As Google Upgrades Google Maps Business Listings, Conflicts Happen Including Duplicate Listing Issues

Google has been automatically upgrading Google Place listings from the old system to the new Google Places dashboard. With this upgrade, there may be conflicts that prevents the upgrade from completing. The latest conflict is that there are duplicate listing issues and Google needs you to step in, fix the issue and then complete the […]

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Google has been automatically upgrading Google Place listings from the old system to the new Google Places dashboard. With this upgrade, there may be conflicts that prevents the upgrade from completing. The latest conflict is that there are duplicate listing issues and Google needs you to step in, fix the issue and then complete the upgrade process.

Google has recently began sending out notices of the duplicate place listings conflict via email to those impacted by this issue. The email reads:

We’d like to inform you that Google Places no longer accommodates more than one authorized owner per business location. Your account contains one or more listings that have been identified as duplicates of other listings and as a result, some of the information you provide will not be shown to Google users anymore…

Jade Wang from Google posted a detailed how to fix this issue in the Google Business Help forums where she summed up the issues two-fold:

(1) Your account and another account that you don’t control became verified for the same business using the old Places dashboard.

(2) You may have verified the page multiple times using accounts you control.

Each has their own method of resolving, which Google has either emailed the business owner or you can read them below in more detail.

From Jade of Google:

In one scenario, your account and another account that you don’t control became verified for the same business using the old Places dashboard:

Additional unknown verified account(s) from the old Places dashboard:
Google Places no longer supports multiple verified business owner accounts for the same business location, so we are letting you know that your account has a listing that’s a duplicate of a listing in another account. By logging into your Google Places for Business dashboard, you can view the duplicate listing, which will show a banner reading, “You cannot update this listing because it has been marked as a duplicate of another.” If you no longer want to manage this listing, you can remove this listing from your dashboard. Alternatively, you can request administrative access from the current owner of the listing using the link to Learn more in your dashboard.

It’s possible that someone else in your organization, or a third party whom you once worked with, verified the business in another account. If you don’t believe anyone else could possibly be active in managing this business information, other than yourself, you can always contact support directly to help restore your account’s access to the listing.

Or, you may have verified the page multiple times using accounts you control:

Multiple known verified accounts from old Places dashboard:
You may remove the duplicate listing from the dashboard in the account we emailed, which won’t affect the information on Maps. Then, please simply use the other account to manage the listing.

Verified same business in both Google Places and in Google+, same account:
You had a listing that you created on Google Places as well as a local page that you created in Google+, using the same account. You PIN verified the local page in Google+. The system now has identified that the listing you have in Google Places and the page you have in Google+ as duplicates. We have marked the listing from Places as duplicate. If you log in to Google Places, and you should see your local page (from Google+) as well as the duplicate listing, which will show a banner reading, “You cannot update this listing because it has been marked as a duplicate of another.” You can remove this listing from your dashboard, and continue to manage the business using the account with the listing which is connected to Maps.

Verified same business in both Google Places and in Google+, different accounts:
You or someone in your organization used different accounts to verify the Google Places listing and the local page in Google+. If this is the case, please use the latter account to manage this page. You should be able to do so via Google+ or Google Places. You can remove the duplicate listing from the account we emailed in Google Places, which won’t affect the information on Maps.

In any of the above 3 scenarios, you can keep the duplicate listing instead of the active one if you really want. First, remove the active listing from that account Then, you should contact our support team, who can help make the duplicate listing active again.

If you have questions or concerns, please contact our support team.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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