google added the ability to indicate, when reporting, the new location so that the closed listing would point to the new listing and indicate that it had relocated.

The above, if I read it correctly, means that sometimes the intuitive act of changing the address in either the  dashboard or the G+ Page for local admin area will properly update the listing and sometimes it will create a new listing that leaves the old listing open. It appears from the above that  Google may or may not require reverification as well. Regardless the process still requires that the listing owner needs to keep a watchful eye on their listing in both the dashboard and the index for three or so weeks and if there is still a listing at the old address proceed to using the report a problem.

I am sure that Google knows but this is still too complicated and unpredictable for most SMBs to get right. Its better but still not where it needs to be. It would be nice for the listing owner if 1)the procedure was consistent across all listing closing situations (or warned the business what was going to happen) 2)was able to be managed within the management dashboard alone and never required an SMB going to the report a problem area and 3) had a consistent outcome in the index.

In some ways it appears that the system mimics the practice & outcomes that have long existed in MapMaker where you could change an address as long as it was in the same city and the move was not too far.

None of this changes the fact that the business needs to not only change their information at Google but several weeks ahead of that change their information at the primary data suppliers and other claimed listings.

Let me know if you have to close a business and what actually happens to your listing.