Merging two companies and the directories

[Stuart26]

My company (x) is about to merge with another company (y) to become xy...

As part of that, I'm thinking that Moz local is going to help with changing the name of the company in the directories. If I sign up as company x to change the listings to xy... will I need to sign up a separate account with y (with a y e-mail address) to change the listings to xy also? I would like to kick off the process a few days before the effective merge date when xy goes live.

Thanks,

Stu

[moz_support]

Hey Stu!

In a case like this we recommend purchasing a listing for the new company (xy) overall. We have tools that allow you to enter alternate names/addresses/phone numbers for the old listings that will help us identify, update, and/or remove them. If you already have an existing Moz Local listing for company x or company y, you can shutter those listings, but we do not recommend buying new Moz Local listings for outdated company information. You only need one account to manage this new listing!

Also, please be aware that we expect updates through Moz Local to generally take 8-12 weeks, so if you're looking for immediate effects by purchasing the new listing right before the company merges, there may be some lag time before the listings are updated.

[Stuart26]

Hi, thanks for the quick response. I should have mentioned that companies x and y are all in different non-conflicting locations. All locations will remain after they both become xy and there will be no duplicates.

Changing the listings should be fairly clean.

My question is more of a technical account set up question for Moz. As I work for company x - if I sign up for Moz Local under stuart@x.com, surely i'm not going to be authorised to change the listings for company y? I mean, if I need a stuart@y.com account to do this - this can be arranged. But I would like to know the position first before I sign up.

Thanks,

Stuart

[BlueCorona]

Hi Stuart!

My fear in creating two accounts (one for x and one for y) in hopes of changing both their information to reflect xy would be that there would then be duplicate information for xy across all online directories—which could cause more harm than good. Google’s Business Guidelines make it very clear that you should not create more than one listing for each of your businesses locations.

If I were you, I would change one of the companies (i.e. x) through Moz local (whichever one has the better Local SEO score), and then I would see if you could find a way to mark y as closed/delete it's online presence altogether. That way you wouldn't have duplicate listings for xy which could be detrimental to your rankings when starting out.

Apart from just merging company x and y's online directory listings, you will need to figure out how to want to handle merging their domains. I recommend checking out this Moz blog that discusses when two companies become one and how to handle it successfully. Here is some more information on handling two company websites:

• http://moz.com/community/q/how-to-keep-old-url-juice-during-site-switch
• http://moz.com/community/q/301-redirect-subdirectory-to-new-domain
• http://moz.com/community/q/which-page-should-i-301-redirect-to-the-other

Hope this answered your question!