The salon that was fighting itself

The salon that was fighting itself

Meet a hair salon in Minneapolis. Lovely reviews, two of them — because there were two listings. A second profile had been auto-created years earlier when an old address got crawled, and nobody noticed.

Reviews and ranking signals were split across both. One showed 60 reviews and ranked at position 6; the ghost showed 18 reviews and ranked nowhere, but kept appearing for some searches and sending clients to a dead address.

Google saw two salons with the same name and trusted neither fully.

We identified the duplicate, confirmed which was authoritative, and filed to merge them so the reviews and history consolidated onto one profile.

The merge processed in a week, then nothing visible for another two, and the owner feared we'd broken something.

Week four, the consolidated listing surged.

From 60 reviews to 78 in one place, position 6 to position 2, and the wrong-address complaints stopped overnight. Bookings rose 21%.

The lesson: a duplicate listing isn't harmless clutter — it splits your strength and confuses Google, and merging two weak profiles into one can beat months of new work.