Acquiring Business - Merging GMB & Reviews

[Conor Treacy]

Hi Guys,

One of our clients is considering purchasing another business in town - same industry.

Their main business is outside of town by about 15 miles, but the new business currently serves the city without issue (no physical address for the new business, but may set up a physical location).

They are deciding whether to operate as TWO businesses or merge into one single company. While there are other logistics, one of the items has to do with the GMB and Reviews of the new company. The company they are looking to acquire has just over 100 reviews. If they merge into a single company, can those reviews be merged/transferred into the acquiring/original company?

The acquisition allows them to creep into the city market easier with an established base. They were doing this already with the existing company, but the acquisition will act as a springboard and speed up the process completely.

Any thoughts?

 

[Yan Gilbert]

I would aim for keeping both listings active.

The reviews can't be merged into the other listing as they are basically tied to the listing they were left on.

 

[Conor Treacy]

So keep both GMB profiles active, just change the name of the business on the new acquisition, correct? Essentially "XXX Dentistry" gets changed to "Family Dentistry", thus keeping two listings on the maps.

Somehow I had a complete brain fog on this! Don't know why

 

[JoshuaMackens]

So keep both GMB profiles active, just change the name of the business on the new acquisition, correct? Essentially "XXX Dentistry" gets changed to "Family Dentistry", thus keeping two listings on the maps.

Somehow I had a complete brain fog on this! Don't know why

Yeah, Yan nailed it. That's what you should do.

 

[aggiejulie12]

Changing the name would fix the citation issue, but say the business bought was mentioned in the press prior to the acquisition and had already built up brand equity. Would a more phased approach allow Google to recognize the two entities now as one?

 

[Conor Treacy]

Thanks for the responses guys.

It seems my brain kept getting wires crossed when the client said "merge businesses" and I was using that same wording for GMB profiles. Brain fog! fun times!

As far as the press releases and the mentioning of the other brand, it does have a healthy online presence when it comes to reviews etc, but the content on the site is very limited, as are backlinks etc. Most likely, they'll put an "under new ownership" notice for a brief time, and then 301 all the pages to the new domain with additional content.

I believe the 301 redirect and the GMB change (along with other directories) will be enough for the entity recognition. There'll always be some old links floating around, but they're very minimal at this point.