Best practice for cleaning up multiple Google Places listings and multiple Google accounts when logins were lost.
-
We are an inbound marketing agency, most of our clients are not relying on local seo. I have a pretty good understanding of it when starting fresh but not so much in joining a "movie in progress" kind of scenario. Recently we've brought on two clients who have had their websites in place for awhile, have made small attempts at marketing themselves online over the years and its resulted in multiple Google places listings, variations of the company names (one of them changed their name), worried there are yet more accounts out there they aren't aware of, etc (analytics, and others from well intentioned employees and past service providers - no internal leadership at the company level). In reading Google help forums I'm seeing some recently having their accounts suspended when they try to clean things up - in one case a person setup a new Google account thinking he would start fresh and in trying to claim listings, get rid of duplicates, etc. his account was suspended. What is the CURRENT recommended course of action in situations like these? With all the changes going on with Google, I don't know which route to take and have combed the Internet reading articles about this (including Google's resources) - would like some current real world advise.
-
My pleasure, Lisa, and I really like the Google=IRS analogy. Agreed! Hang in there. I know how you feel.
-
This helps immensely! I've seen references to the report a problem option but varying experiences with it so I like having some other tasks combined with it. There do seem to be a lot of people that appear to be doing the sensible things but still not having the most desirable outcomes (we just did a blog piece asking the question "Is Google the IRS of the Internet for Keyword Ranking?" since it does feel a lot like trying to straighten out tax issues
Thanks so much for such a thoughtful and precise answer!!
-
Hi Lisa,
I would recommend that you try to have a phone call with Google staff. Follow this process.
-
First, find all duplicate listings and click the 'report a problem' link on the right hand side. This will take you through the report a problem trouble shooter.
-
Then, I would wait a couple of weeks and if nothing changes, use this troubleshooter:
http://support.google.com/places/bin/static.py?hl=en&ts=1386120&page=ts.cs
Choose this option, as I am presuming you've got incorrect data issues spread out over a variety of duplicates:
Listing data, including title, address, phone, URL, categories, hours, description, or coupons
Then click the 'yes' button.
You will get a phone option and can hopefully have a conversation with a live person at Google regarding your multiple issues with the client. If they give you advice, I would then check up on the validity of it by visiting the Google and Your Business forum to see if it matches similar advice being given there by other Google employees (http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/business).
Regarding claiming an existent listing, please read the following:
And be sure to follow all of the links in the above piece to get the full picture from Mike Blumenthal on this. Hope this helps!
-
-
Thank you for such a detailed answer, this is my instinct too, just start fresh but when I read in the forums all the problems some businesses are having I thought I'd better explore a little bit just to make sure I wasn't missing an opportunity to do it some other way.
-
My experience was that mergers and removals take so long and can be very very tricky (google made a huge mistake and deleted / merged a profile we had asked to keep and claim later-awaiting for mail-that had a lot of reviews on it and it was gone with no undo in sight.
I would create and confirm a new listing and get a google plus page for it with confirmation, link website and confirm, and then attempt to merge /delete anything old and bad.
I had a google rep on the phone for adwords and analytics and asked them to help me with this issue to avoid just the headache i was dreading and it resulted in them removing what i wanted them to keep and saving what i wanted them to remove. i even made it clear in back and forth emails with her in writing.
so just be careful, maybe if reviews are not important, request closure and merger of all listings and once all are gone and you can confirm, immediately recreate a clean and official permanent account and keep login access somewhere findable and safe for future.
I know a lot of my clients who have issues with not knowing which email their adwords, their social or their google places or plus accounts are connected to.... its a pain to do anything for them when the time comes...
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How Google recognises Brand name? And ignores attested keywords?
