This article outlines the recommended steps to undertake, in order to achieve a clean Google Business Profile account. Afterwards the account can be used to import locations into our platform. Only a clean Google Business Profile account should be connected to our system. This way users can eliminate flaws and issues during the connection and down the line.

Before we start

First of all: Do you already have a Google Business Profile account? If yes, please proceed with the "Clean up", if not please follow the instructions of this article.

Why should you follow this preparation?

Google Business Profile Import

The ultimate goal by this is to import your location data into our platform with as little friction as possible. This is usually achieved by connecting the clients Google Business Profile to our platform and pulling the data directly from Google Business Profile. While this is the easiest way to start with our product, there might me challenges, which we want to eliminate prior the connection. Find out more about the Google Business Profile import here.

Google Business Profile Connection

At some point after your locations have been imported to our database, you want to start submitting data from the platform to Google Business Profile. Therefore a connection to your Google Business Profile Account is needed. Only a clean Google Business Profile will connect without any issues and flaws. To learn how to connect your Google Business Profile with the platform go here.

Clean up

The next steps will guide you towards a perfect Google Business Profile account.

Bulk-verified or not?

In case you are not yet familiar with the different verification methods of your locations in Google Business Profile, please read this article.

In a nutshell you can verify your locations in two ways: 

• "Manually" one by one, 
  • most commonly via Postcards
  • in certain occasions via Email, or Call
• "Automatically" by getting your whole account "bulk-verified"
  • Google will analyze your locations and business structure and in case those meet their guidelines your Google Business Profile account will get whitelisted
  • After completion of the bulk-verification process any location in your Google Business Profile will get verified and published (if not already existent on Google Business Profile) - the same goes to any newly added location in the future
  • Find out how to bulk-verify your Google Business Profile here

Organize locations in location groups

It is advised to organize your locations in groups. Google Business Profile allows to do so via their location groups. The benefit of having locations grouped is, that you can grant user access to various locations at once, while excluding certain locations. Here you'll find out how to create location groups and invite users.

We recommend to create at least one location group to move your locations in Google Business Profile to. Based on your business setup it can bring value to create more groups. Do you divide locations internally in a certain way? Are you established in various countries? Is your business model a Franchise System? If any of these questions is a "yes", feel free to widen the amount of location groups accordingly. 

As part of your implementation into our platform we will mimic the location group structure into our system, by creating accounts accordingly to allow to manage locations in the same way, as you did in Google Business Profile.

Clean up locations

In order to only import up to date data and locations, it's worth checking Google Business Profile before attempting the import. 

Your locations in Google Business Profile can have multiple statuses, of which you only want to import locations with the status Published (green status). Only this status guarantees, that your locations are not against Google Business Profile guidelines. 

You might find Duplicates in your location groups. Locations marked with this status are not published on Google Search or Maps. Google determines them as Duplicates, since in its data base there are published locations with "similar enough" information. 
It is advised to remove all locations from your location groups, which are marked as Duplicates. Exception: In case you are in the middle of requesting a location's access/ownership, leave it untouched.

Locations with status Permanently Closed should only be imported, as long as you want our system to check on other directories for matching listings, which we should remove or mark as permanently closed. For more information on this, please talk to us about our "Erase" product.

The easiest way to make sure, you only import the correct locations to our database is the following:

1. Create a new location group in which you will want to move all locations to, which should not be imported to our database. 
2. Name it in a way, to easily identify it. (e.g. "*My CompanyName* - 1. No Import*")
3. Identify all locations you want don't want to move to our platform
4. Select all of them
5. Move them to the new location group

This way you will be able to deselect the location group "*My CompanyName* - 1. No Import*" in the import process - our system will not consider the locations inside of it. 

During the connection process at a later stage of your implementation, will also not consider to connect any of the locations inside of "*My CompanyName* - 1. No Import*".

Identifier vs. Store Codes

It's highly advised to only import locations from Google in case their Google Business Profile store codes are the "identifiers" you want to use in our platform. This way our system will be able to identify the correct locations, when connecting your Google Business Profile to the platform.

Read next: 3-Step Implementation Guide via Google Business Profile (GBP) Import