Gained Access to Duplicate Listing - Next Steps?

[fredmcjunkins]

Hello,

I tried to find this answer somewhere but had no luck. We had a competitor create a GBP listing with all of our information but their phone number. We were able to gain access to the listing via 'Own this Business' but unsure of the next steps to have it removed. Many of the prompts are encouraging verification. (Not sure how it's public without being verified).

Are there any suggestions on how to completely remove this listing? We have also exhausted many direct efforts to have the competitor remove/delete the listing.

Thanks!

 

[keyserholiday]

Mark it as permanently closed.

 

[whitespark]

I wonder if it would be better to mark it as a duplicate through the front end, rather than marking it as permanently closed. This way you can say "this listing is a duplicate of the actual real listing, here".

I just worry that marking this listing as permanently closed might have an impact on the actual listing with the same business info.

What do you think, @keyserholiday ?

 

[keyserholiday]

I wonder if it would be better to mark it as a duplicate through the front end, rather than marking it as permanently closed. This way you can say "this listing is a duplicate of the actual real listing, here".

I just worry that marking this listing as permanently closed might have an impact on the actual listing with the same business info.

What do you think, @keyserholiday ?

Google is so hit-and-miss when you flag a business as a duplicate. Marking it as closed, will remove it from the results and make the real the default to show.

 

[MonicaH]

I wonder if it would be better to mark it as a duplicate through the front end, rather than marking it as permanently closed. This way you can say "this listing is a duplicate of the actual real listing, here".

I just worry that marking this listing as permanently closed might have an impact on the actual listing with the same business info.

What do you think, @keyserholiday ?

That's what I worry about too. There's a duplicate for my business that I've flagged as duplicate multiple times (so have others). It's still there. In fact, it often shows up instead of our real listing. Which makes me really nervous about marking it as closed. What if both get closed? Google is such a black box and support always tells you something different.

 

[fredmcjunkins]

Thanks for the feedback. We had some luck using the suggested edit, marking it as closed. Any of the edits we made within the GBP platform were not published.