Hi Robin

That is just great timing with your post. I’m having so much troubles with Google Places recently. I have change my business address about 6 months ago so i decided to change my address on Google Places. For some reason they created additional listing for my business with my new address. I haven’t realized that until a month ago so for all that time there were two listings of my business with different addresses. As soon as i noticed that I emailed them and asked them to corrected it and they just removed listing with correct address and left the one with old address so back to square one Listing with correct address seams to disappeared completely now.
However when i log in into my Google places account all the details are showing correct (so correct address – new one) but on google maps itself details are incorrect.

As you can see its very confusing I tried to contact them again but they never get back to me or fixed that problem. Do you have any suggestions how i can fix that?

@fsdegrees

How coincidental. I just posted one warning about trying to use PO Boxes instead of street addresses. Next, I was going to write about the problem of having more than one NAP. Google doesn’t know which business is the legitimate occupier of the land at that street address, so it tends to just reject your NAP and make your listing disappear. They’re not sure if you’re the scammer or not. Or, you could be a competitor trying to put the business at that location out of business. Happens that way a lot.

Let me doublecheck this first, but I think it may have been advisable for you to first verify the listing with the wrong address, go inside, and delete the listing entirely.  The same would be true if there were a listing for your address that belonged to a previous business no longer there.

Then, you would create and verify a new listing with your correct business NAP — name, address (street address only), and phone number. They’ll probably make you get verification by mail, which can take a long time. The good news is that eventually Google will spider you again and realize you are now the rightful owner of your NAP and the one and only business located at that precise street address.

Just make sure you write your NAP the exact same way every time. If you write it as  “Suite 123″, then never abbreviate. Also, search the internet for any old or scamming businesses who might have used that address in the past, as well as making sure that every single online citation with your NAP appears the same. One NAP for your business — now and forever, as long as you’re at that address.

A medical prospect last year had 15 different addresses, phone numbers, business names floating around the internet. That wa a nightmare worst case scenario.

For you, I recommend  scouring the internet for your NAP first, just to make sure. Then try what I said. Sorry, but you could be in a waiting game now.

@atlantarobin

Thanks Robin for your answer.

Wow sounds more complicated then i thought it will be. So it means that i will lose all my reviews when i delete my listing is there anyway I can move them over to new listing. I already lost couple as someone put review to listing they removed.

@atlantarobin

Not sure if this will be helpful to you but I had recently written a post, Local business marketing: 3 strategies to leverage engagement, where I included info about Google Places.

Thanks too for posting these great topics!

@debbie-hemley

Wow, Debbie, great article! That commenter was spot on, as this offered a lot of interesting and new info on this too often regurgitated topic. Lol, well that doesn’t sound quite right, but my intent is to highly recommend reading your article.

@debbie-hemley thanks for the article. @atlantarobin what’s your opinion on using Google Places for a solo home based business?

@joanmuschampfagnani

I think Google Place listings are great for home-based businesses. Just make sure you use your home address (best option) or pay for one of those executive office service plans for $50 or so. Google is fine with the latter because even though you’re not actually working there, you will have a singular address with your own suite number and they don’t usually get rejected  by Google. Just no PO Boxes. The big plus is that if you optimize your Google Places listing well, then it can definitely help boost your own website rank for those search keywords as well. Higher rankings = more potential customers are going to find you. I think local businesses should make this their first priority, before spending a dime on any other marketing. .

@fsdegrees Jakub, that is sooo cool they finally called you. And no, I definitely think that was no coincidence. Can you tell us what Google finally did for you to get your Places page listing straightened out?