When is a listing considered a duplicate?

[spadilla]

I have a client who was working with an SEO guy that disappeared a couple of years back. He created a keyword-match domain and submitted that domain to the aggregators and when he went MIA the domain went offline.

The sites that are still showing the listing don't show the actual company name and instead look like : City Name Plumber - Plumbing Services. This is the service my client provides, however I am trying to just get everything sorted in the directories with the client's actual business name. The only item that matches the real data is the address. Thankfully, he used a different phone number.

My question is, would you go to the extent (pain) of trying to remove these listings or just leave it as-is? Does Google see this as confusing? They have their actual business name listed in these directories and categorized as a plumbing company, so I am curious if this would be considered a duplicate.

I appreciate your feedback

 

[heckler]

Greetings Spadilla (welcome to the forum),

Because the actual business address is on those old listings it could cause noise for Google and result in the business not being shown as frequently as it COULD.

Additionally, the fact the business name on those old listings looks spammy could be another mark against the business.

It is probably best to clean-up as many of those old listings as you can. Google will undoubtedly draw a relationship from the old-spammy listings to any new ones you create (at some point, if it hasn't already).

I'm not saying you have to clean ALL of them, but you should clean the most important ones (which push data to other places). Phil has a great resource to help you prioritize which directories should be cleaned (marked in RED)

The Definitive List of Local Search Citations | LocalVisibilitySystem.com

Hope this helps!

 

[spadilla]

Thanks so much for the warm welcome and your detailed reply. It looks like I've got some work ahead of me!

 

[JoyHawkins]

I would agree that it's a good idea to update all the major directories and make sure the name is correct on them. This decreases your chances of having duplicates pop up in the future as well.