A customer made a duplicate google plus page, now what?

[jag1025]

A customer of mine went to a business conference about a year ago and one of the speakers told them of the importance of having an optimized google plus page. Instead of talking to me about it, they went ahead and created a brand new page and began posting content and reviews to it. I've contacted google and they've told me they deleted the first page, but it still always shows up in the local search results even though the new page has much more content on it.

Has anyone dealt with a similar situation that could help me? I have them ranking #2 organic, but barely showing up local...

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Jag,

Are you able to share the URLs for the 2 Google+ Local pages here? It would help to be able to to see them directly.

[jag1025]

Original google generated page:
https://plus.google.com/116492650865307526395

Owner created page: 
https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107353006122285235025/+MasterKhechensMartialArtsAcademyWilliamsville

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Jag!

Thanks for the links. Here's what I see:

1. Moz Check Listing is surfacing the filled out page as the main Google+ Local listing (https://plus.google.com/u/0/+MasterKhechensMartialArtsAcademyWilliamsville/about) and the less filled out page (https://plus.google.com/116492650865307526395/about?hl=en-US) as a duplicate. So, this tool is being shown the better page as main by Google.

2. Going to Google and searching for 'Master Khechen’s Martial Arts Academy Williamsville' I am being shown the better page - not the less-filled out page in the 3-pack: https://www.google.com/search?q=Master+Khechen’s+Martial+Arts+Academy&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=Master+Khechen’s+Martial+Arts+Academy+Williamsville

So for this branded/city search, I am seeing what I believe is your desired page - not the thinner duplicate.

3. Searching Google for 'martial arts williamsville ny' the business isn't coming up in the 5-pack, but clicking on the maps results from there, they are coming up further down in the map pack. Clicking the 'be the first to review' link on that result, I am being taken to the thinner, duplicate Google+ Local page. So, that's a problem. Less users are likely to go through all these steps, but it is indicative of the problem and confusion in Google's system being caused by the duplicate listing. Fortunately, the duplicate is unclaimed, which minimizes the potential for penalties resulting from it, but it's still not good that it exists.

So 2 questions here:

• Are both pages showing up in the client's Google My Business dash or is only the good one showing up there at this point?

• Have you tried contacting Google again (https://support.google.com/business/#topic=4540083&contact=1)? Show them the above data to explain how the duplicate is still appearing.