Triple listing mayhem, how to deal with this?

[Adam]

Looking for a little advice, I have a strategy in mind how to deal with this but curious what your thoughts are.

I have a client that has three 'duplicates' showing up in local search. Business name uses an ampersand and some citations have been created in the past using "and" instead. They use a suite at an address and some of the citations have varying formatting for that as well. I found these by searching for "stimpys widgets" in the map. Using some fake info here but just to illustrate the situation here is the jist of the three listings:

Stimpys Widgets & Surplus
Google+ Local Business page (about, posts, photos, write a review)
Lists address as: 22 Johnson Road #12
Active social posting on this page
Website links to this page

Stimpys Widgets & Surplus
Google+ Local (About, photos, write a review)
Address is hidden, only displays city name
* This was the original old school Google places listing
* This entry shows in the places dashboard with an address like: 22 Johnson Road Unit 12
* This one ranked #1 until recently it dropped to #9

Stimpys Widgets and Surplus
Google+ Local (About, photos, write a review)
Lists address but without suite number.
* I think G made this from scraping somewhere


The citations are in a bit of a mess. I've done SEO for awhile but never had to jump this deep into the local SEO hole. Some sites list them twice with same name but different or partially correct info.

Steps I plan on taking and associated questions:

1. Update all citations with proper NAP and remove duplicate citations from the same source.
2. Deal with duplicate local listings.

What address is the right one? I plan on building/fixing citations using the original Google places listing (#2 above) since this was ranked high/is highest and I figure it has the most juice. Hopefully I can find the citation that is creating the third page (with no unit #) and fix that problem in the process. Will editing/updating old citations reduce their value?

What I've done so far. I tried to change the Google+ Local Business (#1 above) page to use the same address formatting as #2 above via the "edit business details" admin page but it simply switched the formatting back and even changed the post code. This page had a title "Stimpys Widgets and Surplus" as it was made this way, I changed it to "Stimpys Widget & Surplus" to match the #2 listing, I thought this would merge the two (#1 and #2) but that was before I dug deeper into the issue.

I've started updating citations I can gain access to.

How do deal with dupe listings? I'm really not versed here, is there a way to get the #1 and #2 merged? Or, do I need to delete the first and try to make a new + page that sticks to the 2nd? Social is important in the overall game of things but ranking in the local pack is much more important so scraping that page and making something new for the 2nd juicey is not a huge problem.

-- Any advice would be hugely appreciated.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Adam,

WELCOME! And thanks for posting.

Those that read me know that dupes are the bane of my existence and some call me the duplicate queen. I also cover dupe problems in detail in my training.

I'm swamped and don't have time to answer now but in a nutshell will quickly mention that there are several types of dupes and several ways to deal with them so it's hard to advise without seeing specific listings. But you've given enough general info that I can try to weigh in tonight when I get time.

FYI the other way you need to search for dupes since names could be different is map search for phone (555) 222 -3333. That's always the 1st thing I check.

Others feel free to weigh in please and I'll try to circle back tonight if I get time.

 

[Adam]

Yea same deal shows up with phone number search.

I've since dug up ~35 sites with the wrong/inaccurate info and requested an update or done what I can to update it manually. Looks like it will be an on-going battle of following up. I did the 'report problem' thing from my non-owner account and said that listing #3 is a dupe of listing #1. Nothing's happened since I did that a few days back.

Jist of it is there is a business local page that's verified via the website. Then there is a local plus page that migrated from the old places setup. Old places page has more ranking juice then the business local page, we're talking #9 vs #80.

I was thinking of making a new business page and attempting to tie it to the local page, but not sure if this will just make more of a mess of things.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Jist of it is there is a business local page that's verified via the website. Then there is a local plus page that migrated from the old places setup. Old places page has more ranking juice then the business local page, we're talking #9 vs #80.

I was thinking of making a new business page and attempting to tie it to the local page, but not sure if this will just make more of a mess of things.

No G+ Business pages do not rank unless they are merged with G+ Local and should not be merged right now. So sounds like there may be confusion about what page is what.

Even Google says not to and I REALLY say don't it's too buggy. PLUS even if you wanted to risk it Google also says not to merge if there are data problems and I consider dupes data problems.

I think there is more to this and it's really hard to decipher when people just try to explain because the page names are confusing and people call them by one name when they are really something else or make up a name like local plus page.

Would help a lot if you post links to all the pages so I can see what we are talking about.

 

[Adam]

Yea the page names are confusing as hell. I sent you a PM.