One or Two GMB listings? Individual facilities under same brand on same campus

[hmarmo]

I have a healthcare client with two brand new different facilities located on the same campus. The facilities are unique (one is a rehabilitation center and one is an assited living facility) and each have a seperate license#, tax id, staff, marketing etc. They even have different addresses on the same street - eg: one being 123-125 main street and the other 130 main street.
They are named Brand Senior Living and Brand Rehabilitation Center

How should we set up Google Local - should they each be set up as a separate location or should we create one listing for the whole campus? I am concerned:
1. Google should not suspend one/both listings viewing it as duplicate
2.Even if both are successfully set up google may get confused and show the wrong one when someone is searching eg: if someone searches for Brand Assisted Living and the Rehabilitation Center shows up instead of the Senior Living?

Thanks!!

 

[Rich Owings]

If they use different primary categories (assisted living facility vs. physical therapy clinic), you should be able to have them both be accepted, if they have separate websites and separate phone numbers. If you end up having issues with a suspension, merge, duplicate warning, etc., you should be able to get GMB support to correct the issue.

 

[georgenenni]

We do this every day for our automotive dealer-customers, setting up a primary sales listing, and then adding Service, Parts, and Body Shop all at separate locations. Make sure to deep-link and UTM to department pages, different phone numbers if possible, and then purely delineated GMB Categories. As each department GMB gets at least 20 reviews and 20 customer photos, Google typically nests these new department GMBs into main sales listing. Hope this helps!

 

[hmarmo]

Thanks! Do you have an example you can share?
So would you suggest creating another general listing for the whole campus in addition to the individual facilities? That might seem like a duplicate..
The facilities each have their own phone numbers and websites.

We do this every day for our automotive dealer-customers, setting up a primary sales listing, and then adding Service, Parts, and Body Shop all at separate locations. Make sure to deep-link and UTM to department pages, different phone numbers if possible, and then purely delineated GMB Categories. As each department GMB gets at least 20 reviews and 20 customer photos, Google typically nests these new department GMBs into main sales listing. Hope this helps!

 

[georgenenni]

Here is an example of a new car dealer's "main sales listing" (for new and used car sales), along with Parts, Service, etc. all nested. I don't know your business, industry and what may be allowed, but if there is an overarching entity for a GMB, or perhaps your "main business", or primary profit center, then offshoots could be their own GMB department. In automotive, this approach is recommended and embraced by Google.

 

[hmarmo]

If they use different primary categories (assisted living facility vs. physical therapy clinic), you should be able to have them both be accepted, if they have separate websites and separate phone numbers. If you end up having issues with a suspension, merge, duplicate warning, etc., you should be able to get GMB support to correct the issue.

I went ahead and claimed/opened listings for each facility individually - they really are individual businesses with seperate licenses, address, phone number, website and clientelle - but suddenly over the last weekend every single listing in the account was suspended! I submitted a request for reinstatement for two facilities and even uploaded a copy of the state license with address but received a reply:
"We've looked at your account and it looks like your business is not eligible to display on Google Maps per our quality guidelines. Check out our guidelines for representing your business on Google to see what types of businesses are eligible to be on Google Maps."
I have no idea what is wrong! ANy advice on who can help me?!

 

[emarsh]

I went ahead and claimed/opened listings for each facility individually - they really are individual businesses with seperate licenses, address, phone number, website and clientelle - but suddenly over the last weekend every single listing in the account was suspended! I submitted a request for reinstatement for two facilities and even uploaded a copy of the state license with address but received a reply:
"We've looked at your account and it looks like your business is not eligible to display on Google Maps per our quality guidelines. Check out our guidelines for representing your business on Google to see what types of businesses are eligible to be on Google Maps."
I have no idea what is wrong! ANy advice on who can help me?!

Hey hmarmo,

I recently had a similar account-wide suspension of healthcare facilities that took me a couple months to sort out. Google initially gave the same reason for all of them (suspicious activity), but after I submitted reinstatement requests for each location, they either reinstated them with no changes or provided other reasons that were largely nonsensical. Watch out for user-submitted edits (noted on your profile by a pencil icon and oftentimes no other indicator) which can often be automatically applied even if they contradict the business's own manually submitted information (I had users suggest incorrect street addresses that were applied without my input, for example). This was a problem I could fix immediately with a few locations, but few of the suspensions were fixed in less than 2 weeks regardless.

So, some information might be incorrect or might have been changed without your knowledge, but it's also entirely possible that not a single thing is wrong with your GMB profiles and that you have been suspended for no reason. If you have read the guidelines and believe you are not in violation of any of them, submit a reinstatement form as soon as possible say so.

Eligibility came up in a few of my cases and I had to actually screenshot and highlight the text of the guidelines to demonstrate that the business types were not excluded and that they all "make in-person contact with customers during [their] stated hours," which would otherwise be the only exclusion that could possibly apply. As a side note, be aware that you cannot list an address and also use a service area - that's another point that seems to lead to suspensions.

My advice is to be persistent and don't accept nonsense responses. If what they're saying to you doesn't make sense, explain why (politely) and provide evidence if possible.