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Google Business Profile: what should I do in the event of a buyout, takeover or change of ownership?
Google Business Profile: what should I do in the event of a buyout, takeover or change of ownership?

Amending your Google Business Profile listing if your establishment has a new owner, manager, administrator or brand

Clara Demetz avatar
Written by Clara Demetz
Updated over a year ago

Many points of sale change owner, brand or manager on a regular basis, but what should you do if you want to change your point of sale information? Remove the bad reviews left under the previous owner? Remove the old POS listing? Let Partoo give you a few tips!

If you are not at all familiar with Google Business Profile, these things can be quite complex, but rest assured that Partoo can support its customers with such issues.

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Case 1: you want to keep the old listing and the reviews submitted for the old point of sale

In such cases, you will first need to claim ownership of the listing and possibly change the information, or even announce the change of owner via a Google Post

There are several ways to do this:

  • If you know the previous owner of the listing, ask them to appoint you as its owner (view article on this subject)

  • If you don't know the current owner of the listing, you will need to resend your ownership requests via Google and hope that the previous owner doesn't reject them.

Once you have retrieved the old listing, you will then need to contact Google Business Profile support to merge your two listings.
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Case 2: You want to replace the old listing and create a new one

It may be that the previous owner has received bad reviews, in which case you will want to remove the listing and replace it with your own. Clever

The first thing to do is to create a new listing with the new name of the establishment. If Google finds that the listing already exists (same address and phone number), you will not be able to create a listing. You will then have to contact Google Business Profile support to explain the situation or create a listing with a different name and phone number, then edit it once the listing has been verified by having a code sent to your postal address (N.B.: changing the name of the establishment afterwards could invalidate the listing and you will have to repeat the process).

You will then need to report the previous establishment as having closed, either by claiming ownership as explained above, or by submitting changes as a user. N.B.: if you are not a Local Guide, several Internet users will have to submit such a request in order for the change to be made

Once the establishment is closed, it will gradually be de-referenced on Google and will no longer appear in the results, although this may take a few weeks/months, depending on its SEO!

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If all of this sounds too complicated for you and you’re afraid of getting lost in the process, why not have the specialists at Partoo do it for you?

We can manage your visibility across some 20 or so online directories such as Google Business Profile, Waze, Facebook and Hoodspot for just €55 a month! We also offer sliding-scale pricing if you have over 10 establishments

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