Directory and Citation Management In Case of a Business Merge

[Matt Chauhan]

We have a client who has two businesses sharing the same physical address. We were managing one of the businesses and created a handful of citations for it. The business is now merged with the second one which doesn't have many citations. How should we handle the directory and citation management in this case?

- Shall we create new citations for the second business and ignore the ones we created for the first business?
or
- Shall we modify the existing citations of the first business and change the details on those?
or are there any other suggestions?

P.S. We have marked the GMB listing as closed for the first business.

 

[Yan Gilbert]

I would change the original citations if they are indexed.

 

[Matt Chauhan]

I am curious and looking forward to the views of other experts as well on this.

 

[Nyagoslav]

Hi Matt,

Different platforms might have different requirements in terms of how they handle such situations. What I would suggest is:

- First, try to update the old citations with information for the new, merged entity. Such listings would usually have some trust built into them as they have existed for a while. They may even have some links or social activity around them.

- Some platforms may not allow such updates, so in these cases you will have to set up new listings, and report the old listings for closing or removal (depending on the corresponding platforms' guidelines).

However, if you do not follow my suggestion, by any means don't ignore the old (already existing) listings. Make sure these listings don't remain the way they are right now as they may cause complications down the road. If you don't update them, just report them for removal or closing.

I hope this helps.

Nyagoslav

 

[Matt Chauhan]

Hi Matt,

Different platforms might have different requirements in terms of how they handle such situations. What I would suggest is:

- First, try to update the old citations with information for the new, merged entity. Such listings would usually have some trust built into them as they have existed for a while. They may even have some links or social activity around them.

- Some platforms may not allow such updates, so in these cases you will have to set up new listings, and report the old listings for closing or removal (depending on the corresponding platforms' guidelines).

However, if you do not follow my suggestion, by any means don't ignore the old (already existing) listings. Make sure these listings don't remain the way they are right now as they may cause complications down the road. If you don't update them, just report them for removal or closing.

I hope this helps.

Nyagoslav

Thanks, this is really helpful.