SAB wrongly marked as a duplicate

[SaraG]

Hello!
One of my accounts, with SAB only locations, keeps getting duplicates every now and then even though the areas do not overlap. They offer an emergency locksmith service. One locksmith = one SAB profile with areas covering more or less 2 hours drive distance around the locksmith's residential address.

We were unable to fix the duplicates with Agency Support - invoice with a locksmith wasn't enough (it was sent to a locksmith's private address and didn't show the covered areas). They don't have any other proof besides an excel sheet where each listing is assigned to a locksmith's name, surname and their home postcode, which also didn't work as a proof.

Agency Support said that they need:
Any business document that can prove that the business has the authority to operate in the mentioned service areas would be sufficient.

But I have to admit that this type of proof is really difficult to get and my customer and I don't have a clue what to do to. Do you maybe have any advice?

Not to mention that SABs seem to have such poor ranking compared to hybrid businesses that I sometimes doubt it's worth wasting time on handling these issues...

Thanks in advance for any kind of advice.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

One of my accounts, with SAB only locations, keeps getting duplicates every now and then even though the areas do not overlap.

Hi Sara, can you clarify what you mean by that? Can you show an example? Are these live duplicates in the sense that there are multiple live listings? Or are you receiving the "duplicate listing" message in the GBP dashboard, but there is only one live GBP?

Any business document that can prove that the business has the authority to operate in the mentioned service areas would be sufficient.

That is an odd thing for GBP Support to request. Typically, they just want to see that the address used to verify the listing is an official business address and that the service areas don't overlap with other GBP's that the business might have. Do you have screenshots of the email where Google stated that?

 

[SaraG]

Hello Colan,

Apologies for being unclear at the beginning, but I hope that I can fix that.

Hi Sara, can you clarify what you mean by that? Can you show an example? Are these live duplicates in the sense that there are multiple live listings? Or are you receiving the "duplicate listing" message in the GBP dashboard, but there is only one live GBP?

Yes, we are receiving the "duplicate listing" message.

Google's guidelines state that Service Areas should not overlap - and they don't. Yet still the listings get marked as duplicates.

So now what we have to do is to add more areas to the live listings, and therefore violate the guideline that states "The boundaries of your overall area should not extend farther than about 2 hours of driving time from where your business is based."

That is an odd thing for GBP Support to request. Typically, they just want to see that the address used to verify the listing is an official business address and that the service areas don't overlap with other GBP's that the business might have. Do you have screenshots of the email where Google stated that?

Interesting that you say it, because we get a lot of requests like that. These businesses don't have addresses, they are pure SAB listings. And as they don't have storefront signs, Google Agency Support asks for business licences.

In that case it's difficult to obtain a "business licence", because as I said, the customer doesn't have "any other proof besides an excel sheet where each listing (i.e. areas) is assigned to a locksmith's name, surname and their home postcode".

Do you have any ideas on what could help in that case? And thank you for answering in the first place.