Google Places + Automation is Really Obnoxious
Google places has always used some form of automation to pull in citations that are located out on the web. Well, I have witnessed that for quite some time anyway. This can be a great practice when we need to gather as much data as possible. Sometimes however this can really lead to issues.
Recently I had a client that decided to change their business address and business name. The business maintained the same type of service and only changed the name slightly due to a partnership change (LLC etc.). With that change I went into the verified Google Places account for said client and updated the business name and address to reflect the new updates. You would think this should be a good standard practice as I am promoting accurate content.
Within 2 weeks of this update I had noticed the clients local positioning had dropped off. This made me dig in and notice that Google Places had actually created a duplicate Google Places listing for said client with the old business information. This duplicate listing had impacted the results of the claimed listing. Under further examination it was determined that Google Places had automatically created a new listing with the old information due to many citations still existing on the web with that information.
This now creates a huge problem because a few side effects were felt and will continue to be felt.
1. We dropped in the local results
2. Google Places automatically made this change because more citations exist for the old incorrect address
3. Google Places will continue to support the old business information until I update ALL old citations with new ones (possibly 100′s)
4. Google’s report a problem tool barely ever works, but I will try to tell Google this is a duplicate anyway
5. Any many other issues …
The summary seems to be that the automated system will continue to inaccurate skew my manually updated data until I can force the automated system to see the new information. I feel like this is a flawed system. Being the verified owner, I should be able to say “hey, my address changed”.