Duplicates happen quietly. A business gets imported once from public records, then again from a different source with a slightly different name — “Sri Lakshmi Traders” and “Sri Lakshmi Traders (Koramangala)” — and now there are two pages instead of one. Nobody did anything wrong; it’s just what happens when the same business shows up in more than one place data gets pulled from. But once it’s claimed by an owner, a duplicate stops being a data curiosity and starts costing something real.
What it actually costs you
- Split search visibility. Two thin, near-identical pages rank worse than one complete one — a search engine has to guess which is the real listing, and often picks neither with any confidence.
- Split enquiries. A customer who finds the page you haven’t claimed sends their enquiry into a listing nobody is watching. You never see it. They assume you ignored them.
- Inconsistent details. If the two pages have different phone numbers or hours, a customer trying to reach you has a coin flip’s chance of getting the current one.
How to spot one
Search your business name on GullyDirectory before you claim anything. If more than one result comes back for what is clearly your business — same address, same phone number, a name that’s a minor variant of the other — you’ve found a duplicate. It’s more common with businesses that have been open a long time, changed their trading name slightly, or operate from more than one nearby address that got recorded as if it were two different shops.
What to do about it
Claim the listing that looks strongest — usually the one with more information already filled in, or the one that’s ranking — and then tell us about the other one. Merging two listings is something our team does by hand rather than something you can trigger yourself, because it’s a one-way operation: the losing page’s history, services and enquiries all move over to the survivor, and its old address starts redirecting to the merged page automatically. Getting that right needs a person looking at both listings, not an automated guess.
Don’t claim both. If two accounts end up owning what turns out to be the same business, resolving that takes an extra step on our end before a merge can happen at all. Flag the duplicate before claiming it, and we’ll sort out which one survives.
Starting fresh?
If you’re about to add a new listing for a business that’s been open a while, search for it first — see our guide to claiming a listing for how. A minute of searching is a lot cheaper than untangling a duplicate later.