Removing non verifed listings

[r.talbot]

Hopefully this question (and Linda's answer) will help a few of us out!


I am having some trouble removing unverified locations from the local search results.


The locations show up when searching the brand name, but they do not exist. So i cannot even claim them to verify and then delete...


They were old sales offices so they did exist once, but not any more. The phone numbers associated no longer exist either - so I am unable to get any verificvation sent.


I have optimised a main profile which has more reviews and views, images, posts, yet these unverified listings still show up. Very frustrating!


Is there a way to go about removing these listings?

Thanks!!

 

[Eric Rohrback]

If they're true duplicates you can flag them so Google Support can merge them together, but if they're different locations (maybe the client moved) then it's not possible to completely remove them from the SERPs. They'll always show up for brand searches, so you would need to mark it as permanently closed.

If it's a dupe, the best bet is to call Google Support to get it merged with the correct listing.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

100% echo what Eric said.

And just in case, since there are two different types of unverified pages, it would help if you could provide the URL's to the pages in question.

Thanks!

 

[r.talbot]

Thanks guys, looks like i am gonna get onto support.

They are not duplicates - they were previous offices that were never verified, but got mentioned enough for G to make them a local page.

The offices no longer exist and the phone numbers have been discontinued.

The pages were all annoyingly called 'Brand Name LTD', so Google has just confused itself.

Thanks,
Rick

 

[Linda Buquet]

Rick,

Eric and Colan are right, but support is not the answer if these are previous locations.

Like I said via email: I make it a point not to give free one-on-one advice unless it's a quick simple answer and I have quite a bit to explain. The reason is because I have serious RSI problems and am crippled up in both arms. If I'm going to take the time and pain to write out a long answer, I want to do it on the forum where others can benefit from the answer too.

So thanks for posting here. Here is the reply I had prepared last night.

1) Even if you could claim or even if you already had them in dash, Google won't let you delete them if they were valid previous locations.

2) What you need to do is mark them closed. You do that as a user edit right on the listing. (Edit details) Don't need PIN or anything. BUT since competitors try to mark another closed when it's really open, you may need to try a couple times from different computers and different Google accounts.

3) BUT a problem once marked closed, Google puts a big red "Permanently Closed" banner on the listing. Closing is supposed to pull it out of search for KW searches. BUT sometimes it will still rank for brand searches. So if someone searches for the brand and they see the big red banner they can think you are out of business.

Soooo after all that if the closed listing still outranks the current one then you need to contact support.

But no need to contact them now because you can just close them yourself.

BUT before you even try to do that, Colan is right. There are different types of listings and you may have found one that does not even count and can be ignored AND you can't even close like we suggested above.

So we need to see links to the listings. Then we can tell you which to close or ignore.
If not comfortable posting links then can email to me and I'll check but reply with the situation here for the benefit of others this might help.

 

[r.talbot]

How do you mark as permanently closed if the listing is not verified?

 

[Linda Buquet]

I think we posted at same time Rick. See my long post above where I explain.