Delete Single Practitioner Listing?

[Tony Wang]

I have a dentist with an established business listing, but found an old/irrelevant practitioner listing, with old address and phone. I contacted GMB support asking to delete it since we have no access to the phone or addr. They told me to claim it and then update the info.

I'm thinking that if I do that, they may then merge the listings; he's currently solo, but may not stay that way, so prefer not to have that practitioner listing at all. Should I not worry about that until if/when he adds another dentist? Any other suggestions?

 

[Phil Rozek]

@Tony Wang, I'd leave the GMB page unclaimed, and make two public edits: (1) update to the current, correct address, and (2) specify the doctor's "bio" page as his GMB landing page URL.

The idea is the page probably won't rank well for much, but provides a trail of breadcrumbs to the main practice in case some patients search for the doc by name.

The alternatives are:

(a) to try to remove a page that Google probably won't remove (because it seems to like being able to serve practitioner-page results to people who search for doctors by name), and

(b) having Google auto-generate a practitioner page later, for the reason I mentioned in point A.

Neither of those is ideal.

 

[JoyHawkins]

If it's an old address you should be able to get it marked moved. You don't need to claim it to do this. If you want to post a thread over at the GMB forum and paste the link here, I can ask Google to complete that for you.

 

[Tony Wang]

Thanks Phil and Joy, I'll submit an update and see if that works before posting on the GMB forum.

But is there any reason for NOT claiming it? Is Google going to then merge it?

 

[JoyHawkins]

I'm double-checking with Google to make sure this is still true, but according to my guide:

"Google told me recently that they need a listing to be unverified before they can merge it with another listing but they don’t need this for a move. This means if you have 2 listings in your account you shouldn’t need to unverify one before contacting GMB."

 

[JoyHawkins]

Okay just confirmed that's still true.

• Move (when the addresses don't match ) > can both be verified in the same account.
• Merge (when the addresses do match) > one must be unverified.