Anybody know how to check for duplicate citations?

[Goku770]

Do we just Google our business name in parenthesis, or phone number, or street address. Or everything combined?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Because there can be variances in formatting across platforms AND because NAP may not have been submitted consistently I usually do a couple like this.

Use the SHORTEST part of the name if there could be variations. So if name is Alpine Services Inc, I'd maybe just use Alpine as so...

"Alpine" "555" "232" "4444"

Then the shortest part of street address
"Alpine" "123 Main" "city" (don't spell out Street or St or use Suite)

I think this could flush out lots of the dupes.

I'm going to move this to the citations forum though where it's better categorized and Darren from Whitespark checks that forum and may weigh in.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Searching within the Directories themselves is a great way to find dupes. This method ensures you don't miss anything.

---------- Post Merged at 03:26 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 03:22 PM ----------

Great insight here - http://www.whitespark.ca/blog/post/16-local-citation-building-best-practices

And here - http://www.ngsmarketing.com/how-to-remove-duplicate-listings-from-different-business-directories/

(not directly related to your OP, but these links will come in handy)

 

[Phil Rozek]

I'm going to echo what Linda and Colan said. You'll want to Google each part of the NAP: search for each of the phone numbers, each of the addresses, and each version of the business name. If pressed for time, focus on the phone numbers.

 

[manny1020]

Ctrl + F is your friend if your going to search via the directories themselves.

 

[Andrew Scherer]

You can use something like Moz Local to possibly dig up some initial NAP inconsistencies, and then quote "" search them in Google from there.

 

[Louis Nava]

I received an email today from Google Places with a notice to cleanup duplicates. See attached

Baffled as can be I called Places support and they said there's an overwhelming amount of duplicates in their system. I explained that I didn't see any on the public end.

The agent explained that Google will archive and block these duplicates from any public system and calling-in will be the only solution to have these dupes cleared up.

She also explained that the email was sent out from a new email system that will notify owners of any guideline violations.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I received an email today from Google Places with a notice to cleanup duplicates. See attached

Baffled as can be I called Places support and they said there's an overwhelming amount of duplicates in their system. I explained that I didn't see any on the public end.

The agent explained that Google will archive and block these duplicates from any public system and calling-in will be the only solution to have these dupes cleared up.

She also explained that the email was sent out from a new email system that will notify owners of any guideline violations.

Hi Louis,

This type of e-mail refers to the hidden merged dupes, for the most part. It's when you have two accounts feeding the same live G+ Local page from the back-end. With the old places dashboard, this scenario could exist. This is Google's means to rectify this situation with the upgrade to the new dashboard.

http://localsearchforum.catalystema...pting-rectify-dual-claimed-local-listing.html

 

[Linda Buquet]

Louis, you can't see hidden merged dupes. (Or dual claimed listings.) If similar enough they morph into a single live listing.

I've made a bunch of posts about it. Colan linked you to one of the main ones.

Dupes are also created if you or client set up G+ pages and manually merged back when it was advised not to.

Be sure to see the post from Jade that I think is buried in that thread somewhere that explains all the different potential issues.

 

[whitespark]

Just a note to the original poster on how to find the incorrect citations. See my slide deck from SearchLove San Diego. My Google queries start at slide 32:
Darren Shaw_SearchLove San Diego_Audit and fix citations for Local ...

Hope this helps.