How do I get rid of rogue listings?
-
Unfortunately, Google has taken bits and pieces of my business and combined it with non-existent businesses and other rogue information. So now my business has 3 locations.
One proper listing that I created and manage.
One that uses my website address but nothing else is correct in the listing.
One that contains my name(incorrectly), but the address and everything else about it is incorrect.
I have reported these places many times but they continue to hang around and I am lost/confused on what to do next.
Please advise.
-
Hi Dignan,
The appropriate thing to do in cases like these it to go through the REPORT A PROBLEM link at the bottom of each problematic Place Page. It's a good idea to be signed into your account while doing this. Describe the situation and link to the correct listing for your business in the wizard. State that you have only one address - the one on your authoritative listing. Ask that these 2 other listings be removed.
Wait 4-6 weeks to hear back from Google (could take considerably less time these days, actually). If you do not see resolution, then take the matter to the new Google Places Help Forum. The new forum will be here:
http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!forum/maps
Explain the steps you have taken and ask if a Top Contributor can please help you obtain resolution.
*In your shoes, I would also do some sleuthing to try to figure out where the other data is coming from...it's coming from somewhere and discovering the origin may help you to surmise what is going on.
Hope this helps and good luck!
Miriam
-
As you have your listing I would suggest that you continue to try and get those listings removed by reporting it to Google.
One way that you can demonstrate that your verified listing is the "credible" and only one is through local citation linkbuilding and getting people to place reviews on your listing.
The more activity will show hopefully push the other two down in SERP's and eventually be removed from Google.
Good luck,
Vahe
-
HI Brent,
Thanks for the reply. As of last week the phone numbers were different on the rogue listings, but I just checked...and guess what...both now have MY phone number.
So it looks like I could claim them. It was advised that the best way to deal with these listings would be to just report them to Google, opposed to claiming them.
They mentioned it was against the rules for me to have more than one listing(even if my intention was to nix the two rogue listings.)
Care to share your input?
-
This may be obvious but you haven't mentioned it. Did you try to claim the listings? Or are they already verified and claimed by somebody else?
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Schema Markup for property listings (estate agent)
Hello, I've been looking online for some help with this. An estate agent has a page of properties for sale. Is it possible to mark these individual properties up and if so would they appear as rich snippets in the SERPS - never seen anything like this for properties for sale so just wondered,
Technical SEO | | AL123al1 -
Getting Google to index a large PDF file
Hello! We have a 100+ MB PDF with multiple pages that we want Google to fully index on our server/website. First of all, is it even possible for Google to index a PDF file of this size? It's been up on our server for a few days, and my colleague did a Googlebot fetch via Webmaster Tools, but it still hasn't happened yet. My theories as to why this may not work: A) We have no actual link(s) to the pdf anywhere on our website. B) This PDF is approx 130 MB and very slow to load. I added some compression to it, but that only got it down to 105 MB. Any tips or suggestions on getting this thing indexed in Google would be appreciated. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | BBEXNinja0 -
HELP! Google Business listing removed - check out my SERP free fall!
Hey Moz Community, I need your help. I have (had) a google local business listing. I made some changes last week to clean it up. Now it's gone and I've had a massive fall in my rankings (see images). Changes I made: I changed the business name from a spammy name: BYOL Graphic Design & Web Design Courses. TO: **Bring Your Own Laptop PTY LTD. ** I added Local business schema to my website. I added my telephone, address etc. Previously it was all an image. I tinkered with a few other things while I was there too but I can't remember them all. Other notes: Initially I blamed the dramatic drop on Hummingbird but after doing some research I'm not so sure. I think it's because I was messing around with Google Local. My listing is/was here: https://plus.google.com/111689574762050943425 (though it doesn't work any more). My website is www.bringyourownlaptop.com.au Questions: Do you think the loss of my Google local listing could be the cause of such a big drop? If it is my Google local listing - Is there a way to find out what I did wrong? Is there a place to ask for it to be re-checked? Is it better to just start again with a new listing? Do you think it's tied together with a Hummingbird change some how? What else can I check? What would you do? Thanks for your time. Dan
Technical SEO | | danlovesadobe
_The nervous business owner. _ InKrwvX.png Hv36XUu.png0 -
DMOZ listing
Hello, My website is not listed in DMOZ. Is DMOZ important? And how to submit website to DMOZ directory? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | JohnHuynh2 -
What Would i do to get my site ranking high?
Hello Friends, I need your help please tell me what would I do to get my site ranking high in Google search engine. When I start my work on my site my work blog commenting , social bookmarking, keyword targeting etc.… But now the scene is completely changing. Now I am working on just guest blogging. I don’t understand that what would I do next after the guest blogging. Because I think there is now just one way to promote your site VIA guest blogging. Now please tell me is there any other option to work and get high ranking?
Technical SEO | | KLLC0 -
How do I get google to index the right pages with the right key word?
Hello I notice that even though I have a site map google is indexing the wrong pages under the wrong key words. As a result its not as relevant and is not ranking properly.
Technical SEO | | ursalesguru0 -
Our homepage currently uses a Meta refresh. Is it worth $1,000 to get it fixed?
Look at http://www.ccisolutions.com After the meta refresh takes place the homepage URL looks like this: http://www.ccisolutions.com/StoreFront/IAFDispatcher?iafAction=showMain I am trying to convince management that it is worth spending $1,000 with our current provider to get it fixed. It is my understanding that this meta refresh could be preventing the value of our homepage from being passed down to our category pages, etc. Can anyone give me something concrete that I can use to convince management that the fix is worth $1,000? Or is it not worth fixing?
Technical SEO | | danatanseo0 -
Struggling to get my lyrics website fully indexed
Hey guys, been a longtime SEOmoz user, only just getting heavily into SEO now and this is my first query, apologies if it's simple to answer but I have been doing my research! My website is http://www.lyricstatus.com - basically it's a lyrics website. Rightly or wrongly, I'm using Google Custom Search Engine on my website for search, as well as jQuery auto-suggest - please ignore the latter for now. My problem is that when I launched the site I had a complex AJAX Browse page, so Google couldn't see static links to all my pages, thus it only indexed certain pages that did have static links. This led to my searches on my site using the Google CSE being useless as very few pages were indexed. I've since dropped the complex AJAX links and replaced it with easy static links. However, this was a few weeks ago now and still Google won't fully index my site. Try doing a search for "Justin Timberlake" (don't use the auto-suggest, just click the "Search" button) and it's clear that the site still hasn't been fully indexed! I'm really not too sure what else to do, other than wait and hope, which doesn't seem like a very proactive thing to do! My only other suspicion is that Google sees my site as more duplicate content, but surely it must be ok with indexing multiple lyrics sites since there are plenty of different ones ranking in Google. Any help or advice greatly appreciated guys!
Technical SEO | | SEOed0