Name Change - Places and Citations Mismatch

[MunishDev]

Hello Everyone,

I am in a bit of confusion here regarding my Google places listings and Citations. My company name has changed and all my citations reflect old company name while I have changed it in Google places. This all happened few months ago and Google has picked up new company name.

Out of sudden flash of enlightenment I came to realize that having different company names is not good. Now The question is Should I change all the citations(I have previously created account in most of them.) or change the company name in Google Places . Pleas Help!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Happy to help. But you posted in someone else's thread about a totally different topic, so I moved you to your own post here in the help section.

A couple problems. But basically you can't just change the name on your Place page if you move OR re-brand. It can cause all kinds of data problems.

Google is probably going to keep changing the name back on you.

DON'T touch the Place page right now. We need to investigate and advise best way forward because this can get SUPER complicated.

Please post link to listing.
Old name, new name.
When you changed it and when you pin verified it.

Then we can investigate and advise from there.

 

[MunishDev]

Thanks For Quick response , Here are the details

Link to Google Page https://plus.google.com/118346060416100041207/about?hl=en(Search for "Atlantic Divorce Mediation & Collaborative Law Center" in google maps)

Web URL Monmouth County, New Jersey divorce attorneys, mediation lawyers, litigation attorney, child support Ocean County

Old Company name : Atlantic Divorce Mediation

New Company Name : Atlantic Divorce Mediation & Collaborative Law Center

Name Changed : Almost six months ago.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Google now say's that with any NAP changes, the best practice is to create a new listing and mark the old one as closed.

However, for minor business name changes, where the brand is the same, you should be ok to make the minor name edit within the account, as you have already done six months ago.

It was just a name change, right? Phone number and address are the same?

 

[MunishDev]

Yes Everything except the company name is same.

 

[Linda Buquet]

If it was a name edit with part of the name the same, not a complete name change
and ESPECIALLY since it was 6 months ago I would not close and open new.

Now if you asked me BEFORE the name change I would caution that that name is too long and could look KW stuffed to the algo and there are not hardly any citations to support it. So I'm still a little worried about being suspended.

But if it's been live for 6 months you could be OK. But you better get busy and change the most important citations sources to match ASAP.

 

[MunishDev]

I'll do that, Thanks a bunch everyone

 

[Andrew Sawyer]

Name corrections are allowed for things like misspellings, but branding changes such as these should have resulted in closing the old and opening a new one. Since the change was so long ago I wouldn't change it, but it is likely the name will flip flop as the bots will see the name imported and will sometimes revert it to that. Have fun playing with the bots...