Merging Google+ Business Page and Google+ Local Listing (via separate accounts)

[m_j_gregory]

Hey all!

I was just wondering if anyone has had experience in trying to merge a listing where the Google+ Business Page and the Google+ Local listing (Places listing) were housed in separate accounts.

Currently, I would advise to not merge listings where the business page and local listing are in separate accounts. I can share with you my current findings as of today:

I had utilized the account which housed the Google+ Business Page (let's call this Account A) to merge and send the verification mailing from. After verifying the listing this morning I viewed it and it displayed the checkmark indicating the listing was verified. Also, it showed the updated 4 tabs (Posts, About, Images, Videos) also indicating the fully updated listing.

Then, I logged into the account which housed the Google+ Local listing (with the Places dashbord, let's call this Account B). After getting to the dashboard I clicked "View my listing" and it brought me to the original listing that was live throughout the past couple of months.

After doing a search in the 'Maps' tab on the business name and geo the results showed 2 listings. Thus, the verification created a duplicate listing.

The differences in the listings were as such:

Account A was the duplicate, new listing - the "About" tab showed only the address and phone number. The only thing it displayed was the images I uploaded prior to verification and the checkmark indicating the listing was verified. More importantly, no reviews showed on the page.

Account B showed the original listing as it was prior to the merge. The about tab was completely filled out (with the description and categories). Also, this listing did not show the verified checkmark. Furthermore, this listing showed the reviews.

Something I did not check is if there was a notification email in Account B stating something like "Someone is trying to merge your local listing with this Google+ Business Page". I will check on this tomorrow and provide an update.

Also, it may be too soon to make an educated guess on whether or not to merge a listing where the business page and local page are housed in separate accounts - if you'd like I will monitor the activity and provide updates on this. Though, as of now, I would advise to not do it. Currently, the 2 major takeaways are that it (1) it creates a duplicate listing and (2) the reviews do not show on the verified listing.

If anyone else has experience with this please chime in! Also, I'm open to any questions and/or concerns. Just thought I'd share my early findings before anyone decides to do this out of curiosity with their clients.

Hope this information was beneficial.

Thanks,
Matt

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hey Matt, what you are describing sound similar to this thread.
https://productforums.google.com/d/topic/business/SDd05Rp9ddg/discussion

Can you take a look at that situation and see if it seems similar?
I escalated to Google and they are looking into it. But I didn't think about diff accounts potentially being the issue til I read your thread here. So I just asked the OP if he had listings in diff accounts too.

 

[m_j_gregory]

Hey Linda,

Everything is identical to this situation. The only instance which is different is when he states:

"The google maps search results only bring up my old google places page and not the verified google+ page."

(Last I checked the maps search brought up both listings but this was a business name + geo search.) I bet he is doing KW searches which are showing the original listing (because the new listing has no categories).

And, I cannot confirm this statement in my situation:

"I've also lost a significant amount of page rank for my keywords "san antonio bail bonds" because my website doesn't appear to have a real link to my google places page."

Hope this was helpful.

-Matt

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks Matt, I just alerted Jade to your situation here as well, so hopefully they can figure out what's up.

 

[m_j_gregory]

Thanks Linda!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hey Matt, the other person at the G forum just replied and said NOT diff accts.

"They were both under the same account. I created the G+ page using the same account as the Place page to make sure there wouldn't be any problems with it later down the road."

Then in the private G forum someone said another similar problem was reported yesterday but he didn't link to it and I don't have time to dig.

Will let you know if I find anything out. Or if you want to post your deets on the G forum, then let me know the link and I'll escalate and see if I can help.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Several users are reporting 500 errors when trying to access google.com/local/verify to enter their PIN as well. Google is aware and working on it.

So as I kinda warned, this is an early release and I expected it to be a little buggy.
Matt you should add Google BETA tester to your resume.

Anyone who has NOT merged yet and is considering should see this thread.
Google+ Business Update - Pros and Cons of Merging Google Places Now Vs Waiting

 

[m_j_gregory]

Hey Linda,

Thanks for the update. Odd situation, however, I wonder if a duplicate listing was involved in this process prior to merging.

A colleague of mine today saw that he merged a listing where the local listing and the business page were in the same account. However, there was a duplicate unclaimed listing showing in the SERPS. After merging the business page and local listing the verified checkmark appeared on the duplicate listing.

I would be curious if this person knew of a duplicate listing existing prior to merging?

Also, I tend to agree with you: "This could just be an issue in moderation and delay". If these listings aren't reverted correctly within a week I think this will be a much larger issue. May be best to sit back for a couple days and see how these listings react. I will keep you updated with our instances.

Thanks,
Matt

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks Matt, yes please do keep us in the loop on what happens on both.

As I said over at the G forum, this is uncharted waters for us all (even Google) so we just need to figure it out as we go along.

 

[Keenan Glass]

The attny (bailbondsmen) in San Anontio in that thread merged his duplicate, and it looks like it went just fine.

Poor guy.

 

[Keenan Glass]

I just verified a +Listing, but instead of using the link provided in the postcard, I navigated to the page itself and used the verify button under the pending status at the top.

THAT verify page url included my G+page ID.

After completing the process, the information in my about us page was NOT deleted.

However, it appears it might take a few days before it goes live.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Keenan, as 1st the way it was written in the G thread I didn't realize what you meant and then it hit me.

It appears the OP merged a bare empty dupe with his G+ page (or somehow that's the one Google chose to merge). (Can't believe I didn't think of it since I'm usually fighting with dupes and that's usually 1st thing I think of.)

So he has what was likely an unclaimed bare and empty dupe he didn't know about, merge with his G+ biz page. And that's why he still has a separate claimed Place page with his reviews. The wrong Place page got merged.

