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A second listing exists because somebody made one, once, for a reason that made sense at the time, and nobody took it down. Google's own line is that there should be one profile per business, and that a profile it considers a duplicate is not shown in Search or Maps at all. So if you can see two, Google is treating both as real businesses, or one is a practitioner profile at your address. A law firm is unusually good at producing that second record: attorneys leave, offices move, names change, and vendors build things nobody at the firm can log into.
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The five ways a second listing appears
An attorney left. Google's guidelines let an individual practitioner, and lawyers are named in the list, hold their own profile as long as they are public-facing and can be reached at the verified location. When that lawyer moves on, the profile stays put with your address and your main number on it. Google's duplicate-profile page covers practitioners who share a location, not one who has left, so there is no automatic cleanup; someone has to deal with it.
The office moved. Somebody created a new listing at the new address instead of editing the old one. Google's instruction for a move is the opposite: do not create a new profile, update the existing one with the new address. The old listing keeps the history and the reviews, and keeps showing for a neighbourhood you left.
A vendor built one. A past marketing engagement created a profile on an account nobody at the firm can access. Until somebody searches properly, the firm has no way of knowing it exists.
The firm changed its name. This one is not always a mistake. Google treats a minor change, where the proper nouns and services in the name stay the same and the category does not change, as a rebrand you can edit in place. A bigger change, a partner departure or a merger that produces a new name, is treated as a new business, and Google's page says to mark the old profile closed and create a new one. If that is your situation, the second listing is what Google asked for, and the job is to make sure the old one is actually marked closed.
Somebody was helpful. Anyone with a Google account can add a missing place in Google Maps, and it shows publicly once added. A well-meaning former client who could not find you can start one.
| How it happened | What Google's page says | Which listing should survive |
|---|---|---|
| Attorney left | Practitioners may hold their own profile; nothing on what happens when they leave | The firm's; ask the attorney to update or remove theirs |
| Office moved | Update the existing profile, do not create a new one | The older one, corrected to the new address |
| Vendor built one | Request access from the current owner; they have 3 days to respond | Whichever holds the reviews |
| Name changed (minor) | Edit the name in place | The original |
| Name changed (major) | Mark the old profile closed, create a new one | The new one; confirm the old one is marked closed |
| Added by the public | Anyone can add a missing place in Maps | Yours; report the other as a duplicate |
Finding all of them, properly
Ten minutes with a notepad. Search the firm name in Google Maps, then the previous firm name if there was one. Try every address the practice has ever occupied, and each attorney's full name plus your city, including anyone who has left in the past five years. Put the old phone number into a plain search, in quotes.
Then check inside the account. Sign in to the Business Profile account and look at the list of profiles it manages, and ask whether anyone else at the firm has a different account with its own list. If a marketing company worked on the firm at any point, ask them what they created and under which account.
Write down what each listing has on it:
- The address
- The phone
- The review count
- Whether it says verified
- The date of the oldest review
That last one matters more than it looks.
Merging without losing the reviews
Here is where firms lose things they cannot get back, so it is worth being slow.
The profile you want to survive is the one with the reviews and the oldest history, even if its address is wrong and its name is out of date. Addresses and names can be edited. A review is somebody else's writing on somebody else's account, and you cannot write it again for them.
So the order is: claim and verify the profile that holds the reviews first, correct it to the current address, name, suite and phone, and only then deal with the other one. The tempting order, cleaning up the newer profile you already have access to and marking the old one closed, is the one that quietly costs you the reviews.
Do not mark a duplicate permanently closed. Google's page says a profile marked permanently closed may still appear in Search and Maps for people who search for it, clearly showing that the business is closed. A law firm showing as closed in Maps can do more damage than the duplicate did. Closing is for a real closure or a major rename, and only for the profile without the reviews.
