Complicated Rebranding scenario (PLEASE HELP)

[Trufinity Plumbing]

Hey everyone,

I recently got hired as a marketing manager for a company. They have 4 google business profiles. They only have one actual physical location. Here is how they were set up before they ran into an issue.

Kelowna - Where there actual Shop is located
West Kelowna - Owners house
Vernon - Rented UPS box
Penticton - Rented UPS box.

All 4 of these profiles ran without issue for years. Recently the Penticton account got suspended. When the owner contact google support he was told it was because there was an overlap in service area between The Kelowna location and Penticton. Kelowna had Penticton listed in it's service areas. He was told on the call by google support that having extra GBP if they were set up as SABs was acceptable. That doesn't sound right to me but I don't want to get to off topic. The owners reaction, since he was spooked by the suspension, was to change Vernon and West Kelowna to SAB.

So here is the current set up

Kelowna - Where there actual Shop is located - Address listed
West Kelowna - Owners house - SAB
Vernon - Rented UPS box - SAB
Penticton - Rented UPS box.- Suspended

The big issue now is we will be rebranding including changing company name and website. I am worried when this occurs we will need to re-verify the 3 GBP that are still live and West Kelowna and Vernon will get suspended.

I have spoken to the owner about this issue at length over the past few days and he is onboard with renting out legit addresses if this will allow us to actually have 4 google business profiles that have their address shown.

What is the best / cheapest way to go about this? I have read co-working space with a private office where you can display signage on it. I've also seen people say co-working spaces are flagged. My other concern is setting up proper documentation for the other 3 addresses.

Wondering if setting up new addresses before the rebrand is the best way to go and adding the addresses to the existing profiles? Or is it to just make new profiles with the new addresses for West Kelowna, Vernon and Penticton? If we do make new addresses is there a way to merge all the reviews from the old profiles? I have heard this is possible but I'm not sure how we would go about that if we needed to.

 

[Greg Gifford]

ok yeah - you're 100% going to get caught/suspended when you do the rebrand. UPS boxes aren't allowed as GBP addresses, so that's for sure going to die.

What type of business is it? You say it's a shop, which makes me think it's either a physical store selling items or the HQ for a service business. If it's a store that sells items, you're not allowed to have any SAB profiles, so I'm thinking it is more likely a service business. If that's the case, you COULD use the owner's house as a location for an SAB profile... but if you wanted to keep the other 2, you'd have to go get legitimate office locations (no coworking spaces)

you likely won't be able to merge and keep reviews, since the reviews are tied to a specific location - and you're also changing the name of the business. So the only way you'll be able to reliably keep those reviews is to just update the name and address on the current profiles. You'll most likely get suspended, so be ready for that - you'll need documentation about the rebrand, and you're going to need business license/articles of incorporation/utility bills in the new business name to prove it's a legitimate change... So you'll need to get the name change pushed through and updated on all the documentation BEFORE you try to change the name of the GBPs