If you’ve been following our recent posts, you will notice we have become a bit obsessed over solving our duplicate Google+ page issue. In January we addressed the duplicate page problem and how, despite the number of blog posts claiming otherwise, it was not possible to merge your Google+ brand page and your duplicate Google Local page. Later that month, we noticed that our duplicate Google Local page was actually ranking in Google over our branded Google+ page, so we wrote a post entitled: What To Do If You Are Confused About Google+ and Google Places with some helpful instructions from our friend Mike Blumenthal.
Based on Mike’s advice, we decided to keep managing both our brand page and our Local page and continued updating both with the same content. Despite these efforts, however, our Local page kept ranking above our older Brand page in Google.
So when Google My Business launched, and we caught wind of the news that it was finally possible to transfer “the heart of local data” to our Brand Page and delete the Local page, we didn’t waste any time trying out this new feature. Read on to learn how we did it!
Connecting Your Brand Page to Google Maps
If your business has multiple Google+ pages it is likely I don’t have to explain how frustrating it is to have a dinky (often empty) Google Local page with your Maps info rank above an older, awesomer brand page where you have all your great reviews and whopping number of followers. It’s also confusing for users who want to follow you, but aren’t sure which page they should be following.
Thankfully, it seems like the confusion is coming to an end. Follow these simple steps to transfer your Maps information to your old and awesome brand page and delete that [enter expletive] duplicate page!
In order to connect your Google Brand page to Google Maps, follow these instructions from Google. Be sure to make sure the person who is doing these steps is the owner of your Google pages.
Now for the fun part! (Cue evil-genius laughter.)
Deleting Your Google Local Page
Once you’ve connected your Google Brand page to Maps, a message will appear prompting you to delete your previous Google Local page. For us, it looked like this image below. (Alternatively, you can click the gear icon on the page you want to delete and then click settings. At the very bottom of the settings page you should see a blue Delete Page link.)
See that beautiful “Delete page” link at the bottom?? Click it. (Happiness awaits…)
We checked all the boxes and clicked “Delete” with some trepidation, but breathed a sigh of relief when we saw our duplicate Google Local page had disappeared and our good ol’ Google+ Brand page appearing in Maps!
