Help! My Listing was Flagged as a Duplicate

When you go into your Google Business dashboard sometimes you might see that your listing has been flagged as a duplicate.

This is often confusing because most people assume this means you actually have multiple profiles on Google. In reality, it means Google thought one of your listings was a duplicate of one that already exists and has already merged them. 

So any listing that is listed as “duplicate” in your dashboard is not actually a live listing. It has already been merged with another listing.  To see the listing it was merged with, you can click the name of the listing and it will pull up the search results with the live profile on the right.

Why did Google mark my listing as a duplicate?

Google does not want duplicate information on maps, so it often marks listings as duplicates because they are too similar to other listings that exist. If they share the same name, same phone number, same address, same categories, or same website, this often gets them flagged.  This is part of the reason why we suggest always having a unique phone number per location. 

Google marked a listing as a duplicate that wasn’t actually a duplicate, what do I do?

If you are annoyed because Google marked a listing as a duplicate but it should not have been merged, you should start by looking at the two listings that were merged and seeing what likely caused it. Do they share a phone number? Are the two listings using the same category at the same address?  Are you sure you’re even allowed to have two listings?  Once you figure that out, you can help keep it from happening again.

Listings cannot be unmerged so the only option is to set up a new listing and start over. Make sure you fix the duplicate information that caused the listing to be marked as a duplicate to avoid having to repeat this cycle.  The reviews on the 2 listings would have been merged as well so if you want to separate them, contact Google support after the new listing is live and they may be able to move the reviews back.