Last week, our blog focused on demystifying marketing jargon. Today, we want to focus on one term used quite often by our Online Presence Team: Duplicate Suppression. In researching today’s article, we discovered that in 2021 alone, DSG has suppressed over 4,700 duplicate listings for our clients, and that number continues to climb higher every day!
4,700 may sound like a good number on paper, but what exactly is duplicate suppression and what is the true impact to our clients’ online listings? How does this practice improve our clients’ online presence and increase traffic and engagement? Read on for answers to these questions and more.
What are Duplicate Listings?
A duplicate listing occurs when a business is listed more than once on any site, map, app, search engine, or social network. Duplicate listings can be created a few different ways.
Automation is a common source of duplicate listings. Often, online publishers aggregate their business listing information from multiple sources on the web. If there are slight variations in this information, duplicate listings may be automatically created. For example, the business shown below has slightly differing names and addresses in both listings. Google may have seen the names “A Cut Above Tree Care” and “A Cut Above Tree Care, Inc” and assumed that they were two different businesses. For this reason, duplicate suppression goes hand in hand with Listing Management.
Duplicates may also be created by human error. Perhaps more than one person at “A Cut Above Tree Care” created a Google listing, each of them not knowing that there was already a Google listing for the business. Other times, people may not know how to update information on these business listings, and might decide to create a new listing rather than update the existing one. This, of course, is not a best practice and should be avoided.
Why are Duplicates Bad?
According to Yext, “duplicate listings negatively impact your brand in many ways: they cause consumer confusion, brand frustration, and reduce the reach for the correct, main listing”. Imagine a potential customer is searching for your business, and finds two or more listings for your business on the same platform, each with different phone numbers, addresses, or business hours. How can they know when and where to contact you, and which listing is the real one? It can be a turn off, and might ultimately drive your customer to your competitor.
Benefits of Duplicate Suppression
Improves Search Engine Ranking
Keeping duplicates under control can improve your business’ search engine ranking. Consistency of business information across online listings is an important ranking factor in Google search. When you suppress duplicates, you’re ensuring that only accurate, consistent information on your business remains on the web. This helps Google to see your business as trustworthy and up-to-date, thus potentially improving your rank.
More Customers Can Find You
Returning to our example from earlier, imagine the frustration of a customer who is searching for your business only to find more than one listing with differing information. Now, consider the number of customers who are seeing only the duplicate listings and not the real ones! These customers are left with inaccurate information, and possibly unable to find you.
When your duplicates are suppressed, you’re ensuring that only your accurate listings are visible to the public meaning more customers find your business with the correct information.
Business Reviews Go To The Right Place
Suppressing duplicates helps minimize the possibility of misdirected business reviews. Whether the reviews are good or bad, you could be missing out on important customer sentiments if users are mistakenly leaving them on duplicate listings. Eliminating duplicates ensures that all reviews end up on the correct listings.
What Can You Do About It?
There are multiple platforms geared toward identifying and suppressing duplicate listings. This technology combined with DSG’s expertise means our clients get the best duplicate protection possible. Contact DSG if you’d like to learn more about duplicate suppression, and what more we can do for your business!