How does Citation Builder handle the removal of duplicate listings?

What are duplicate listings?

'Duplicate listings' are additional (extra) listings that a business has on a citation site that display the same information, or different (i.e. incorrect) information as their main listing.

Why are duplicate listings bad?

Duplicate listings with different / incorrect information creates confusion for users and Google.

Having duplicate listings with the same / identical information can also create confusion if users see both of them, and they lead to other problems such as:

• The business has to remember to update their info on multiple listings, rather than just the one.
• Customers can write reviews on different listings rather than concentrating them on a single listing, which would be more useful and positive for the business.

How are they removed in a Citation Builder campaign?

When we find duplicate existing listings on a citation site, there are three potential routes we'll take to get them removed:

1) Create an account, claim the existing listing and delete it directly.

2) Submit a removal / update request via web-form. We give evidence of duplication and cite your website / Google My Business listing as proof of incorrect data.

3) Email site editors to request listing removal / update. Again, we give evidence of duplication and cite your website / Google My Business listing as proof of incorrect data.

If we don't achieve duplicate removal with these approaches, we may use a final tactic of claiming a listing and altering the business details so there is no connection to your business (stopping it from being a duplicate). However, this is a last resort as it's not really helpful for users or the directory.

How successful is duplicate removal?

Typically we expect to see between 60-80% success rate when we remove duplicates. 

Achieving 100% is an almost impossible task as we are often reliant on website editors to actually remove the listings from their sites, despite us taking all possible actions to remove duplicate listings.

We don't control the sites and we can't dictate that they take action because we don't pay a fee for the listings, therefore we can’t guarantee the success of duplicate removal on all sites.