One of the first steps for a company in search engine marketing is claiming your Google Places location. This is quite easy to do, and it clearly puts your business on the map. Literally. When you want to put your business on the map, you might run into a problem. One of those problems could be that your Google Places location has already been claimed by someone else. This is very annoying, but no reason to panic yet. You have a significant chance of still being able to claim it.
First, perform a check. It is possible, of course, that a colleague has already claimed the location. If this is not the case, you can proceed by following these steps to claim your Google Places location:
- State the official company name and do not use anchor text (link to internal page about anchor text)
- Use an area code for the phone number, not an 0800 number.
- Add your company's address. Carefully check that all address details are correct.
- Next, add a business email address.
- List the URL to the page that is most relevant to your location
- Select an industry category
- Describe your company in no more than 200 characters.
- It is possible to add a maximum of 10 photos and 5 links to a video.
- In the "extra details" section, you can describe what makes your company unique compared to the competition.
- The final step is verification. This can be done via SMS, a phone call, or a postcard.
You are done. It may take 48 hours for your location to go online.
Now, of course, you want to have the fake Google Places location removed. Go to the location you want to remove and click on "Edit this place" and then on "Report a problem". You will see the following screen:
Check "Place has another listing" and describe the URL to the correct listing in the "Comments" section. Ask if the other (incorrect) listing can be removed. If the problem is still not resolved after a few weeks, you must report the problem again.
Success!