Question Regarding Multiple Google Places Pages

[Bjolley]

Hello,

One of my clients has about 20 different google places pages at locations that are not real. The previous SEO company thought that would help with local search. My problem is that several great reviews have been written on each page by real customers. I want to close the places pages for locations that don't exist, but I don't want to lose the reviews. Is anyone aware of a solution for this? I have searched Google's forums and have not found anything.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bjolley,

Thanks for coming to the forum to ask your question! I'm glad to see Members contributing their thoughts, but think a point needs to be clarified here.

This is not a case of claiming the 'best' profile and making it your client's authoritative Place Page  - it is a case of claiming the CORRECT profile - the one for the business' legitimate location.

At this point, if this were my client, I would not be worrying about losing a few reviews on his phony Place Pages. I'd be sweating whether his account would be penalized before I could report the bogus listings through Google's report a problem link.

Now, that being said, I have seen cases where Google has accidentally displayed the reviews for one geographic location on another location's Place Page, but so far as I know, there is no way to save the reviews. Tell the client they are lucky you are trying to clean up the mess and that going forward, they will need to work on building up new reviews over time to replace what has been lost.

As a final thought, before you report the incorrect Place Pages, why not copy the good reviews and use them as testimonials on the client's website? You might even try doing this with hReview markup code to see if Google will eventually pick them back up again and display them on the authoritative Place Page. But first things first...tell the client you've got to get that record cleaned up as best you can, and fast!

Good luck to you!

Miriam

[itrogers]

I don't think it would be a good idea to claim all of these profiles. Google will most likely just suspend your account. Claim only the best one with the most/best reviews on it. On all of the other duplicate profiles use the "report a problem" link and choose the "place has another listing" option. In the comments, give Google the direct URL to the claimed profile.

I am unsure how they will handle reviews for this, but at the very least you'll have a starting point with the best profile these previous "SEOs" did.

[Jinx14678]

WOW an SEO firm that thought Quantity over Quality is important, NO!!!!!!

I am unaware of any solution for this, as I had a similar issue due to the company i work for has changed names a few times for Branding, so before i got here there were 3 -4 Place pages for each one of our 15 locations. It sucked to say the least especially since Google does not allow the use of extensions for authentication.

I would like to hear if anyone has any ideas, although I do not think it is possible. Especially since in most cases the comments are from 3rd party sources.

Hope you find an answer though!

w00t!