How To Resolve Duplicate Addresses in Google My Business

This past week we learned a useful trick to get rid of the “Duplicate Addresses” label inside GMB. With the current iteration of the GMB dashboard, Google will add a “Duplicate Addresses” label to any listings that are at the same address. In the screenshot below, for instance, are two listings for the same law firm. One is the practice listing and one is the practitioner listing. Even though this is a perfectly compliant setup, Google has marked the listings as duplicate addresses.

Note: This is not the same type of duplicate that happens when you have duplicated listings that we all know can cause ranking issues. This particular scenario is a messaging issue inside GMB.

This is a problem that I wanted to solve for a few reasons:

1. It makes the dashboard look messy. I like to keep my GMB dashboard clean and tidy, especially when there are lots of listings to manage
2. Clicking on “Resolve Address” doesn’t really solve the problem. It just navigates to the listings editor interface. Once there, there is nothing to resolve so it seems like a deadend
3. And most importantly – when you are in list view and you have the duplicate address label there is no way to navigate to the individual listings dashboard where you can manage reviews, posts, etc. This is a major pain if you prefer to manage your listings in list view

How To Resolve The Duplicate Address Message

In order to get rid of the duplicate address message navigate to the listing editor for each listing that has the duplicate address label and add a store code. In this example I simply added “001” to the practice listing and “002” to the practitioner listing.

Once you add the store codes the listing status will change to “Published” instead of “duplicate addresses” and you will see the little GMB icon that lets you navigate to the full listing editor where you can manage reviews, posts…etc

I tested out some other tactics including adding a label to the listing but outside of actually changing the address itself it appears that adding the store code is the only work around at this point.

What Are Google My Business Store Codes for Anyway?

According to the Google My Business Help Center: 

Having a unique store code for every location in your account ensures that changes are accurately applied to each location when you import a new spreadsheet.

Bulk accounts are the reason that store codes exist in the first place. They are a way to keep your listings organized when you have a ton of listings to manage. But the store codes can be used on a much smaller scale if it helps you keep organized and in this case keep your multiple listings at the same address clean, tidy, and managed effectively.

Have you run into this issue before? Did you find this tip useful?