Submitted listings for Removal via MOZ local 7 months - still showing 'Request Submitted'

[rosemontmedia]

I manage multiple health care practices and have them submitted to MOZ Local. The main reason for this is to clean up and remove listings with inconsistent business names, addresses and phone numbers on aggregators such as InfoUSA and Localeze. I felt MOZ Local would be something that could save time and money for myself and clients so I wouldn't have to do the phone verification game for sites such as InfoUSA and localeze. In some cases I submitted for removal aggregator listings 7-8 months ago but they are still showing the same 'Request Submitted'.

What is the standard time I can expect these requests to go through. I sort of feel duped believing that MOZ would remove duplicate/incorrect listings somewhat quickly.

If anyone else has a similar experience or a timeframe of removal for sites MOZ works with that would be great.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Rosemont,

Thanks for taking the time to ask about this. I want to share with you all that I can about this topic. I completely understand that there might be some confusion surrounding this, and we've recently updated our Help Hub to reflect our current best advice regarding duplicates.

Basically, what happens is that Moz suggests the duplicate closure request to given platforms and they then process these in very big batches, based on each platform's own internal structure of handling such requests, whether they come from Moz or from a data aggregator or what have you.

The issue, then, is that we have no way to estimate time frames or to guarantee that a request on our part won't be denied by a given platform based on its own assessment of whether a duplicate is really a duplicate or not. They have the deciding vote on this.

So, at this point, what we're suggesting to customers is that they consider manually closing small numbers of duplicates as they may get faster results than Moz will. For large accounts with hundreds of customers with hundreds of duplicates, it can be helpful to automate duplicate closure requests with the thought that they will eventually close, but it's unlikely to happen quickly, bringing us back to the suggestion that manual closure for small numbers of duplicates may be a smarter route where speed is key. We'd love this to be faster and more reliable to automate, but we're working within the limitations of the various platforms.

For your particular situation, as we've already assumed management of the duplicates in order to request closure of them, you would not be able to act manually. I'm not sure if it would be possible to reverse our management of the duplicates, but if you would like to get further feedback on this, you could create a help request with our Help Team who then might be able to escalate the question to our engineers to see if reversal would be possible. https://moz.com/help/contact

I want to apologize for the inconvenience you've experienced and disappointment with time frames. The duplicates feature is really helpful for surfacing duplicates, but for now, manual closure may be faster than automated closure.