Google My Business: Missing listings stuck in old dash.

[Christa Morgante]

Hello Everyone!


This is my first time posting, but I have been following this forum for a while and am excited to start joining the conversation! I work out of Denver, CO as a Local SEO Specialist for Page 1 Solutions which is a marketing agency doing SEO and Website Development for Lawyers, Dentists, Cosmetic Surgeons and Ophthalmologists.


This question comes from Max Miner's G+ Hangout on Google My Business today.


Does anyone know what happened to listings that were still in the old places dashboard? I haven't been able to access those that didn't make the transition to G+. (on the account side) Has anyone else experienced this?


I have a client who is a dentist and this is his main Local Page/listing we want populating in the SERPs. This unverified Places Page is currently out ranking ours and is on the first page.


We had a decent amount of clean up to do for this client and a few different accounts to scrape for inactive listings, and the places page was one of them. It was housed in the old places dashboard and was unverified. I left it as is at the time, because there was already an existing verified listing. Once everything was cleaned up and merged to G+, I was going to call Goog to get those reviews transferred from its current listing to our active one. This wouldn't have been an issue because I had the account info for both listings. Easy transition, so I thought. I logged into the account today, and it was empty.


This isn't a huge concern for this client because Goog should be able to do this without access, but I have a large amount of listings that were still in the old places dashboard. As I am sure most of you know, we can't even access that dashboard anymore, so unless they pushed all of them through to G+ Local, what happened to those listings?


I have also dealt with a good amount of listings/G+ Pages that had been disconnected from their original account which, in turn created duplicates when they were finally merged to G+. I was able to consolidate these with the help of Google, but I am almost certain this is the case here and will know for sure once I speak with them tomorrow.


This is a hard topic to explain in writing, so I apologize in advanced for any confusion, but I just wanted to see if anyone else was experiencing any issues similar to this.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Welcome to the Local Search Community. Glad you joined the conversation.

We have a few accounts that still haven't been upgraded to the GMB interface. What I am seeing is a message pop-up and then it redirects back to the old style places dashboard.

Did you see the message below?

Here's the message. Sounds like it's just a matter of time:

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Christa thanks for joining and posting this Q that came up in the Hangout we were in today. I felt like answering would take us into a lot of back and forth that could not easily be done in a Hangout thread.

Dividing this up to try to answer better.

Does anyone know what happened to listings that were still in the old places dashboard? I haven't been able to access those that didn't make the transition to G+. (on the account side) Has anyone else experienced this?

1st of all I'm not sure where the listing is but I think I may know what happened.

Secondly most listings had been upgraded to new Places dash, and now are transitioned to My Business.

EXCEPT problem listings and complicated listings like multiple locations. Which leads me to some comments below.

We had a decent amount of clean up to do for this client and a few different accounts to scrape for inactive listings, and the places page was one of them. It was housed in the old places dashboard and was unverified. I left it as is at the time, because there was already an existing verified listing. Once everything was cleaned up and merged to G+, I was going to call Goog to get those reviews transferred from its current listing to our active one. This wouldn't have been an issue because I had the account info for both listings. Easy transition, so I thought. I logged into the account today, and it was empty.


This isn't a huge concern for this client because Goog should be able to do this without access, but I have a large amount of listings that were still in the old places dashboard. As I am sure most of you know, we can't even access that dashboard anymore, so unless they pushed all of them through to G+ Local, what happened to those listings?


I have also dealt with a good amount of listings/G+ Pages that had been disconnected from their original account which, in turn created duplicates when they were finally merged to G+. I was able to consolidate these with the help of Google, but I am almost certain this is the case here and will know for sure once I speak with them tomorrow.


This is a hard topic to explain in writing, so I apologize in advanced for any confusion, but I just wanted to see if anyone else was experiencing any issues similar to this.

REALLY hard to answer any of this generically without links to really see what you are dealing with, but here goes...

At 1st I thought you were saying the listing was claimed in 2 dashboards which could be a reason a listing would not have been upgraded and would have been stuck in old dash.

