Google Local Listings Madness
It seems two have become one! Although this time it’s far from a match made in heaven. My two Google Local Listings have gone crazy. After updating my two business listings (for two separate businesses) today I found my self in a bit of a conundrum. When I searched for “web design Adelaide”, my first business, if came up first position in the local listings as we have for a few weeks, but in a quirky twist, the link goes to the second business I added to local listings, not the first one!
Now because clearly I want both my businesses listed in local listings and seeing they both operate out of the same office, I put one listing under our post office box which is generally accepted as the correct way to list a business within a city.
Some how Google (now don’t get me wrong I never doubted their intelligence) after realising that I own both business has decided to merge both my listings into one, and its not pretty!
Let me explain:
The Second Business, Optimise My Website (OMW), still displays correctly:
But The First Business DBG Technologies when clicked - links to the OMW website! See the green address after the first listing below:
But that’s not all, when I clicked “more” at the end of the listing I went to the more details page only to find that the information from both listings had also been combined DBG heading, OMW postal box, OMW phone number, with email addresses, website addresses, logos and the works in one giant “web design-optimisation mash up”!
I went to the local business centre, logged in and checked both listings. Each individual listing was exactly as should be. Separate email, separate website addresses, different contact details, information and different logos, not a hint of similarity, or this merger mambo jumbo. But then I found it…
My two businesses use the same land line phone number (which I used for Google verification of my listing). This is the ONLY thing connecting these two listings. So I have now updated the second website to have a different phone number. I await eagerly to see if the problem corrects itself and what affect this whole charade is going to have on my local, and perhaps even the organic listings.
Optimise My Website lisiting here has the DBG logo:
DBG Listing has the Optimsie My Website Contact Details!
If anyone knows anything about this “Google Local Listing Merger Phenomenon” I’d love to hear about it! I’ll keep you posted on the latest developments.
July 6th, 2008 at 3:58 am
Hi
I had the same problem
2 different business, the same address, same phone number, the result a gret mess
I have changed the phone and address for one of them, after 24 hr nothing change, only to one of them
when u do search in google it comes up, with wrong website, i click on MORE still wrong website but different address from my other listing, it is unbelievable how google associates a business with a website that has nothing to do with that business, and they never get back to me with a solution
Any luck with your listing
July 7th, 2008 at 10:33 am
Hi Nicole, after many headaches we were still unable to resolve the problem, we updated phone numbers, edited information, deleted and re-entered the second listing all to no avail! Even once we had de-activated and deleted the second account it was coming up weird for about 2 weeks.
Finally about a month later the original listing went back to normal and the second business was no longer listed. Still have not tried putting it back in as while the chaos reigned our online enquires pretty much dropped to nothing!
Would love to hear if you have any success!
July 10th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
This is the first I have heard about google local listings. Based on everyones experience should I not bother participating?
July 10th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Hi Peter, on the contrary you SHOULD DEFINATELY participate in Google Local Listings! It’s great if you just add one business and very handy when you come up at the top of that pretty list next to the map in the Google results! The problem only occurs when you add more than one business that use the same phone number or some other corresponding details. You should be fine, let me know how you go!