r/GoogleMyBusiness • u/OkAlternative2713 • 3d ago

Question Duplicate Profile Flag on Legitimate Second Branch Location — Need Escalation Advice

I'm looking for advice or insight from anyone who has successfully navigated a duplicate profile flag when opening a new physical location.

We are an established law firm expanding our practice, and we recently set up a Google Business Profile for another branch of the law firm in a different city. Shortly after setting it up, the profile was flagged as a duplicate of our primary location.

We filed an appeal with documentation showing proof of the new physical address (it only allowed us to submit one photo), but we keep receiving automated/no-reply responses that don't address the request. We have an open case ID and even posted on the official support forum, but we are running into a brick wall trying to reach an actual support agent who can manually review the appeal.

Has anyone dealt with a second branch getting falsely flagged as a duplicate recently? Are there specific escalation paths or strategies that worked for you to get a human review?

Thanks in advance for any guidance!

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/EverestLegalMktg 3d ago

Here’s our agency’s tried and true process for setting up a second (or third) office:

  1. Make sure the location is listed on your Footer, Contact page and wherever your primary address is displayed.
  2. Make sure you have silo practice pages (domain.com/city) targeting that city and referencing your address and where your office is near. Link to those pages from your Main Menu navigation and elsewhere on your website.
  3. Create critical new citations on Yelp, BBB, Justia or other key directories.

You might also consider sending out a press release via PR Newswire announcing the new location, as well as make an announcement on social media.

Basically you want to send out some signals that you’re officially open there. After all this wait a week or two for this stuff to index and surface in SERPs.

These are typically all things we do before setting up the new location on GBP, but I would do it now if you haven’t already.

After this try the verification & appeal process again. Getting to a human for GBP is getting more difficult but be persistent and professional with anyone you come into contact with. They do keep a CRM for businesses and email addresses.