Local Business Listing Merging

[Morledge]

Hi,

Is there a case when two business listings created by two differet
accounts will merge? If you look at the below listing, it shows two
different website hostings and different contact numbers. I do know that the
listings do have the same title and do share the same address. Because
of these two factors, will Google merge the two listings? If it does
then does this not open up a potential way to Hijack a listing?

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?source...um=1&ct=result

Thanks
Morledge

[paul]

I don’t think google will merge those two listing, moreover google will look it both different site, btw if you merge two weak website hosting that won't work well, if you merge two strong website hosting with same focus, it can be one of the terrifying competitor for others.

[jc8654]

I don't think they would merge them either... You would have to do it yourself if you wanted that to happen.

[Morledge]

Just an update.

After further investigation, I have found that Google Local does merge listings.

If two listings have the same Post Code and same Title then Google will merge them, even if they are created in two separate accounts. In the case of the web links, it will show both links in the Local Business detail and choose one to show in the general search results. I am not sure what criteria it uses to choose the primary web link.

I have not done an exhaustive study of this, but have come to the above conclusion.

Regards

[paul]

I don't understand what you will achieve by this merger, is that you want to show different content to users than what you show to search engines? if yes for Local Business go Geo-targeting route as Geo targeting may not be considered as cloaking under Google’s guidelines. Also please correct me if both web site hosting have same content it will have unintentional duplicates that could show supplemental results.

[Morledge]

This is not something I was looking to do, but one of my clients stumbled upon it when they created a Local Business in Google Local. They got an upset competitor/friend saying that they hijacked there Business listing when in fact it was just because they both used the same listing title and post code (the postcode they both used is shared).

Everything has been changed now, but we are waiting for Google to get the updated business listing (which can take 4 weeks).

I hope that explained it a bit clearer. As I say, this is not try to get two listings to merge for any Blackhat Search Engine Optimization, but to try and clear something up.

[DPS Computing]

Same postcode and title? Then of course they will merge them - they are the same thing after all!!