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- Jul 25, 2012
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I remember in the Google Places training that we went over the process of editing a business name... a special way.
I believe that was to correct something minor... or perhaps to remove superfluous words that could violate Google's guidelines... such as changing from 'Fred Smith - Chicago Accountant' to just 'Fred Smith' (without a keyword in the name.)
Where do we draw the line between changing a business name from within the Google Places dashboard and closing the listing altogether when a name change is needed?
This is probably pretty straightforward, but an example would be a name change for an accounting firm... From the old name (fictitious) of: Smith & Doe LLP to the new name "Smith LLP" (Mr. Doe left the firm).
In this case, would we attempt to simply 'edit' the Google Places business name (as all other NAP info remained the same) or do we close it and create an new listing with the new name?
I assume the latter, as there would be many many many citations for the old firm name in existence, and forcing a name change via the dashboard would only cause the name to flip back and forth between the old and new name at best.
I also ran into this issue with Google reviewers when trying to 'correct' a company's name where their official name is something like "Example Inc" but they made the mistake of opening a G+ Local listing as "Example Widget Services Inc" (to get keywords in their company name.)
When I tried to edit (or 'correct') the G+ Listing (and GMM POI), the reviewers (and Google's algos) seemed to insist that the longer, incorrect, name was the real name. Reviewers didn't want to OK the edit in GMM and Google's algo didn't want to 'take' the name change from the dashboard. (Most likely due to the abundant propagation and popularity of the old/incorrect name) in IYP sources.
Thanks for you input.
Russ
I believe that was to correct something minor... or perhaps to remove superfluous words that could violate Google's guidelines... such as changing from 'Fred Smith - Chicago Accountant' to just 'Fred Smith' (without a keyword in the name.)
Where do we draw the line between changing a business name from within the Google Places dashboard and closing the listing altogether when a name change is needed?
This is probably pretty straightforward, but an example would be a name change for an accounting firm... From the old name (fictitious) of: Smith & Doe LLP to the new name "Smith LLP" (Mr. Doe left the firm).
In this case, would we attempt to simply 'edit' the Google Places business name (as all other NAP info remained the same) or do we close it and create an new listing with the new name?
I assume the latter, as there would be many many many citations for the old firm name in existence, and forcing a name change via the dashboard would only cause the name to flip back and forth between the old and new name at best.
I also ran into this issue with Google reviewers when trying to 'correct' a company's name where their official name is something like "Example Inc" but they made the mistake of opening a G+ Local listing as "Example Widget Services Inc" (to get keywords in their company name.)
When I tried to edit (or 'correct') the G+ Listing (and GMM POI), the reviewers (and Google's algos) seemed to insist that the longer, incorrect, name was the real name. Reviewers didn't want to OK the edit in GMM and Google's algo didn't want to 'take' the name change from the dashboard. (Most likely due to the abundant propagation and popularity of the old/incorrect name) in IYP sources.
Thanks for you input.
Russ
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