Departments at same address marked as duplicate

[nbrimhall]

A non-profit that I help occasionally is having a trouble with a department at the same address as their main location being marked as a duplicate. The non-profit, Community Warehouse in Portland, OR, has a retail store called The Estate Store sharing the same building as their main office, which also collects donations of furniture and other home goods. Up until a couple weeks ago, they had 2 listing, one for the main office and one for the retail store. Their GMB console received a duplication notice and although they've called the GMB support phone number multiple times and provided proof that they have two different entrances and different hours & phone numbers for each department, GMB support has thus far been unwilling to get the "duplicate" listing reenabled. This is the listing for their main office: Google Maps

Ironically, they have another location in a nearby city (Tualitan) and it has the same structure (office/donation center and retail store share the same address), but both listings for that location are still working (Google Maps and Google Maps respectively). Other non-profits with the same model in other cities (Tacoma, WA for example) also have 2 listings.

As I mentioned, the communications director has contacted GMB support via the phone multiple times and provided all the proof requested and has even shown them Google's own support documentation about departments that share the same address (Guidelines for representing your business on Google - Google My Business Help) and hasn't gotten anywhere. Recently the comms director updated the "duplicate" listing to make sure it shared now business categories or other info with the main office listing and still nothing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated as this is starting to affect the non-profit negatively.

 

[Phil Rozek]

@nbrimhall, does each have a separate site? I don't see one for The Estate Store.

Also, have you tried specifying that The Estate Store is "Located in" Community Warehouse? See New Feature: Manually Add "Located In" to a GMB Listing

 

[nbrimhall]

Hey @Phil Rozek - Thanks for the quick response! They don't have a separate site for The Estate Store, but they do have a page for the stores - Vintage Furniture | Estate Store | Community Warehouse | Portland Would it be a good idea to have a different page for each location of The Estate Store (Portland vs Tualitan)?

Thanks for the link to the recent "Located in" post - I had seen that (that's how I found this amazing forum), but unless I'm misunderstanding a listing has to be live to access the "Located In" in the Knowledge Panel's "Suggest an Edit" screen. Is that correct? If so, I the "duplicate" listing can't be labeled as Located in since it isn't live.

Also, yesterday afternoon we found out that there are actually 2 addresses at their Portland building, so we are considering resubmitting the listings with 2 separate addresses to see if that helps.

 

[Phil Rozek]

Hey @nbrimhall, I'd definitely have a separate site for The Estate Store. Generally, I'd recommend having a separate site any time you've got a separate entity like that, for which you want a Google My Business page.

Google's guidelines are mushy, but essentially your GMB setup is supposed to reflect your real-world marketing, including how you present TES online and offline.

Within each of those two sites, yeah, I'd probably have a location-specific page for Portland and for Tualitan.

That's correct re. the "Located in" feature. I'd do that once the TES listings is back up.

 

[Cherie Dickey]

Hi @nbrimhall, is your client able to provide separate documentation or licensing information using the different business names? @Colan Nielsen (I think it was Colan!) suggested that to me a few weeks ago and it made them more responsive to my request... it might be worth a try for you as well.

I've also found that sometimes you need to ask to escalate the matter to a supervisor when you know you are right, and they are still digging in their heels.