When you change the name, Google will ask you if the name you submitted is a New Name of the same business, or a New Business.
My answer was: New Business.
Everything was fast, and my single edit was transformed by Google Maps in two edits:
Closing the old business
Creating a New Listing with the same address and the new name
Everything seems to be amazing, but there is an issue in this: The New Listing didn’t had any category
I didn’t take any screenshot to demonstrate this (sorry) but…
This explain why we found business listing without any category, even if the category is one of the basic requisite for an edit to be accepted
The short way is totally useless if then you have to add extra edits to fix the issue
Fortunately, I was careful enough to check the result of my edit immediately, and to add a category. BTW, this can be a serious damage for the business itself, as it will not be found searching for a specific category on the area.
Good point @ErmesT . Being the control freak that some people claim I am (what could possibly make them believe this???), I have never come across this as I always close the old place and then manually create the new one. But it’s indeed really not good that this leads to POIs being created without category.
What would be perfect, from local guide user experience perspective, would be a follow-up screen asking if the category of the old place also applies to the new one (is often, but not always the case). If yes: apply that one to the new POI, if no: show the category selector.
This procedure make sense (everything in one shot) if you want to replace a business with another on the same location, @JanVanHaver . BTW, as you said, in not complete, as it should have exactly what you suggested.
I was thinking of writing an idea about this subject, but I wanted to write a post on how to instead, because I believe this was already on the mind of the developer.
The additional step will make an edit easier and more efficient than the “old style” procedure, avoiding overlapping between an old business that may stay there, while the new one is approved
@ErmesT Thank you for reporting this. I had encountered this a few months ago. I did a change of business and this new listing was created without a category. It shows ‘Point of Interest’ in the category. I submitted several edits as Bank but never got accepted. And someone might accidentally submit Band as category and the bank now shown as Band
So I think they should give us a prompt to select a category for the new business.
@KlaudiyaG Could you change the category to Bank? I submitted several edits periodically but never got accepted. Padma Bank Limited
