Google Places For Business Email Update
March 6th, 2014 by
We’re still not panicking about all of Google’s updates! As many of you already know, Google has been sending out a Google Places for Business email that reads as follows:
The Message
Hello,
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.
To get more information or request access to the other listings, please log into your Google Places account.
Sincerely,
The Google Places Team
As this message is kind of vague/ confusing, I called a Google rep to get clarification on exactly what’s going on here. Bear with me as I explain what this means exactly and how it’s affecting business listings.
The Meaning
Google is finally pulling all listings into the new Places for Business dashboard. In the old dashboard there could be multiple owners of a listing, but in the new dashboard there can only be one.
As Google performs these batch listing upgrades, the first owner whose account is upgraded gets grandfathered in, so to speak, and they will be the sole owner of the listing through the new dashboard. If someone has already claimed and verified a listing in the new dashboard, however, then no one will experience the “grandfather” situation in the batch upgrades as it is already verified in the new dashboard and has its one owner.
The good news is that many of us have been force pulling businesses into the new dashboard by claiming them through the Places section of plus.google.com. So the latter situation will have already occurred for most, and we will be the current, sole owner of verified listings in the new dashboard. (If you lose ownership of your listing in the batch update by Google, you can still request it back, it will just take time through a two week request period and contact with Google.)
We have seen cases, however, where after the batch update by Google there appears to be two listings in the dashboard of accounts who have already pulled their listing into the new dash on their own. Generally one appears as verified(the one we forced pulled into the new dash) and the other as unverified(the one Google pulled over), but they both lead to the same G+ page when you click through the “view this listing” link in each. This is just a weird hiccup, and if you wish to clean up the dashboard by deleting the unverified one, it will not affect your listing. As long as you have a verified listing in the new dashboard, you are the sole owner of said listing.
Now What?
Basically, anyone who has ever had a listing in the old dashboard is receiving this generic email, and it is not necessarily an indication as to whether or not the listing is owned/verified in the new dash in your account. So, as long as we’re keeping on top of our business listings’ dashboards, there is no cause for alarm! There’s also the note about duplicate listings in the email. Duplicate listing issues are not something that occur in every account which receives this email. More to come on addressing duplicates in the new dashboard next week! If you’d like to see what others are saying about the email, check out Search Engine Land’s post from earlier this morning or these forums where people have been discussing particular, individual issues encountered (Google Product Forums and Local Search Forum).
Here’s a screenshot of the actual email for those of you who would like to see it:
If you have any questions or comments about this situation, feel free to comment below! Stay tuned for how to handle duplicate listings!
