Merging Duplicate Yelp Listings: Tutorial for Business Owners (and Analysts)

Having duplicate Yelp listings for your business may make it difficult for potential clients to find you and is not ideal for your Local Campaign.

If you are a business owner, but not necessarily Yelp-savvy, you might not be aware that you created duplicate listings for your business. This can happen while you’re trying to create a listing for a different location, update your business info, or change your business name – which was the case for our client.

If you have a similar issue, this tutorial can help you, or at the very least, point you in the right direction.

When merging duplicate Yelp listings, make sure you are logged in as a business owner because it will make things much easier. In the back-end, there will be a number provided: (877) 767-9357. This is the number for the Yelp Advertising department.

When I called, I was helped with my request by a Senior Account Executive. Luckily for me, the executive emailed some info regarding my request, and now I have access to his email as well as direct line for future inquiries. However, if you are not emailed by someone who works at Yelp, you should still ask for their contact info for your reference. Now, back to merging listings.

In detail, let whomever is helping you know exactly what you’re trying to achieve. In this case, I was trying to merge two duplicate listings into one and update the business name.

In this instance, since we were working with a doctor’s personal listing as well as his practice, he had to give written consent to Yelp. The executive at Yelp emailed me the following statement to forward to the doctor to sign:

I, __________ , give Yelp my consent to merge my individual Yelp listing with my practice listing. I understand that this will not be undone in the future, and I will lose out on the ability to take any photos, reviews, tips, videos, or other content with me in the future should I move locations or practices.

It took some time, but I got this back from the doctor and emailed it immediately to the Yelp executive. I did not hear back from him for a couple of weeks, so I called his direct line (again, I strongly urge you to record someone’s contact info at Yelp).

The Yelp executive said he remembered our first conversation and would complete my request right away. I checked the listings about an hour later, and…

TA-DAH! The listings had been merged.

Merging duplicate Yelp listings can actually be quite simple. The whole process should take about a week or so if you are checking on it regularly. It will take effective communication and possibly some phone calls, but you can do it too!