In recent days, there has been an increasing number of reports in the Google Maps for Business Group complaining about two completely different business records being conflated. In just today’s postings there were 5 reports:

•Google Maps Hijacked!
•My business information appearing on another business listing
•Web Pages of other sites?
•Incorrect URL Associated with My Listing
•Wrong URL again

This ssue has been reported on in the past (here, here, here and here). It certainly results in confused customers and annoyed business owners. There have been attempts to explain the cause although it appears that there may be multiple reasons. The bug seems to stem from Google Maps conflating the two records when certain elements of the two businesses (their address, their phone number, directory listings or their website) are the same or similar.

Google ultimately fixed my merged record and Maps Guide Jen responded to Gab Goldenberg’s issue at his blog:

Thanks for flagging this one. This is a tricky case due to the fact that there are two hotels with similar names in the same building, which is quite rare. We don’t have a great answer for that situation right now, but we’ll look for ways to make cases like this better in the future.

Thanks,
Jen (aka Maps Guide Jen)

One would think that increasing adoption of the Local Business Center would mitigate this problem but that appears to not be the case. It is time for Google to either own this problem by responding more proactively to the reports in the Google Maps for Business or to quash this annoying bug!