Hi community, Our company name got attested with our industry keyword over the years; which also primary keyword of our homepage and all of our industry competitors. Best example is... Moz turns to Moz SEO for fraction of the audience or users. Again this is an example. Now if Google thinks "Moz" is only the company name, does it ignores the word "seo" completely? Or Google gives negative score for employing "seo" after "Moz" across all pages? Does the "seo" word will be considered or ignored in this case? How Google recognises the company name? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Many meta descriptions ignored by Google
Hi all, We have recently added the meta descriptions for more than 50 pages of our website. It's been more than a week and all the pages have been indexed. But still I can see most of the pages in Google results didn't show up with recently added meta description, but the content from page like how it used to be. I wonder what's wrong with this scenario. Please guide of someone aware of this. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Satisfaction survey on Google search results
Anybody else noticing Google satisfaction surveys on long-tail results? I'm only seeing it when there are no ads... 6071fb3341.png
Algorithm Updates | | Propecta1 -
If Google Trends Doubles?
If google shows a search trend doubling in a time frame, does that mean the amount of searches doubled? As in: 2006 was ranked at a 50 on trends and the 100 is 2013 and in 2013 10,000 searches were made, does that mean around 5,000 searches were made in 2006?
Algorithm Updates | | JoshBowers20120 -
Google Authorship and Hobby Blog
I hope that someone can help me come up with the best option. Please forgive my ignorance on this issue. I have a hobby blog and up until now I have not wanted to associate it with my real name. It is a menswear blog about classic American style. I was afraid that it may be a hindrance if I was ever looking for a more conservative career than SEO. I am now reconsidering this and thinking that claiming it may be of more help than harm. Which brings me to Google Authorship. My dilemma and misunderstanding stems from the fact that I have mutliple Gmail accounts. I am guessing that some of the newer accounts have a G+ associated with them. So my question is do I use the email that is associated with my blog or my main gmail that I use personally? If I do use the gmail associated with the blog will it then become my default Google plus profile? Any insight would be helpful. Thanks in advance. If any of you are interested the hobby blog is Oxford Cloth Button Down.
Algorithm Updates | | JerrodDavid0 -
Google Search CTR % By Position
Hello I am looking for an updated report regarding the CTR % by position for Google search results. I have the compete.com report which Gives the 1st organic position a 53% CTR but I have not be able to duplicate that number with any other report or research. I am just trying to validate this report before I suggest any recommendations to my company regarding our search efforts. Thank you Ben
Algorithm Updates | | bhalverson30 -
What is the best way to build a Mobile Site?
I am looking into building a mobile version for my website, knowing that Google Likes Google should I stick with using their mobile building tool or build something from scratch in Dreamweaver? How to optimize for Google Mobile? Thx
Algorithm Updates | | Ben-HPB0 -
Website "penalized" 3 times by Google
I have a website that I'm working with that has had the misfortune of gaining rankings/traffic on Google, then having the rankings/traffic removed...3 times! (Very little was changed on the site to gain or lose "favor" with Google, either.) Notes: Site is a mixture of high quality original content and duplicate content (vacation rental listings) When traffic crashes, we lose nearly all rankings and traffic (90+%) When traffic crashes, we lose all rankings sitewide, including those gained by our high quality, unique pages None of the "crash" dates appear to coincide with any Panda update dates We are working on adding unique content to our pages with duplicate content, but it's a long process and so far doesn't seem to have made any difference I'm confounded why Google keeps "changing its mind" about our site We have an XML sitemap, and Google keeps our site indexed pretty well, even when we lose our rankings Due to the drastic and sitewide loss of rankings, I'm assuming we are dealing with some sort of algorithmic penalty Timeline: Traffic steadily grows starting in Jan 2011 Traffic crashes on Feb 19, 2011. We assumed it was due to a pre-panda anti-scraper update, but don't know. Google sends traffic to our site on March 1, then none the next day On June 16th, I block part of the site using robots.txt (most of the section wasn't indexed anyway) On June 17th, Google starts ranking our site again. I thought it might be due to the robots.txt change, but I had just made the change a few hours ago, and Google wasn't even indexing the part of the site I blocked Traffic/rankings crash again on July 6th. No theory why. Site URL: http://www.floridaisbest.com Traffic Stats: Attached I know that we need more backlinks and less duplicate content, but I can't explain why our Google rankings are "on again, off again". I have never seen a site gain and lose all of its rankings/traffic so drastically multiple times, for no apparent reason. Any thoughts or ideas would be welcome. Thanks! t8IqB
Algorithm Updates | | AdamThompson0