How to resolve duplicate points of sale in Google?

INTRODUCTION:

We are receiving more and more questions about the présence of duplicate sales points on Google. L'objective of this article is to help you à see more clearly on this problématique. 

In this context, I invite you à read également l'article following which explains how to gérer the information of your sales points on Google: Implément Google Business Profile for multiple sales points.

First of all, you need to understand the management system:

The presence of your distribution network's points of sale in Google generally comes from multiple sources:

1. Manual encoding. This can être réalisé by the département Marketing of your chaîne or by the gérant/franchisé of the point of sale. 
2. The remontée d'information from Google bots. These crawl the web to find information and when they identify on the web pages "points de ventes", this info is récupéréed to create pages points de ventes in Google. 
3. Google's partner media.

If you have taken the trouble to créer your store location pages, this has été réalisé in Google Business Profile, l'interface de gestion mise à disposition by Google.

How are duplicates created?

Given the large number of sources that Google uses, duplicates can occur because each source may contain a certain number of inconsistencies. Imagine that you represent a restaurant chain whose name is: "boire et manger" and that you have a point of sale à Brest. Two encodings are performed:

1. The franchisee encodes their point of sale as being "boire et manger Brest".
2. The marketing manager encodes the point of sale as being "drink and eat".

NB: the correct wording is the second.

It often happens that these points of sale are found with different addresses, phone numbers, or opening hours. Google will consider these two points of sale as different. A duplicate has therefore been introduced into the list. The same principle applies to any other data source.

What problems for distribution networks?

The problems are quite simple to imagine:

1. the chain's image is not consistent across the web
2. customers don't know which information is correct
3. Google has difficulty knowing which information to trust and therefore your positioning will be diminished because the quality of the referencing is not good.

How to resolve duplicate issues in Google Business Profile?

1 - Opt for a centralized approach:

Often, the work is à réaliser upstream, before the problème arises. Indeed, it is important d'avoir a centralisée of the problématique of référencement of sales points in Google. Indeed, for a chaîne, all sales points must have the same name, the same data structure and the same diffusion policy. For example, it is not good that the chaîne is called "boire et manger Brest" à Brest and "boire et manger" à Lille.

2 - Communicate this approach to your managers/franchisees:

Don't forget to inform your franchisees/managers that the issue is managed centrally from headquarters. Why? To avoid them creating these infamous duplicates. The majority of the problems we encounter are found here!

Warning, they are often contacted by photographers or local agencies offering to create a Google+ page for their point of sale with a virtual tour. This is a good approach. However, it must be aligned with the headquarters. Indeed, photographers and local agencies can create these virtual tours. This will improve the SEO of your points of sale. However, it is essential that they link it to the account Google Business Profile managed centrally. Why? Otherwise, a duplicate will be created.

3 - Clean up Google:

To do this, you have to list all the duplicates created in Google and, one by one, ask Google to delete them. This can be tedious, but it's the only thing to do at the moment.

CONCLUSION:

Managing store information on Google is not as easy as it seems. You need to make sure that your stores have the best possible referencing.

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