More threads by freerunr

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Those of us who work with professional practitioners (dentists, doctors, lawyers, etc.) are all too aware of this dilemma: multiple practitioners transact business out of a single office space/suite while running separate business operations, but one of them is your client, and he/she wants a Local listing on Google. The risk is that Google can get confused and merge business listings at the same address together. This situation I'm describing is different than a single business with multiple practitioners -- using individual practitioner listings solves this problem. But when it's multiple businesses, what have you found to be the best strategy so that businesses in this situation still receive some visibility (whether it be Local or social), on Google's platform specifically? I understand it can depend on the situation, but some alternatives I can think of are below:


  1. Claim the listing; maybe use a different phone number (that is still direct) than other businesses located there to help distinguish NAP. If it merges with another business, suffer the consequences and/or contact Google Support
  2. Do nothing -- it's not worth the risk of a merged listing
  3. Only claim individual practitioner listings (not business-level listings) for the individual practitioners
  4. Create non-Local Google+ pages for the business(es), because these don't show on Maps and don't run the risk of merging
  5. Use a home address instead and hide it (which may not be the correct use of this feature)
  6. Ask the business with an already-claimed listing at the location to mention the business in their description

And as a final question, is these types of businesses merging together even an issue anymore?
 

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