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How to Tell if a Page is Verified with the New Google Plus

I was helping a user on the GMB forum and found it’s getting even harder to find duplicates now with MapMaker not having a phone-number search option any more.

Currently, I search on Google for “plus.google.com” “999-999-9999” and then add &filter=0 to the end of the URL to find a list of duplicates.

However, now when you click on them, they all look the same and don’t really indicate if the page is connected to maps or not. Previously we’d look for features like a posts tab or review options to know what kind of page it was.

Unverified G+ Page - Not Attached to Maps
Unverified G+ Page – Not Attached to Maps
Verified G+ Local Page - Attached to Maps
Verified G+ Local Page – Attached to Maps

The way to tell if the page is verified or not is to get rid of the /about in the URL.  Usually the URL you are looking at is something like this: https://plus.google.com/114760363041730005343/about which now shows you limited information. Now if you remove /about you will see a different view (https://plus.google.com/114760363041730005343)

Since the only duplicates that matter for ranking are those that are connected to Maps, this how you can tell which pages you should be concerned about.

Unverified Google Plus page - does not matter for ranking.
Unverified Google Plus page – does not matter for ranking.
Verified Google Plus page that is connected to Maps - matters for ranking.
Verified Google Plus page that is connected to Maps – matters for ranking.
Unverified Google Maps page - matters for ranking.
Unverified Google Maps page – matters for ranking.

 

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Joy Hawkins

Joy is the owner of the Local Search Forum, LocalU, and Sterling Sky, a Local SEO agency in Canada & the USA. She has been working in the industry since 2006, writes for publications such as Search Engine Land, and enjoys speaking regularly at marketing conferences such as MozCon, LocalU, Pubcon, SearchLove, and State of Search. You can find her on Twitter or volunteering as a Product Expert on the Google My Business Forum.

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. Only just got the update down here in Oz Joy so am only just wrapping my head around it all.
    One thing that I’ve noticed – you can’t easily tell now if it is a profile or a business page anymore, every page has the ‘follow’ option rather than ‘add to circles’. That’s a real pain!
    And Im assuming there’s no way to embed maps from a page directly to a website? Or do we do that via Maps now? Hmm, so many questions.

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