If you’ve done any work on local optimization then you’ve no doubt had to deal with one of the biggest headaches facing online marketers today- duplicate listings. One would assume that removing these duplicates, or even merging them with the correct listing would be easy, but this usually isn’t the case. Most sites require a page manager to verify a listing, via postcard or phone call, in order to take control of the issue. And if you’re doing this on behalf of a client, this isn’t necessarily the most time effective process, as you’ll have to wait for the client to receive the verification pin and send it back to you in order to claim the listing. Fortunately, many local online directories, including Google Places, have recognized the issues surrounding duplicate listings, and are beginning to make the process a bit less of a hassle.

So what’s the problem with a duplicate listing? Duplicate listings usually contain outdated or incorrect business information, and can create confusion amongst users, as well as other websites.

Have you ever done a search for a local business, only to find out it has multiple listings with different contact information? Deciphering which information is correct is not always the easiest task.

When it comes to local listings the internet is, in a sense, its own ecosystem. A listing is created with a set of business information, and other websites will take that information to create new listings. Eventually, that information gets to Google’s local data cluster, where they’ll create their own listings. At this point, having duplicate listings can be dangerous as they may affect your search rankings.

So what can you do about duplicate listings? Unfortunately, there are no automated tools to deal with this issue. Therefore, you might have to put in quite a few hours depending on the severity of your problem. A good way to get started is to run your business through Moz Local, (formerly getlisted.org). This tool gives you a snapshot of your local profile, and notifies you of any potential issues. Unfortunately, the tool isn’t perfect, and it often won’t pick up on some of your business listings if they have even a slightly different name. So I’d recommend doing a manual search on all of the local directories as well.

When a duplicate listing appears on Google Places, you’ll have to go about fixing it the old fashioned way. This is by verifying that you’re the owner, and claiming the account. Luckily, Google has finally made some strides to recognize duplicate listings. As recently as last month, Google began notifying some page managers when they’ve found duplicates.

Google has also added a feature which allows you to report a listing as a duplicate.

Once you have verified a listing:

• Go to the correct Google Places listing and copy the URL from your browser
• Go to the duplicate listing and click on “Report a problem” at the bottom of the page
• Choose the “Place has another listing” option
• Find the comments box, and write a little something, letting them know that the page is a duplicate of another listing, and paste the URL of the correct listing. You can also ask them to merge the listing into the correct one, if you’d like to keep the reviews.

Fixing listings on other directories can be time consuming as well, but they’re similar to Google. Just be sure to continue running your company through Moz Local as you clean up your local search profile. This way you can track your progress, and continue looking for duplicates.