Hidden Merged Dupes under 2 account I control - what to do?

[BrendanT]

Getting to the end of cleaning up a massive mess one client created by creating local landmarks in Gpaces (they're a property developer) using the same phone number.

I now have 11 dupes of the same listing under one account and 1 under another account. Google has merged them all as the stats are showing the same across both accounts.

We're definitely copping a ranking penalty of some sort by having dual account owners.

Wondering what to do to remove the dual ownership, I'm guessing if I hit the delete button in the account with the single listing then it could delete all?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Brenden, does not matter if they are in different accounts or one. You can only have 1 listing claimed per location. It's a violation to have more than one AND it causes all kinds of other problems in addition to ranking problems.

Don't select delete from maps, just delete from account on all but one.

Be aware that if NAP is different on any of them, which you release them they could break out of the merge and show up on maps as live dupes. If so just report a problem to try to get Google to take care of them.

 

[BrendanT]

Interesting, just hit the delete button on the dupe account with the 1 listing and it removed it immediately, it gave me the option "remove this listing from my places account"

Tried the delete option on the dupes on the other account and it only gave me the same option, no "delete this listing permanently" option so will sit on it for a few days and see what happens.

Guessing if google does the auto upgrade this may solve this dupe problem on this account anyway

 

[Linda Buquet]

Actually I think having dupes in the account could likely stall the account from being upgraded. I think most of the accounts that have not been upgraded by now have not been due to having problems or complications like dual claimed listings.

 

[BrendanT]

Ok some movement forward here today.

Removed the listing from the account that had the single listing

The other account has now been upgraded to the new Places dash and all listings are marked as unverified and have the red "this is marked as a dupe" message.

Next step is to speak to support to get the mess cleaned up.

 

[BrendanT]

Update: spoke to Google support and they advised to remove the dupe listings which we've done. That left one listing which was still showing up the red "this is a dupe" message and was unverified in the backend

They had me open the local page, click "manage this business" page which then opened up the Places edit window for the listing and it magically started showing as verified and the dupe message disappeared.

Last step is to report a handful of broken old listings in mapmaker and I think we'll be sorted

 

[Linda Buquet]

Whew! Good job Brendan, almost there.

And some, that don't know any better, say Google Local is easy.

 

[BrendanT]

Still ongoing with this one....really hit and miss with Google support. There is a dupe with a different name but same address and phone number.

Last time I spoke with Google they said they deleted it and couldn't see it any more in their system but its still showing up for me. Now the listing is starting to show in blended search results from time to time.

Spoke to them yesterday again and they said mark the listing as closed - I don't like this as its triggering in the SERPs and is HQ. Going to attempt phone verification today (phone verify is allowed) and then once verified jump in and delete the page itself, seems like a more intelligent way to deal with it.

Also found huge NAP issues with this client. Their genius corporate grade web dev shop has all sorts of random ways of using the company name, eg XYZ, XYZ Pty Ltd and then in the footer they screwed up and it was showing C2014 XYZ....off to go bang my head on the desk for a while

 

[BrendanT]

Gah...so we claimed the dupe with the wrong name and deleted the page, yay!

But in the process found another dupe of the dupe with a different plus page ID....turns out the customer decided to do a bit of their own SEO work, seriously WTF!

Running through the same process again with the dupe of the dupe so we'll see where we're at after that

 

[Linda Buquet]

Clients! Gotta love em!

 

[BrendanT]

Ok, so instead of deleting the second dupe (dupe of the dupe) I've de-optoed it, removing phone and web address (after doing telephone verify).

This dupe was definitely being used as the authority listening over the genuine biz listing as it seemed tied to the homepage and the genuine listing triggered on an inner page.

24 hours after de-optoing the dupe has stopped appearing in the normal SERPs so getting some movement forward. Have decided to sit on it for a couple of weeks to see what happens and if the genuine listing starts ranking again for our primary key term, prior to this saga plus a major canonical issue where the client add 30+ domains with 302 redirects thus causing massive canonical issues, they were at the top of the places merged results and pos 3 overall.

If no progress after 2 weeks I'll delete this dupe and see if that removes it completely from the map.

 

[Linda Buquet]

If no progress after 2 weeks I'll delete this dupe and see if that removes it completely from the map.

Deleting from maps or suspending a listing does not work any more. As long as there are citations out there it will stay live. Plus the algo is likely to put the home page back on the live listing even if you delete from dash. So I would have linked that page to an internal page of the site. Also make sure it only has one sub par cat and none that compete with the main KWs the main listing wants.

If in the end it needs to be deleted support will need to do it and should have been able to by now. May need to just try again and get a different rep.

 

[BrendanT]

Figured that was the case. I've had 2 calls with support and both assured me its gone but 2 weeks after both it still sits there hence taking action myself.

Its not actually a dupe of the business name, its just a name of a department inside the company which should have never been given a places listing or have any citations created....case of the client doing something that hurts them long term. De-opting the listing seems to have made the biggest impact so far with the real listing now being merged with the homepage today so at least some progress forward

 

[Adam Zahler]

I'm not sure if this is of any help but I just deleted 2 dupes for a client. I felt pretty dumb because it took me about 45 mins to find the delete link. I realised 'Remove listing' must not be the same as deleting - you are just removing your ability to manage that page. Eventually realised I needed to be logged in as the owner to the dupe G+ and then click page setting and scroll all the way to the bottom to 'Delete'.

You probably already know this but just wanted to share to make sure if anyone else has the same issue as me they don't need to embarrass themselves by admitting what I've just admitted ;D

Honestly this can get annoying but then if it was easy I wouldn't have any clients.

 

[Linda Buquet]

I'm not sure if this is of any help but I just deleted 2 dupes for a client. I felt pretty dumb because it took me about 45 mins to find the delete link. I realised 'Remove listing' must not be the same as deleting - you are just removing your ability to manage that page. Eventually realised I needed to be logged in as the owner to the dupe G+ and then click page setting and scroll all the way to the bottom to 'Delete'.

You probably already know this but just wanted to share to make sure if anyone else has the same issue as me they don't need to embarrass themselves by admitting what I've just admitted ;D

Honestly this can get annoying but then if it was easy I wouldn't have any clients.

Actually Adam, not quite sure what you meant but wanted to explain it's a little more complicated even.

LIVE dupes that you can see on maps you can't delete. Only support can.

Place pages, in the Places dash, if there are dupes you need to remove from account. If you say delete, from maps, (if there even still is that option in new dash), it won't delete them. Only support can. BUT you need to get them out of your account because it's a violation to have more than one claimed Place page and can cause many other problems. So remove listing.

You said "Eventually realised I needed to be logged in as the owner to the dupe G+ and then click page setting and scroll all the way to the bottom to 'Delete'."

Not sure but that part sounds like you were deleting a G+ page not a Place page???

If so, that's another animal! So you know dupe G+ pages all by themselves if not connected to a Place page aren't a problem per se and it's not a violation to have more than one and they don't rank or anything. (If it only has a follow button and no review option, it's a plain G+ page.)

But if it's merged or upgraded to a full G+ Page and Place page combo, then just deleting the G+ page may or may not delete the Place page (depending on which way it was created.) For instance if it was a combo page where the client or previous SEO manually set up a G+ page and manually merged it with Places, deleting the G+ page will still leave the Place page usually and it's the dupe Place page that's the problem as far as ranking and a violation.

ISN'T THIS FUN? And was that clear as mud???