Professional Listing with a Name Change

[JoyHawkins]

I have a scenario I thought I'd check to see if anyone had run into before. I have an insurance agent, let's call her Betsy Smith that got married so now her name is Betsy Rogers. If you look at her MapMaker history you can see that Google used to associate her old name with the page and when she got married she simply updated the title. So when you search "Betsy Smith" you do get her G+ Local page showing her as Betsy Rogers. So Google obviously know that A=B.

The question is about citations. We've updated a few but how much would you stress over updating all the ones that list her as Betsy Smith still?

 

[Scott Rawlins]

Joy - moved your post to citations since that's really what you're referring to.

IMO - I wouldn't stress too much about it. I would take care of the major players and some industry specific ones.

 

[whitespark]

Hey Joy,

If Google has already made the connection, as proven by the search you mentioned, then I think you're in good shape and I wouldn't stress much about it.

I'd fix up her listings on the data aggregators, Google, Bing, Apple, Facebook, Yelp, and Foursquare, then call it a day. The other listings she has out there with the wrong name won't matter.

 

[Nyagoslav]

Joy, I would probably be a bit more conservative than Darren and say that it might be a good idea, just for the sake of good-night-sleep, to potentially have the following done in addition to what Darren mentioned:

- Have her maiden name variation added as an additional business name for the business record on Map Maker.

- Do some clean-up work on at least the top 20-25 business directories.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Thanks you 2! @Nyagoslav - technically adding old names is against MapMaker policies (https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/map-maker/2FEQgW21KP8)

 

[Nyagoslav]

Thanks for pointing to this thread, Joy! It is interesting that Google instructs the Maps reviewers to actually remove the old business names from the POIs, because according to my understanding, it is a feature of the Maps clustering system (arguably a grandfathered in one, but still) that within the same business record additional, different variations of the business name are stored. In this particular case where the agent changed her surname, but she might still be known with her maiden name to the wider public, I would interpret the situation as more like two different variations of her name (which is technically the business name, too), rather than a case of re-branding. Thus, there might be merit to adding her maiden name as an additional name for the business. At least that's how I read the situation, but of course in the end of the day it would be the call of the reviewer