Need Advice on Merging Profiles With Extra Problems

[joegrape]

Hi Everyone,

I'm about to pitch a prospect. In performing my due diligence, I found a problem that I've not yet had to deal with. The prospect has two GBPs. Both are claimed by the prospect.

If that were all, I know it would be straightforward. But there is more...

• The company is a Service Area Business (cleaning service). One GBP is set up correctly as a SAB. The other GBP is with a PO Box address.
• Both have reviews, so there is a review transfer that needs to happen.
• The GBP with the most reviews (by a factor of 6x) is the one set up under the PO Box.
• It is probably the worst time for an operation like this, given all the SAB issues people are having due to the latest Google update.

Here is my action plan:

1.) Bring the GBP with the PO Box into compliance by switching it to a SAB.
2.) Transfer the reviews by following the instructions here: How to move your reviews across Business Profiles - Google Business Profile Help
3.) Merge the GBPs using the instructions here: How To Deal with Duplicates in Google My Business [2020 Edition] | Merge 2 Google My Business Listings
4.) Pray it goes smoothly.

Anyone have advice? Or am I about to step into a field of metaphorical landmines?

Thanks in advance,
Richard

 

[whitespark]

Hi Joe,

Have you considered just turning the PO Box location into a SAB listing and calling it a day? What’s the reason you want to merge them?

 

[joegrape]

I had not, actually.

I guess I assumed we had to merge them. But you are right, there is no real reason we need to. We'd lose the 6 reviews on the SAB profile, but that is probably an acceptable loss to avoid bigger problems.

What would be the order of operations here? Should I delete the SAB profile, then change the PO Box to an SAB? Or do the PO Box to SAB switch first, then delete the other SAB?

Or am I overthinking this? Does it matter?

I guess my fear here is I don't want poke the Google beast too much and make things worst.

 

[whitespark]

Are the two different profiles verified at different addresses? Like, the SAB profile is verified at a home address in one part of the city and the PO Box profile is in another part of the city?

If so, then while it’s not within Google’s guidelines (overlapping service areas), you could see how it goes to leave both listings up and running as SAB listings. This way you’ll continue to rank in two areas of the city rather than just one. Driving double the potential leads.

The risk here is an automatic suspension, but I don’t expect that would happen.

If you were planning to delete one of them anyway, then no harm done?

The only action item would be to switch the P.O. Box listing to sab… but now that I think about it, the best move might be to just do nothing at all. As you said: don’t poke the beast.

 

[joegrape]

I'm pretty sure they were verified at different addresses. But if you run both at the same time, how does Google decide which profile to suspend, if it came to that?

Also, the client already has a problem with the splitting of reviews - some customers are putting them on one profile, some are putting them on the other. It depends, I'm guessing, on which profile customers encounter first.