Google Places - Bulk Upload Solution

[MattCarter08]

Hi we have a client who currently has over 50 stores in the country (Australia). Some of these stores already have a Google Plus Local Pages and manage them individually. Most of them have reviews, and images. The corporate office wants to place all these stores under one bulk account to bring consistency with the brand and it's image.

Now this presents a issue. From our research we have 3 options:

1. Un-verify the listings in each of the accounts and once this has been done, claim them individually in the account you want to manage them under.
2. Delete the listings from Maps and then recreate them under the bulk feed in account. This will allow you to manage them with the rest of your listings more efficiently, however if the stores have any reviews these may be lost.
3. Create new listings and leave the other ones and these should get merged, the issue here is the data could be incorrect and it could cause some duplication.

Our goal is to transfer the listings to a single bulk account without losing the - reviews, and images.Or avoiding new problems such as duplicate listing or the listing gets somehow deleted for weeks during the process, causing massive frustration with all the stakeholders involved.


I think our best bet is (1) to get the stores to individually unverify their account. However this may risk the lost of reviews and images. Plus it will be highly unlikely that the store owners will follow through or like doing this, and would be a painful long communication process which may take 2+ months.

Are they any suggestions on how to best approach this situation?

Thanks,

Matt Carter

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hi Matt,

I don't have much experience with bulk uploads.

This thread has a couple good links - http://localsearchforum.catalystemarketing.com/google-local/4159-google-local-bulk-uploads.html

I'll try and take a deeper look a little later today.

Thanks.

 

[manny1020]

Any update on this?

I am running into the same situation where I basically want/need to manage 40 locations from one bulk account. Most of these locations are already claimed.

 

[Linda Buquet]

So sorry Manny, but I've never dealt with bulk so don't know.

Colan has but he's on vaca all week. Other members have too, so hopefully some of them will weigh in.

 

[Richard Haussmann]

I handle a number of bulk uploads where the bulk upload conflicts with claimed and unclaimed records many with reviews and photos as well.

What I've done is submit the bulk upload, get the uploading account verified and start reporting the other locations as duplicates. We've seen a number of the duplicates get merged (you can see their status in Map Maker).

Last month, I started seeing externally generated data appearing in the editing area added to the data I uploaded. In the main dashboard, you can follow a link to the record that is associated to that submission.

BTW, has anyone been converted to the "new" Local+ dashboard? IS there a way to get this sped up?

Rich Haussmann

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Rich,

Thanks for weighing in!

At this point almost everyone has been upgraded to the new dash except for complicated problem listings and bulk or muli-location listings. Those pose challenges I think so are taking longer.