Department Listings Deleting/Merging

[SEOstan]

Hi,

I have a car dealership client who would like to get rid of the nested service GMB listing and parts GMB listing (both unverified) attached to their main dealer listing. I am aware that Google allows car dealers to have these subsequent listing, but this dealer doesn’t want them.

I know Google says you can’t “delete” or remove listings from search, that once it’s an actual business it stays and you can only hope to see it lose prominence, but this confuses me since previously, months ago, I had this same situation with a different dealership, reached out to Google Support and they deleted both the parts and service listings (or at least merged them into the main listing, either way, they don’t exist anymore).

That brings me to this case, where I contacted support to remove the listings, they gave me the typical above reasons, and told me to “remove listing” but all that does is take it off my account, with the listing still existing in the wild, and still attached as a department page to the main listing, which doesn’t solve any of my “needing to remove it” issues at all.

Through their suggestions I did “Suggest an edit” on both the service and parts listings, then marked them as duplicate of the main listing. The next day the parts listing was gone (great news), but the service one remained as they couldn’t verify the edits. I don’t really know why the one was approved and the other wasn’t, as they’re virtually similar.

I tried to get the remaining service listing merged into the main listing through Google Support, but no luck on that, and currently have just tried to remove it again through “Suggest an edit.”

I’m confused as to what to do next, or what the best plan should be with something like this, especially when Google tells me GMBs can’t be deleted (and when I seemingly get different answers about what can/can’t be done from different support contacts), but I’ve seen them be removed, and even with this case. Unless, there’s something I’m missing, or it’s just up to me getting lucky, and connecting with the right support person or edit approval.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Hey Stan,

Google isn't supposed to delete them. If you managed to get one deleted, it just means the GMB rep did the wrong thing (this happens quite a lot). If you try to get rid of it via Suggest an Edit and the edit doesn't publish immediately, it will get sent to a Google editor who will likely deny your edit. When that happens it hurts the trust of your Google account thus making it harder for you to get edits published in the future.

In summary, clients often want things that go against what Google wants so this is just one of those cases.

 

[SEOstan]

Hi Joy, thanks for the response!

I figured as much re. deleting the listings, as it often seems like you'll get different responses as to what can/can't be done depending on the GMB rep you get, and what they'll do for you, knowingly correctly or not.

I did not know that re. hurting your trust with Suggest an Edit, so I'll refrain from using that unless I'm absolutely sure my GMB suggestion is in violation.

I guess I'll just inform my client about this, that it can't be fully deleted/removed as they would like.

Thanks again!

 

[djbaxter]

@SEOstan please remember to upvote @JoyHawkins' response above (right side of the post) if it helped answer your question or resolve your problem/concern.

 

[Jeffrey Taylor]

Hi Stan,

I work on hundreds of Car Dealer GMBs and am curious as to why the dealer wants to delete the fixed operations GMBs. I have never run into that, as most dealers welcome the opportunity to separate the department hours, phone numbers, and GMB data to increase their visibility.

Most of the unverified department GMBs i run into were in fact, created by Google and often have inaccurate data or are missing data. Talk with the client about the benefits of having a department GMB and work to get it more visibility for service related keyword searches.

 

[SEOstan]

Hi Jeffrey,

Thanks for the response. I did have the conversation to them about the benefit of maintaining the additional service and parts listings, but they aren't interested and just want to focus on having the sole listing.

As well, another problem has arose, where if you search just their dealership name, the parts or service GMB listing populates instead of the main listing that should. I know this was a bug earlier in the year, but I thought it was fixed.

I tried to get the parts and service department pages merged into the main listing, but I was told by Google Support that they won't merge service department listings? I didn't know that was a thing, I thought that you could.