The folks at the Local Search Forums are chatting about a pattern they've been seeing for the past several months around closed local listings.
When a business is marked as closed on Google Maps, the rankings in the local pack for that business goes away. This can be an issue with duplicate listings, moved businesses and then a competitor marking a business as closed.
Linda Buquet wrote:
What we've discovered is if there is listing marked permanently closed at your address and phone, it often (not always) seems to suppress ranking for the main listing you are trying to rank. This should not happen, but it seems to in numerous cases we've investigated.The old listing may be closed due to either rebranding or practitioners that are no longer at that location. So a standard part of our troubleshooting checklist for awhile now is deep dupe research to try to uncover any closed listings that may be out there.
So local SEOs have been adding to their audits and troubleshooting the process of checking for duplicates or closed businesses to ensure the rankings are optimal.
I guess it makes sense that Google doesn't want to rank closed businesses but a closed business on Google Maps doesn't mean the business is closed - really, it doesn't.
Forum discussion at Local Search Forums.