Google's route for a duplicate is a merge request, made by reporting a suggestion on the listing in Google Maps. Google reviews every edit made through Maps, says changes may take time to appear, and warns that edits which try to significantly change a business may be rejected. Its duplicate page says that when two profiles are merged their reviews are combined, but replies to reviews may be lost, so copy your replies somewhere safe before you ask. Google does not publish how long the review takes. If the duplicate is one you created yourself by mistake, Google says you can remove it without affecting the verified listing, which is why the order above matters: the verified profile is the one that has to survive.
Getting access back when nobody has the password
This is a formal process with its own form and its own clock. If a verified profile for your business is owned by someone else, Google's page has a form to request access from the current owner. The owner is notified by email and has 3 days to respond. If there is no response after 3 days, Google says you may have the option to claim the profile yourself by verifying it. If the owner denies the request, you get a rejection email and can appeal. Start this early in a cleanup, because everything else waits on it.
If the current owner is a former employee who is still reachable and on good terms, one email asking them to transfer ownership is faster than the formal process. It is worth trying first.
After the merge
Google says Maps edits are reviewed and may take time to show, so give the surviving profile room before judging the result. A profile whose details were recently updated may also be asked to verify again; Google's verification page says that is the likely reason when re-verification is requested, and it is a check rather than a punishment. Send one edit, wait for it to publish, then send the next; two edits submitted together leave you guessing which one Google objected to.
Then go back to the directories. Check whether the wrong address and old phone number that produced the duplicate are still sitting in the bar directory, on Avvo, on Justia, on FindLaw and on Martindale. Anyone can add a place to Maps from public information, so a wrong address left in four places is a duplicate waiting to happen again.
Once the listing count is down to one, the Google Maps ranking checklist for a divorce attorney is the next pass, and if the merge left you with reviews that deserve a reply, what you can and cannot ask clients to say covers the line between asking and steering.
Where this fits
For a two-to-five attorney practice, duplicates travel with related problems: hours nobody updated, a suite number that differs between the website and the profile. That whole situation, and what I do about it, is on the small firm page. If you are a solo who set up both a firm listing and a personal one because an article told you to, the solo practitioner page covers what Google's one-profile-per-business rule means for you.
Finding and merging every listing is the first job in every size, and the three fixed prices are on the homepage. Before you decide anything, send the firm's current and former names to hello@divorceseo.com and I will reply with the count of listings I can find and which one holds the reviews.
Checked against Google's Business Profile help pages on 2026-09-21: Resolve duplicate profiles and ownership issues, Guidelines for representing your business on Google, Request ownership of a Business Profile, Mark your business as closed, Verify your business on Google, Edit place information in Google Maps, Add a missing place to Google Maps
Common questions
Can two law firms share one address and each keep a profile?
Yes, if they are separate businesses that each meet Google's eligibility rules. Google's guidelines say a location that combines two or more brands should not combine the names into one profile, and pick one brand's name for each. Two names for the same firm at one address is a duplicate, not two businesses.
A practitioner and the firm are at the same address. Is that a duplicate?
Not if the practitioner is public-facing and reachable there. Google's guideline is that the practitioner profile carries only the lawyer's name, without the firm name, and the firm keeps its own profile for the location. A solo who is the only public-facing lawyer at a branded firm is told to share one profile instead.
How long does the current owner have to answer an access request?
Three days from the email Google sends them. After that you may be offered the chance to claim the profile by verifying it yourself.
We lost the login for our own profile, not someone else's. Same process?
No. That is recovery of your own Google account, the same as a forgotten Gmail password, and it is handled on the sign-in screen. The access request form is only for a profile that a different account owns.
We renamed the firm after a partner left. Should we merge the old and new profiles?
Check the rebrand test first. If the proper nouns and services in the name changed, Google treats the new name as a new business and says to mark the old profile closed and create a new one, so a merge is the wrong request. If only a small part of the name changed and the category stayed the same, edit it in place and report the second profile as a duplicate.
Canadian? The same three sizes in Canadian dollars are on the CAD pricing page.