Google Places - Bulk Upload Solution

[Mattcarter08]

Hi we have a client who currently has over 50 stores in the country (Australia). Some of these stores already have a Google Plus Local Pages and manage them individually. Most of them have reviews, and images. The corporate office wants to place all these stores under one bulk account to bring consistency with the brand and it's image.

Now this presents a issue. From our research we have 3 options:

1.     Un-verify the listings in each of the accounts and once this has been done, claim them individually in the account you want to manage them under.

2.     Delete the listings from Maps and then recreate them under the bulk feed in account. This will allow you to manage them with the rest of your listings more efficiently, however if the stores have any reviews these may be lost.

3.     Create new listings and leave the other ones and these should get merged, the issue here is the data could be incorrect and it could cause some duplication.

Our goal is to transfer the listings to a single bulk account without losing the - reviews, and images.Or avoiding new problems such as duplicate listing or the listing gets somehow deleted for weeks during the process, causing massive frustration with all the stakeholders involved.

I think our best bet is (1) to get the stores to individually unverify their account. However this may risk the lost of reviews and images. Plus it will be highly unlikely that the store owners will follow through or like doing this, and would be a painful long communication process which may take 2+ months.

Are they any suggestions on how to best approach this situation?

Thanks,

Matt Carter

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Matt,

I've not personally encountered this scenario hands-on, so I am going to ask around in the Local community and see if someone I know has. Hang tight.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Matt,

I spoke with Local Search Godfather, Mike Blumenthal, about your issue. He remarked that in cases like yours, whomever claimed a listing last controls it, and that if too many listings for this client's franchise locations have already been claimed, there's a strong chance your request for a bulk upload will be denied. He recommends that the business owner reach some kind of amicable agreement with the different store owners/managers. Also, Matt, you are aware that Google+ Local still isn't set up to allow multi-location dashboard management yet, right? So, yes, you could have multiple listings in the Places dashboard, but you mustn't attempt to merge them at this point, because the system doesn't support this yet.

Hope this helps!

[Mattcarter08]

Thanks Miriam,

That helps alot.

Thanks,

Matt