Two Google Business Profiles for one company

What we found

Two profiles for one firm, at two addresses, and the SAME telephone number on both.

One carried 4.6 from twenty one reviews, which is a real asset built over years. The other carried none at all. And neither was claimed, which we know because Google was still showing the prompt it only shows when nobody has.

Why the shared number is the dangerous part

Maps and reviews settle a business on name, address and telephone number. Two profiles carrying the same number are, on that test, strong candidates for being the same business listed twice.

That is what gets one merged into the other or the second suspended. A merge is survivable. A suspension can cost the listing and every review on it, and recovering a review history is far harder than earning it was.

A second profile feels like more coverage. On the rules that actually apply, it is a duplicate waiting to be noticed.

This is a different system from the rest of this pillar

Worth saying plainly, because clients conflate the two constantly and the advice does not transfer.

Maps and reviews are one system, settling on name, address and telephone. What gets said about your company in a written answer is assembled from sources elsewhere. Doing well in one does not move the other, and a consultant who treats them as one subject will give you confident advice on the wrong half.

The practical consequence: reviews carry across a rename, which is usually an asset and often a pleasant surprise. Two firms at one address are one place as far as Maps is concerned, which is sometimes a problem and sometimes simply the truth.

What to do

In order:

• Claim the profile that holds the reviews. First, before anything else, because an unclaimed profile is one you cannot defend.
• Decide whether the second location is genuinely a separate place with its own staff and its own number. If it is not, it should not have a profile.
• If it is, give it its own telephone number. That one change removes the strongest duplicate signal.
• Never create a second profile at an address you already have one at. That is the version that gets suspended.

We give this one away free on the business page, because it takes an hour and the downside of getting it wrong is losing something you cannot buy back.