I recently reported a duplicate listing to Bing Local tech support. Bing support has proven to be very helpful and communicative for me. If the listing problem is not resolved within a few days they normally email me a follow up telling me that they are still working on the issue.
After a couple of weeks I noticed that the duplicate listing was replaced with an exact copy of the proper listing. I found it odd that the only noticeable difference was the listing’s URL. I wondered if it was really a duplicate listing or not and eventually found out a way to verify which listing is the ‘official’ correct listing.
Below are some screen shots of the duplicate listing as it appears in my browser.
If you mouse-over the ‘Report a problem’ link (in the listing in question) you would see that a different listing ID is referenced in the status bar at the bottom of the browser window.
If you copy/paste the link into a text document you can see the following format: http://www.bing.com/local/reportproblem?lid=YN___x_________
So in this case the LID referenced in the ‘report a problem’ link is YN873x133441625 but the actual listing URL has an LID of YN873x121788176. If you would then go to the proper listing in Bing Local, you would see that both the listing URL and the report a problem URL reference the same listing ID. In that way you can confirm which one is the ‘real listing’.
Since Paul, a ‘Bing Places for Business Support Specialist’ told me that they were still working on the listing issue, I informed him that I thought that the listings did actually merge (proven by the fact that searching for the company in Bing brought up only the one listing), and I showed him the info that I explained above. He replied saying the following:
Hi Russ,
Thank you for providing the additional information. I must admit, you have very good observation skills.
Upon checking, the listings have been merged into one by the system. In addition, If you search for the “[Company Name]” on Bing, you will no longer see any duplicate listing so at this point, there’s no need to move forward.
I hope this helps. If there are any other questions regarding Bing Places for Business we can help address, please let us know. Otherwise, let us know if we can go ahead and close this Service Request as resolved.
We will be anticipating your response. Have a nice day.
Paul
Your Bing Places for Business Support Specialist
NOTE: Though I have always had good results working with Bing support, one thing that can be frustrating at first to a 3rd party working on a client’s Bing listings is that before Bing support will work on fixing the issues, they require an email response from someone with an email address at the company’s domain name (and/or the email address listed on the Bing listing, if applicable). In that case you would want to warn the client to expect an email from Bing and that they’ll need to reply giving permission to you to claim/edit/work on their listings for them.
If you would like help getting your Bing Local listings corrected (or any other internet yellow pages venue changed) with your proper business data, contact Orion Group now.