In an earlier post I talked about how to set up your profile in Google Maps. But what happens if someone has beaten you to it?

We’ve had a few clients who have discovered there are already listings in Google Maps for their business and they don’t know how they got there, who added them and, most importantly, how they can access and change them.

You may still be able to claim and edit the listing

Click on the ‘more info’ link next to the listing as it appears in Google Maps.  Log in using your Google account info (or set one up first), edit the listing from the ‘edit this place’ link and Google will review the changes before deciding to make them public.

You can also click on the ‘Business owner?’ link and follow the prompts to add, edit or suspend the listing.

This will require validation* to ensure you are the rightful owner of the listing, but will help to protect your listing from being changed by someone unauthorised. This is all part of ‘claiming your listing’, and the most important step you can take.

Google sends a letter containing a PIN and activation instructions to the business address associated with the listing. After you validate the listing, you may edit your Google Maps listing at any time.

Extra help

I have to admit to finding the whole process less than straightforward so if you experience the same frustration when trying to remove or edit a wrong listing, you aren’t alone.  I couldn’t find any clear path to reclaim a listing once someone else has already done so.

Google does provide a forum and here is a particularly good post that will answer many common concerns about hijacked, merged or duplicate listings.

Other common issues:

I don’t know my password:

With most it is just a case of requesting a password change. If you can identify the email address that was used to log in (and for many businesses they will have one that is used for most generic communications) then just go to:

• • Google.co.nz and click the ‘sign in’ link at top right
  • Click the ‘Can’t access your account?’ link at the bottom of the sign in pane
  • Click, ‘I forgot my password’ and follow the steps from there.

You’ll be sent an email and you’ll have 1 hour from the time it was sent to reset your password. If you miss that hour you will have to do the process again. This is a Google security measure.

I forgot my username:

Do the same process as above, but click the ‘I forgot my username’ button and follow Google’s prompts.

Posted on June 30th, 2010 by Wendy Riley-Biddle
Filed under: Marketing, Websites