"Duplicate" on Google Local - Attorney and Business Listing

[bpurdue]

For our law firm, we have a Google Local listing for the firm (Riddell Law LLC).  Google also created a local listing for one of the attorneys (Riddell) (we didn't create it, but are in the process of verifying it).  Both listings are at the same address.  Moz Local says these are "duplicates" - is that true?  Would Google penalize us for this?  I am not sure how to fix it - both the individual attorney and the business are in fact at the same address.

If anyone has any advice I would greatly appreciate it!  Thank you!!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Tony!

Yes, you would want any practitioner listings on other platforms to match the practitioner listings on Google (i.e. have the same phone number across the board for each practitioner you are promoting). The idea here is that, the more frequently Google finds Practitioner A listed with Phone Number A, the more trust Google feels in the data they have about that entity. Conversely, if Google were to find Practitioner A listed with Phone Numbers A, B, C and D, Google would feel less trust in what the accurate data should be.

So, for sure, you'll want to clean up phone number variants you find so that everything you can access matches what you're listing on Google for a given practitioner.

Hope this helps!

[toby-02]

Hi Miriam,

If it is recommended to create individual practitioner pages with unique phone numbers, is it necessary to build out citations beyond Google for the practitioners?

For our case, our client has existing practitioner citations across various listing sources - would this mean we would also need to clean up these listings with the NAP that aligns with the practitioner GMB pages with different phone numbers?

Thanks!

[MiriamEllis]

My pleasure, Bridget! Happy to be of help to you.

[bpurdue]

This is immensely helpful.  Thank you!!

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Bridget!

I'll respond to your important question with numbers, for easier reading:

1. Moz Local will surface any listing we discover that strongly matches your Moz Local listing. We're making you aware of the existence of these listings, but this does not necessarily mean that they are, in fact, duplicates. It's up to the customer to decide whether a listing is a duplicate or not.

2. It's very important that your law firm study the Guidelines for Representing Your Business On Google. Read the entire document and pay particular attention to the sections on naming and practitioners.

3. Google does allow multi-practitioner firms to build a listing for the business and one for each practitioner. If there is only one lawyer at the practice, Google doesn't want him to build a separate listing, but if there are multiple lawyers, then it's allowed to build a listing for each of them, in addition to the listing for the practice. This is all laid out in the guidelines

4. If there are multiple practitioners, it is highly advised that each one has his own, unique phone number, not shared by any other practitioner or by the business. He should be directly contactable via the number. And, it is also advised that you create a landing page on the website for each of the practitioners and link their listings you build to these pages. All of this serves to differentiate one practitioner from another and one practitioner from the business, itself, hopefully securing you against ranking problems, accidental merges, customer misdirection, etc.

So, in sum, practitioner listings are not true duplicates, but you must follow guidelines for creating them and be sure that the practitioners are being properly differentiated from one another and from the business. And, finally, if you judge that a listing Moz Local surfaces for you is not a true duplicate, you can use the 'ignore' button to have it removed from the list.

Hope this helps, and please let me know if you have any further questions!