Why Are There Two Google Listings for My Business?

Short answer: Google let a second profile get created for the same business, and now your reviews, photos, and traffic are split between two listings. You fix it one of two ways. If you only control one of them, report the other on Google Maps as a duplicate. If you have access to both, ask Google support to merge them into the one you want to keep.

This comes up more than you would think. I have walked into local businesses with three listings for the same front door, two of which nobody at the company had ever created.

How did a second listing even get there?

Almost nobody makes a duplicate on purpose. Here is where they usually come from.

Google builds listings on its own. It pulls business data from directories, data aggregators, your website, and phone records, and it will create an unverified profile from that information without anyone asking it to. If your business is listed anywhere with a slightly different name or an old suite number, that can become its own listing.

The other big source is people. An employee set one up years ago on a personal Gmail and then left. A previous owner made one. A web designer created one during a build and nobody ever handed it over. Or the business moved, somebody made a fresh listing at the new address, and the old one never got closed out.

Practitioner listings cause it too. A law firm or a dental office is allowed a listing for the practice and separate listings for individual practitioners, and those get set up wrong constantly, so you end up with what looks like two profiles for one office.

Why you cannot just leave it alone

Every duplicate splits something. A customer leaves a five star review on whichever listing Google showed them that day, and it lands on the one you never check. Your photos are on one, your hours are on the other, and the one with the wrong phone number is the one ranking.

Then there is the policy side. Google does not allow more than one profile for the same business at the same address, and when it identifies a profile as a duplicate, that profile stops appearing in Search and Maps. That sounds like the problem solving itself, except Google does not always suppress the one you would have picked. Plenty of owners have watched their good verified listing go quiet while a bare bones auto generated one kept showing.

If your listing already went sideways in a different way, I wrote separately about what to do when your Google Business Profile gets suspended, which is a different problem with a different fix.

How do I report a duplicate I do not own?

This is the common case. There is a second listing out there, you have no login for it, and you just want it gone.

Pull up the duplicate listing on Google Maps, not your own one. Click Suggest an edit, then choose the option to close or remove the place, and pick the reason that says it is a duplicate of another place. Google will ask you to point at the listing it duplicates, so have your real profile open in another tab.

Then stop. Do not submit it five more times from five different accounts, and do not have your whole staff report it. Repeat reports from a pile of accounts look like manipulation and can slow the whole thing down. Report it once and give it a few days.

If what you are looking at is actual spam rather than a plain duplicate, a fake address or a keyword stuffed business name, that goes through Google's Business Redressal Complaint Form instead. That form is built for policy violations and it asks for evidence, so bring screenshots.

How do I merge two listings I actually own?

Merging is the better outcome when the duplicate has reviews on it, because a removal throws those reviews away and a merge at least tries to keep them.

You need owner or manager access to both profiles first. If the second one is sitting on an old employee's Gmail, you request access through Google and wait out the response window. Here is how to add a user to a Google Business Profile once you get in, because you will want a second admin on it so this never happens again.

With access to both, go to Google Business Profile support and tell them you need duplicate profiles merged. They will want to identify both listings, so give them the exact business names and addresses as they appear. One catch that trips people up: two verified profiles generally cannot be merged. One of them has to come out of verified status first, and support will walk you through which one.

Before you start any of it, screenshot both listings. Reviews, photos, hours, categories, all of it. Merges do not always carry everything over and there is no undo button.

Which listing should I keep?

Do not default to the one you made. Keep the one with the most review history, the longest track record, and the strongest position in Maps, even if it is the one somebody else set up. Reviews and listing age are hard to rebuild and a name or a phone number takes two minutes to change.

So the order is: figure out which profile Google trusts more, get ownership of that one, and merge or remove the other into it. Then fix the details on the survivor.

Once you are down to one clean listing, it is worth actually working it instead of letting it sit. Posts, photos, categories, and review responses are what move you in the local pack, and I covered that in how to rank on Google Maps. If you would rather hand the whole thing off, that is part of what we handle in our local marketing services for businesses around Northwest Ohio.

How do I stop it from happening again?

Clean up the data Google is reading. If your old address or an old business name is still live on your website, on directory sites, or on your invoices, Google can rebuild a listing from it. Fix the source, not just the symptom.

Keep the profile on a business account that you own, not a personal Gmail belonging to whoever happened to be working there in 2019. Add a second owner so you never lose access when somebody leaves.

And check Maps for your own business name once a quarter. Search it the way a customer would and see what comes up. Duplicates are easy to kill early and a headache once they have collected reviews.

Common questions

Will a duplicate Google Business Profile hurt my rankings?
Yes, usually. Google treats multiple profiles for the same business at the same address as a policy violation, and a profile flagged as a duplicate stops showing in Search and Maps. Before that happens you get the messier problem, which is your reviews, photos, and clicks split across two listings so neither one looks as strong as it should.

Can I just delete the duplicate listing?
Only if you own it and it has nothing worth keeping. Deleting a profile that holds reviews means those reviews are gone for good. If the duplicate has any review history, request a merge instead so Google tries to carry the reviews over to the profile you keep.

How long does it take Google to remove a duplicate?
A simple Suggest an Edit report on Maps often gets handled in a few days. A real merge through support usually takes longer, sometimes a couple of weeks, and it can take more than one attempt. There is no way to speed it up, so report it once and then leave it alone.

Do reviews transfer when two profiles are merged?
Sometimes. Google says it tries to combine the review history, but it is not guaranteed, especially if the two profiles have different names, addresses, or categories. Screenshot the reviews on both listings before you start so you have a record if they do not come across.

Why does the duplicate keep coming back?
Google builds listings from outside data sources like directories, aggregators, and your own website. If an old address or an old business name is still sitting in those places, Google can recreate the listing from that data. Clean up the wrong information wherever it still lives, then report the duplicate again.

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