But on a re-read it sounds like the other listing was UNverified. I assume that's why it did not transfer over and assume that's why it's now gone. I assume only verified listings were moved and are active. Good way to clean house to just let the other ones die. (But again I'm just guessing.)

However if the main issue, since it was not verified is the reviews...

So you know reviews are in a totally separate database. They are associated with the listing but not part of it.

Were you aware that if a business moves for example and a new listings is created and the old one marked closed, you can ask Google to move the reviews from the old listing to the new one?

I would assume the same thing is true in this case. Both listings are live, it's just that the one dash is MIA? If both listings are live then likely NAP is different. So I don't know if there was a name change or move or what. But if the bad one is live you can also ask Google to merge or close it - depending on situation.

Again, so many variables that I'm just guessing in the dark since I don't have listings to look at. But support can possibly move the reviews.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Oops Colan. Sorry we cross posted and I edited several times so never saw your post.

It sounds to me like her situation may be different.

Didn't sound to me like she was saying "not upgraded yet" or she would have seen that same message.

Sounded to me like she was saying they are gone or totally inaccessible?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

It sounds to me like her situation may be different.

Didn't sound to me like she was saying "not upgraded yet" or she would have seen that same message.

Sounded to me like she was saying they are gone or totally inaccessible?

I wasn't 100% sure if I had read it correctly. I may have jumped the gun with my response. The reason I thought this might be connected is because we had some similar situations today where we logged in and didn't see listings where there once had been. But then we tried a different login URL and got to the screenshot that I posted.

Christa, in addition to providing the links that Linda requested, would you be able to provide the URL's that you are using to get to the login page as well as a screenshot of what you are seeing once you login?

 

[Christa Morgante]

Thanks for the feedback!

I thought I had included links to the two pages I was speaking about, but for some reason they got disconnected. Sorry about that! I have pasted the good and bad listings below. You can also do a search for "Boulder CO Cosmetic Dentist" -- Our client is BoulderSmiles, Dr. Mark Birnbach. The Bad listing is ranking #2 and the good #10.

​https://plus.google.com/110332391805543013244/about -- Bad
https://plus.google.com/+BouldersmilesDentistry/posts -- Good

Secondly most listings had been upgraded to new Places dash, and now are transitioned to My Business.

EXCEPT problem listings and complicated listings like multiple locations. Which leads me to some comments below.

At 1st I thought you were saying the listing was claimed in 2 dashboards which could be a reason a listing would not have been upgraded and would have been stuck in old dash.

But on a re-read it sounds like the other listing was UNverified. I assume that's why it did not transfer over and assume that's why it's now gone. I assume only verified listings were moved and are active. Good way to clean house to just let the other ones die. (But again I'm just guessing.)

So you know reviews are in a totally separate database. They are associated with the listing but not part of it.

Were you aware that if a business moves for example and a new listings is created and the old one marked closed, you can ask Google to move the reviews from the old listing to the new one?

I would assume the same thing is true in this case. Both listings are live, it's just that the one dash is MIA? If both listings are live then likely NAP is different. So I don't know if there was a name change or move or what. But if the bad one is live you can also ask Google to merge or close it - depending on situation.

Hi Linda!

It would make sense that Google only transferred verified listings over, so maybe that answers my question right there. I did know reviews were in a separate database and Google has the ability to move them from an old listing to a new one, which is why I explained this 'issue' wouldn't be a huge concern for this client.

If it turns out Google did only transfer verified listings over, my concern is access and ownership. I realize you only own a listing if it is verified in your account, but old listings that my clients may have created, that were organized in one account, even though they weren't verified, we now have to claim/clean up again? Unless, those have just been deleted? I guess my biggest concern is dups. I don't want the inactive listings that were in my old places dashboard to somehow show up as un-optimized, unverified pages in G+ or on Maps, which is the case with this client.

Christa, in addition to providing the links that Linda requested, would you be able to provide the URL's that you are using to get to the login page as well as a screenshot of what you are seeing once you login?

