Recent Multiple GBP Duplicates in Profile Manager

[ABuck]

One of our client services managers recently (all three within one week) noticed three different clients showing up with 2-3 listings marked as duplicate in Profile Manager. I haven't seen this happen before. One shows with "California" all spelled out instead of "CA", but other than that, the names and addresses are the same. Has anyone else seen a recent boom in duplicate-marked listings? I have another client who has suddenly shown up with a new duplicate in Profile Manager marked "Verification Required". Their main listing has been verified for years.

 

[JS Girard]

I know of one source of unexpected duplicates, but I doubt this is what is happening to you:

If you leave old let's call them "draft" unverified GBPs in an account that were never verified, these "drafts" can randomly become duplicates of the "true", actually verified profile later on.

These "draft" occur most commonly because a GBP is created/added to your account as soon as you get to the "choose a verification method step, even if you never even select such a step or go any further. It also happens because you start the process to create/verify and then find out that oops, the client DOES have a GBP they can invite you too. For unrelated reasons, my coworkers (I don't handle the GBP verification process myself) tend to leave behind a lot of these "breadcrumbs" and I'm the one going behind them with the vacuum cleaner , but I assume a properly managed account should have none of them.