What to Do About All These Duplicate / Irrelevant Listings - Related to March Broad Core Update??

[darcycburk]

Alright, get ready for a weird one!

Customer is a used car dealer located in North York, Toronto, Canada. They previously ranked really well for many used car dealership and financing related terms.

In March, we noticed our organic rankings plummet.

You can see that the most impactful keywords that dropped were majority local. They no longer appear in the map and instead are lower down in traditional organic.

Note that these rankings are all based out of Toronto, even though they are located in North York. Regardless even using a tool like Local Falcon shows them completely dropping off locally for a keyword such as "used cars toronto"

This had a direct impact on their businesses performance and clicks from these keywords. Below in a snapshot from search console, filtered by clicks on the GBP website link:

My initial reaction was this had something to do with the March 2023 Broad Core Update given that the drop coincides with the end of that update.

However I believe something else might be in the mix.

This business previously had an issue with duplicate listings. that was years ago but they are still in our GBP account.

They also have 2 other GBP listings on their building. One has been there for a long time that they created years ago to promote a separate financing business that they recently have shuttered. The other was moved there by an employee a few months ago without discussing it with the owner.

And the final "weird" component of this mess is that Google recently "updated the location of the business", moving the pin location on the map.

1. What is the best course of action moving forward?
   
   
2. Should I move the pin back to its previous location?
   
   
3. What is the best way to get rid of the Car Finance Canada and Cars on Canada listings?
   
   
4. Should I be doing anything about the 2 duplicate listings in our GBP account?
   
   
5. Any other things to consider here?
   

Thanks in advance for anyone's help looking at this mess! lol.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hi Darcy,

1. What is the best course of action moving forward? - See below
2. Should I move the pin back to its previous location? - I would, especially if the new spot isn't accurate
3. What is the best way to get rid of the Car Finance Canada and Cars on Canada listings? you might be able to request removal of the one the employee moved there since it never should have been there in the first place. The other one would need to be marked closed if it was in operation at one time. You might be able to request Google "move" it into the main GBP which might be better than closing it.
   
   
4. Should I be doing anything about the 2 duplicate listings in our GBP account? They don't serve a purpose so you can remove them from the account. You can use Google Takeout to export any data that is associated with them.

As far as the ranking drop goes, I would need to dig in a bit more. Maybe we can look at it when we grab coffee next week.

 

[darcycburk]

Hi Darcy,

1. What is the best course of action moving forward? - See below
2. Should I move the pin back to its previous location? - I would, especially if the new spot isn't accurate
3. What is the best way to get rid of the Car Finance Canada and Cars on Canada listings? you might be able to request removal of the one the employee moved there since it never should have been there in the first place. The other one would need to be marked closed if it was in operation at one time. You might be able to request Google "move" it into the main GBP which might be better than closing it.
   
   
4. Should I be doing anything about the 2 duplicate listings in our GBP account? They don't serve a purpose so you can remove them from the account. You can use Google Takeout to export any data that is associated with them.

As far as the ranking drop goes, I would need to dig in a bit more. Maybe we can look at it when we grab coffee next week.

Thanks for your help. I did move the pin and got the other listings removed. We had a slight bump after making these changes but nowhere near the recovery we were hoping for.

 

[JS Girard]

Minor moves tend to happen in waves, I've noticed. I think (I have no way to check on this) that it's Google fiddling with the location of address nodes.