Hi Colan!

I did not see the screen you referenced in your first post because, like Linda said, it's not that it hadn't been upgraded, it's just inaccessible. Below is a screenshot of what I see once I am logged in.

I tried signing in from both of the below URLs.

https://accounts.google.com/Service...continue=https://plus.google.com/?gpsrc=gplp0

Google My Business


.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Christa, I'm madly helping everyone with GMB so not much time but...

CHECK THIS!
https://plus.google.com/110332391805543013244/about

Even though it does not say the listing is CLOSED...

Click edit details - there it does!

Did you try to mark it closed when you did the name change?

Did you change to that new name??? That's likely why it's ranking lower PLUS dupes always will kill your ranking. Plus not so sure the way you did the name is kosher/best practice either.

This one is super complicated. There is more....

But I wonder if since that one is marked closed on the back end, that's why it did not get upgraded.

BUT you can't have more than one claimed listing per business anyway, so there is nothing you could do with that one even if it was in your dash. You could not verify it to edit it or anything at all.

"but old listings that my clients may have created, that were organized in one account, even though they weren't verified, we now have to claim/clean up again?"

No see above. You can't verify other listings if at same location - but could delete them from dash if you could get access which would remove the G+ remnant pages. Then if live dupes on maps need to deal with them via normal channels depending on which types of dupe listings they are.

 

[Christa Morgante]

Linda -- Yep! I see what you mean as far as it not showing as closed, but I was actually just on the phone with Goog and they have marked that location as closed and have moved the reviews over. So, it could be because it was literally marked as such about 30 minutes ago.

The name change was done a while back by the client, and I do see what you mean by it not being best practice. I will be updating that.

The bigger issue is listings housed in the old places dashboard not being accessible. I was on hold with Google for a about 20 mins while they tried to figure out why I couldn't access that bad listing from an account that was never updated to G+. When I tried to sign into the account where I knew the bad listing was housed, the screenshot I provided in my last post is what populates. I should have a unverified page there at the least. After providing them with the account credentials, they did confirm I had the correct account in which the listing was created. So, it should have been in there.

The rep finally came back on the phone and told me the listing wasn't there because we had deleted it even before the transition took place. This is completely false, I know for a fact we did not delete it from our dashboard, so I think it must be a gliche which they probably just found.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Linda -- Yep! I see what you mean as far as it not showing as closed, but I was actually just on the phone with Goog and they have marked that location as closed and have moved the reviews over. So, it could be because it was literally marked as such about 30 minutes ago.

The name change was done a while back by the client, and I do see what you mean by it not being best practice. I will be updating that.

So you know that closed listing with the original name is probably going to hurt rankings for your main listing. I've been seeing lots of disconnected listings that drop out of the pack. When I investigate I often find a closed listing at the same address with same phone. So they are partially clustered and having one closed I think kinda sends Google the signal that there is no viable business at this location or something.

Don't do anything right now if Google just closed it. Just be aware and see if it affects ranking once it actually flips to closed.

 

[Christa Morgante]

I thought it took the place of the other listing as you can see in the attached screenshot, but it's not ranking in the 7 pack. When you choose Map results for cosmetic dentist boulder co, is where you see it in the 2nd position. Weird.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Nope they are both still live and the closed one won't go away. Just will be pulled out of search.

Looks like it already has. It's not ranking any more in the pack.

Maybe for you due to personalization but I think it's gone now for the rest of the world.

See both here: http://goo.gl/maps/Sv2Ym

The one was marked closed now so that's why it's not in the pack any more.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Another report of unverified listings disappearing just came into the forum.

<a href="http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-local/19085-google-my-business-unverified-listings-disappearing-dashboard.html">Google My Business: Unverified Listings Disappearing from Dashboard in Upgrade</a>

Escalating now.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Escalated the general missing listings issue to Google.

But I need to leave in an hour so if I don't get an answer before then someone else may post an update. But Cori in another thread said she reported to support and they were aware. I'm sure it's just a residual update issue.