Jade Wang from Google announced in the Google Business Help forums that they have updated their Google Places Quality guidelines specifically for practitioners and departments within businesses.
Here are the new guidelines:
Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts.
- Individual practitioners may be listed individually as long as those practitioners are public-facing within their parent organization. Common examples of such practitioners are doctors, dentists, lawyers, and real estate agents. The practitioner should be directly contactable at the verified location during stated hours. A practitioner should not have multiple listings to cover all of his or her specializations.
- Departments within businesses, universities, hospitals, and government buildings may be listed separately. These departments must be publicly distinct as entities or groups within their parent organization, and ideally will have separate phone numbers and/or customer entrances.
Soon you will need a degree in law to understand all the parameters and requirements.
This is being updated because of the confusion we reported a few weeks ago.
Forum discussion at Google Business Help.
