How Duplicate Google My Business Listings Impact Your Online Reputation

Attention dealers! Claiming your Google My Business (GMB) listings is important since it can impact your online reputation. Never leave your GMB listing unclaimed, and always watch out for duplicate listings.

How Duplicate Google My Business Listings Happen

Here are a few possibilities:

• Google might have collected data from multiple sources
• Your competitors might have duplicated your listing
• A change in your business information may have caused duplicates
• You might have forgotten the old listing and created a new one, instead of claiming the existing one.

Here are the issues with duplicate Google My Business listings.

• It goes against GMB guidelines, and your dealership may be penalized.
• It confuses your prospects, resulting in potential loss of customers
• It fragments your online reviews between multiple listings

Here are the various things you can do to manage your duplicate listings.

1. Get Your Dealership Verified 

The first thing is to get your dealership verified. Search on Google Maps for your dealership. If the ‘own this business’ or ‘claim this business’ options are available, then your dealership needs to be verified. Follow instructions to claim your dealership.

If your dealership is already claimed, then you need to request Google to unverify or wait until you are allowed to verify it.

2. Merge Your GMB Pages

One more way is to merge your Google My Business page with the duplicate. To make this happen, you need to fill out a form and request GMB support to merge your pages.

This may take some time but your online reviews will be retained.

3. Remove Duplicate Locations

To remove the duplicate location, you can login to your GMB account and in ‘Account Summary,’ you may click on ‘Duplicate Locations.’ Choose the locations to be deleted.

4. Report Duplicate Locations

Instead of manually deleting the duplicate GMB account, you may also report it on Google Maps. Follow these instructions to report your listings:

• Go to Google Maps and find the duplicate dealer location that needs to be reported.
• Click on ‘Suggest an edit’ and mark the location as never existed or permanently closed to prove it is a duplicate listing.

For more insights into duplicate Google My Business listings and how it impacts your dealership’s online reputation, Contact Us.