Former tenant Google Map listing still displays

[KevnJr]

Our tenant closed their business and we now occupy the address, their Google map still displays, albeit "Permanently Closed" along with ours at the same address. I can't seem to get it removed, it's been 2 years. Help

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Kevin,

Did this former tenant relocate elsewhere?

[Everett]

Hello Kevin,

I assume you've already tried the "suggest an edit" feature on the maps?
If not, that would be a good place to start.

Do you have a Google MyBusiness listing?
If not, you should set one up. This may help.

Do you have your address clearly marked on your website?
The more you associate your business with that exact address, as typed, the more you help Google figure this mess out.

Do you have your address marked-up using Schema or JSON-LD on your website?
See above.

Are you the custom signs and displays company or another company?

[KevnJr]

Hi Everett,

Yes on all accounts, I am the in-house marketing manager for Heritage Custom Signs. All suggestions are appreciated

[KevnJr]

Yes, several times actually, leaving a trail of "Permanently Closed" listings

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for coming back to this thread. The permanently closed listing for an unrelated business at your address should not affect you in any way. If it were your business that was marked permanently closed, that would be a problem for you. But as it's the former tenant's business marked that way, it's only a problem for them. I would not worry about this.

[Christy-Correll]

Hi Kevin,

I'm just popping in to make sure you saw Miriam's recent response to your question in this thread. Let us know, thanks!

Christy

[KevnJr]

True, but isn't it Googles intent to provide accurate data? These types of listings are inaccurate information. Imagine a location had much tenant turnover: Video Rental, Gaming shop, Vape store, and Florist over a 3 year tenure, that's confusing to see all those listings on Google.

We have a building in our town used as a restaurant, it has had over a dozen different tenants in the past decade.

I agree, it has little to no impact on our business and i greatly appreciate your reply.

KJr

[Everett]

Kevin,

Have you tried updating the local listing aggregators? Tools that help with that are Moz Local, Bright Local and Whitespark. Yes, this is a problem with Google local and it should be their responsibility to keep their information updated, but I'm sure you can imagine what a massive effort that is for every location of every business in nearly the entire world. The easier you can make it for them the better.

[KevnJr]

Hi Everett,

Yes, I keep them updated every month with new data & imagery. Agreed, it's a massive job to "clean up the internet" one that I'm sure is thankless and never ending.

I hope this post/question doesn't portray me as a hater, I love Google, search changed my life for the better. Good people like yourself, Miriam and others are my inspiration to keep working hard to do my part in keeping our internet as clean as possible.

TY for the reply

KJr

[Everett]

Google is a corporation whose sole purpose in the universe is to make money. I would never think of anyone as a "hater" for legitimate criticisms of an entity that has all the rights of a human being, but none of the responsibilities or risks of one.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Kevin,

Very sound questions. Google's way of dealing with this is the permanently closed label. There are businesses all around me that shuttered years ago and are still searchable, but bear this label. So, at least for the present, this is what they feel is an adequate solution to the fact that businesses close. Google does make some efforts to hide permanently closed listings, but they are still discoverable if a user searches for the name + the old location.

What can be a problem is when businesses don't actually close, but simply move from an old location to a new one. When they do this, there are steps they should take to avoid having their old location labeled as "closed" because some studies have indicated that this can harm their future rankings at the new location if they continue to use the same phone number as was used at the old location, as well as signalling to customers that the company may have gone out of business.

If you own retail properties with tenants who move rather than closing, a nice thing to do for them would be to teach them how handle GMB so that they don't end up with that "permanently closed" listing. I outline how to do this in the "permanently closed" section of this blog post: https://moz.com/blog/delete-gmb-listing

Might be something to bookmark for future reference!