How I changed my Vanity URL in Google My Business

[BenFisher]

I wanted to share a story from my friend Matt Hepburn, a great traditional SEO guy that I work with on various projects.

The interesting thing about this story, and why I am sharing it here, is that he was able to go through a company name change and change the vanity URL on G+, which for most is an impossible task.

He did not have to create a new GMB listing either. Also, what is amazing is the same 15 digit code traveled with the page, confirming it was not a new G+ page.

Oh the reviews went with it as well

"On August 16, 2016 I started working on changing My Google My Business Page. You see I have two


businesses, the first Local Legal Marketing, LLC is my older business that had been established back in 2010. The other LLC: Conversion metrics, LLC is almost a year old.


In the past year, the clients that I have been serving have shifted. By far, I am receiving a larger amount of businesses by a diverse business base. I made the decision two weeks ago to start shifting my marketing to Conversion Metrics.


To be clear, up until two weeks ago, I did not have a website, or e-mail for Conversion Metrics. My only website and social profiles revolved around Local Legal Marketing, LLC.


So I started putting a base website together, met with my website designer to start working on a better site, and removed my content on Local Legal Marketing out of Google’s SERPS, and brought it all over to the new site, with some changes.


I then started working on my Google My Business account on 08/16/2016.


* I changed the name from Local legal Marketing, LLC to Conversion Metrics, LLC


* I changed the website from The Marketing Blog Of Local Legal Marketing to NJ Advertising Agency - Online Marketing Consulting - Conversion Metrics.


I was stuck with a vanity URL from the old business:


* https://plus.google.com/+Locallegalmarketing/about


* https://plus.google.com/b/116912387934399871985/+Locallegalmarketing


I called Google and told them what I wanted to do. They confirmed they were talking to me and after I explained that my business had shifted and I wanted to convert my vanity URL for my one business to the other, they told me they could do that, but that I needed to get some more followers. They stated it would take 5-7 days and that they would follow up with me.


Here are the steps that I took next:

• I removed any images from Local Legal marketing in my Google My Business page
• I completely re-wrote the about section for my business
• I completely filled out my profile for Google Plus.
• I emailed and skyped friends. I explained to them that I needed 5+ followers for Google to change my vanity URL on my Google My Business page. I went from 5 followers to 16.

 I have modified a few of my other social profiles such as twitter, from:


https://twitter.com/Local_Legal to https://twitter.com/conversionMTRX.

• I removed the old Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/locallegalmarketing.
• I will be building a new page for Conversion metrics moving forward.

•  We deleted our Pinterest account.
•  I was contacted by e-mail by a friend that I had e-mailed. He told me that the link I gave him no longer worked. I quickly went to the link and it gave me a 404 error for:

https://plus.google.com/+Locallegalmarketing/about


 I logged in and found the following: https://plus.google.com/116912387934399871985/.


 I called my friend Ben Fisher from Steady Demand and we went over the step that I had taken, as we had never heard of anybody being able to change a vanity URL. In fact, Google tells you when you choose the custom URL something to that effect.

• We decided to see if we could change the new URL:

https://plus.google.com/116912387934399871985/, to a new custom URL.

• Here is the new custom URL: https://plus.google.com/+ConversionMetricsLLC/about

A key takeaway is that my reviews came over with the new URL.

Feel free to ping Matt at Matt [at] conversionmetrics.co

Thoughts on this story?

 

[James Watt]

Thank you for sharing this Ben, I know you've seen a lot of questions on the Google forum about this too, so it'll be good to have something to point people towards. I've just been saying tough luck basically, but now that I know it can be done I'll be saying something different.

 

[BenFisher]

My pleasure James. That is why I had to share this. Next thing I would love to see is if this can be replicated.

 

[cdawg2610]

Interesting. I'm really curious to see about this replicating when you cannot delete some of those old social channels. We come across this problem a lot in our vertical, but it's not always possible to delete those social channels during a name change or a buy/sell.

 

[heckler]

It's a rare issue, but when it comes up and you decide to create a new page... it's like the last scene from Old Yeller, all that age authority gone.

I look forward to not having to "I'll do it Pa," anymore.

 

[timcapper]

Hi Ben

As far as I am aware business support has always able to reset the vanity url and I directed users with the issue to business support.

I have not come across the follower number ( or users never reported back ) any specifics, but i am guessing this is related to a new account and being able to trigger the custom url feature.

Great Write Up.

 

[Eric Rohrback]

So is this expedited by calling support and changing, or do you need to show good faith and change social profiles/build a slightly larger page following to trigger the change? The latter makes sense, because it would show you're actively changing the brand.

Great write up, and very interesting.