Duplicate Google listings and how to merge them

When it breaks 5 min read

Two Google listings for one business splits your reviews and sends calls to an old number, and here is how to find them all and merge them properly.

Somebody says they left you a review and you cannot find it. Or you search your own name and there you are twice, once with fourteen reviews and once with none, one with the old shop number and one with your cell phone. Both are yours. Only one of them is the one you have been looking after.

Duplicates are ordinary and they are fixable. The order matters, because merging the wrong way round loses things.

How you end up with two

You almost never make the second one on purpose.

Google builds listings from other sources, so one can appear before you have heard of it. A previous owner of the business made one and never closed it. An old employee claimed one on their own account. A marketing company set one up during a campaign and moved on. You moved premises and made a fresh listing rather than editing the old, because that felt like the tidy thing to do. Or the phone number changed and a second profile grew around the new one.

None of those are mistakes anybody would have known to avoid.

Find every listing with your name on it

Do this before you touch anything, because there may be three.

Search your business name on a phone in a private browsing window. Then search the name plus each address you have ever traded from. Then search each phone number you have ever used, on its own, in the search box. Then open Google Maps and search the old street. Old listings sit on old streets long after you have left them.

Write down what you find: the name exactly as it appears, the address, the number, and how many reviews each one has. That list is the job in front of you.

Decide which one you are keeping

The instinct is to keep the one you can log into. The better answer is usually the one with the reviews.

You cannot move reviews yourself. When Google merges two profiles it combines their reviews, but every merge request is reviewed and plenty of them do not go through, so a merge is the one thing here you cannot count on. Every other field can be corrected in a couple of minutes. So keep the listing that carries the review history, get access to it if you do not have it, and fix its address, number and hours afterwards.

If both have reviews, keep the one with more. A merge would bring both sets together, but choose as though the smaller set may not survive, because the merge may not happen.

The reviews are the reason any of this matters

A stranger comparing three businesses on a phone is reading star counts. Fourteen reviews on one listing beats seven and seven across two, and the seven-and-seven version also means half the people who tried to leave you one wrote it somewhere nobody looks.

A duplicate carrying a dead phone number also turns your best-reviewed profile into a wrong number. Nobody calls you to say so. They call the next name down.

How a merge actually happens

You do not merge two listings yourself. You tell Google they are the same business and Google folds them together, or removes one.

The usual route is to open the duplicate on Google Maps, choose the option to suggest an edit, and report it as a duplicate of the listing you are keeping. If you have access to both profiles from one account, the dashboard sometimes offers the merge directly. If neither works, Google's business support can do it, and that route wants the exact name, address and a link to both listings, so have your list ready.

Then wait. It is not instant, it is not always confirmed, and checking daily changes nothing.

When they will not merge

Google merges listings it believes are one business. Two listings with different addresses look like two businesses, so the addresses often have to match before anything joins up.

If the duplicate has an old address you no longer trade from, that is the field to fix. If one is set up as a storefront and one as a service area business, they can also refuse to see them as the same. And if the duplicate is verified by somebody else, the merge stalls until the person holding it releases it or Google takes it back.

Closed, permanently closed, or removed

If the duplicate cannot be merged, you have to choose how it dies, and the three options are not the same.

Marking a duplicate permanently closed leaves it on the map with a gray banner saying you have shut down, which is worse than the duplicate. Do not do that for a business that is trading. Report it as a duplicate instead, or ask support to remove it. Permanently closed is the honest choice only when that location really has closed and the business continues elsewhere.

A checklist for cleaning this up

• Search name, every old address, and every old phone number
• Note review counts on each listing you find
• Keep the one with the most reviews, whatever else is wrong with it
• Get access to that one first, before merging anything
• Correct its number, address and hours
• Report the others as duplicates of the keeper
• Never mark a duplicate permanently closed while you are still trading
• Check again in two weeks, from a phone, logged out

Questions people ask

Will merging lose my reviews

The listing you keep keeps its reviews. When a merge goes through, Google combines the reviews from both listings, though your replies to them may be lost in the process. The merge itself is not guaranteed, which is why you choose the review-heavy listing as the survivor rather than the one that is easier to log into.

I have two listings with two different phone numbers

Fix the number on the keeper first, today, before you worry about the merge. A wrong number costs you calls every day the merge is pending.

Somebody else is verified on the duplicate

Then you request access to it the same way you would any listing that is not yours, and the merge waits on that. It is slow and it does resolve.

How long does a duplicate report take

Days to weeks, with no notification you can rely on. Check it from a phone in private browsing rather than watching the dashboard.

Do duplicates hurt my ranking

Nobody outside Google can tell you that honestly, and anybody who gives you a number is guessing. The harm you can see is real enough: split reviews, and a live listing with a number that rings nowhere.

I moved. Should I have made a new listing

No, and it is a very easy mistake. Editing the address on the old listing keeps the reviews. If you already made the new one, treat the reviewed listing as the keeper and change its address.