So I told Jade there needs to be documentation or a warning right in the merge process screen somewhere about or we're going to have a bunch of merge messes.

Also asked here how do we unravel that one? (the bailbonds at the G forum) I don't see any way in heck to report this with the troubleshooter. NO WAY would I risk using the troubleshooter for this if I were him. So asked how she recommends we advise him to go about getting this fixed? VERY tricky problem but you can bet it's going to happen a ton for Drs. Dentists and Attys especially. (Or other industries prone to have dupe probs.)

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hey Matt, now that I'm looking at that other situation I'm thinking you MAY have the same problem this guy does.

Forget separate accounts for a sec because Jade told me that accounts don't matter. The merge isn't taking accounts into account. It's just looking at pages. Merge this G+ page with this Place page.

So looking at this again, you thought the merge verification CREATED the dupe.
But couldn't it be the same as what we think happened to this other guy?

There was a dupe that maybe you weren't even aware of. You did the verification and it said is this the listing you want to claim? You said yes, not realizing it was a dupe? So now the bare empty dupe is what is merged with the G+ page and that's why your main Place page is still separate and NOT merged?

Does that sound possible?

 

[Keenan Glass]

Seems to me that he could just create a new G+Page, tie it to the original Place page and request to Verify.

Then work on removing the duplicate. Start by deleting the G+Page. That should untie the dupe and then he could submit via the Troubleshooter.

He could also transfer ownership of the page to another account.

Hmmmm....

 

[Keenan Glass]

he did say, "Also once my G+ page was eligible for verification i lost quite a bit of ranking in the local maps search"

i wonder if somehow that is when the Dupe appeared.

I guess it would be worth double checking your listing when you get your "PIN postcard" just be be sure, before proceeding.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Seems to me that he could just create a new G+Page, tie it to the original Place page and request to Verify.

Then work on removing the duplicate. Start by deleting the G+Page. That should untie the dupe and then he could submit via the Troubleshooter.

He has over 1,000 in Circles so likely would not want to delete and start over.

Jade is checking into a good potential solution IF it will work and that's for Google to merge the 2 Place pages - see if we can pull the one with the reviews into the rest of the mix.

 

[Keenan Glass]

Well.... there's that.

 

[m_j_gregory]

Hey Linda,

Sorry for the delay.. But you are absolutely correct. We were initially testing how Google would respond to the separate account ordeal (so we thought this was the factor in the dupe).

There was a dupe that maybe you weren't even aware of. You did the verification and it said is this the listing you want to claim? You said yes, not realizing it was a dupe? So now the bare empty dupe is what is merged with the G+ page and that's why your main Place page is still separate and NOT merged?

Here's what happened in my scenario:

When initially claiming the listing there was only 1 choice when you "link" the local listing to the business page by entering the phone number. So we selected that one listing which appeared.

After receiving the PIN and verifying the listing we went to the 'maps' search tab and searched the listing using business name + geo. It showed the original listing (not merged), then I hit refresh and the duplicate (fully merged) listing appeared in the results.

So, yes, we believe the verification created the dupe like the bondsman in the forum's situation.

As a side note: I checked both of the bondsman's links today (the one linking to his old page and new one) and they both lead to the same listing, so it looks like it's fully merged - this could mean that time took it's toll (and fully merged) or Google escalated this situation to correct it?

Now, I checked the same my situation today... If you check the title tags of the listings you will see a difference between the original and the dupe.

Here's my old listing: https://plus.google.com/108969037723026902380/about?gl=us&hl=en#108969037723026902380/about
Here's the new fully merged (dupe) listing: https://plus.google.com/114470908173911997247/about?gl=us&hl=en#114470908173911997247/about
Notice, the old page's title tag adds "-About-" where the 'claimed (dupe)' listing doesn't show it (even if you click on the about tab after being on the page). I don't know what to make of this?

Even furthermore, as of this morning, the bondsman's listing showed the same between his old and new page (this has since disappeared and looked like it has merged - which is why I am unsure if the merge just took it's toll or if Google escalated the situation).

Maybe I am over-analyzing things but just wanted to share my findings so I can equip you with the activity I am seeing.

Again, I apologize on the delay in response Hope all is well, with you!

-Matt

 

[Keenan Glass]

i'm 99.99% sure Google manually fixed the bail bondsmen's listing.

Here's the thread

Hopefully Linda will also send your listing up for review. Did you already post thread?

I'm curious if you think there could have been a timeout during the process.

Also, did you verify from the URL on the postcard or from the Verify button located on the page itself?

 

[m_j_gregory]

Sorry, I timed out but wanted to provide an update:

The listings are not showing the "-about-" if clicking from this post which is even more odd. If you do a search in "Maps" on "ditocco law group fort lauderdale" and click listings B and G you should see the difference. So, I wanted to add the screenshots for clarity.

Here's my old listing: https://plus.google.com/108969037723026902380/about?gl=us&hl=en#108969037723026902380/about



Here's the new fully merged (dupe) listing: https://plus.google.com/114470908173911997247/about?gl=us&hl=en#114470908173911997247/about



Here, you can see the title tag difference.

Thanks,
Matt



---------- Post Merged at 11:59 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 11:55 PM ----------

Hey Keenan,

Thanks for your feedback in all of this situation as well, insight is always appreciated. We verified the listing via the verify button on the page.

Thanks,
Matt

---------- Post Merged on 08-16-2012 at 12:00 AM ---------- Previous Post was on 08-15-2012 at 11:55 PM ----------

Matt you should add Google BETA tester to your resume.

My apologies, I didn't see this post previous to responding. But yes, I love diving into the 'thick' of things and trying to provide beneficial feedback. Maybe I could put you as a reference

Also, cannot thank you enough for all the help you provide in the community, it is truly invaluable!

-Matt