In short and in plain language
Your business is listed in many directories online. Often they show old details, like an old address.
Make your name, address and phone number match everywhere. Use your legal notice as the model.
Your business profile in search shows only the real name of your firm. Extras like the town or trade do not belong there.
After a move, change the old entry. Do not create a second entry.
Keep the details up to date, including your hours. We can help you with this.
The business moved four years ago, two hundred metres down the road into the bigger workshop. The website carries the new address, so does the letterhead, and yet one map service still sends the fitter to the old street. A trade directory still lists the senior owner's mobile number, and a third entry names the business after its trade rather than after the company. None of this is a mistake somebody made. It is the backlog of two decades in which entries appeared without anyone creating them. This article describes how to reconcile that stock: which fields matter, in what order they are touched, and how a business can tell that an entry does not belong to it at all.
Key takeaways
- Reconciliation does not start in a directory, it starts in the legal notice. Name and address are already binding there under section 5 DDG, which makes them the reference state every other entry can be measured against.
- The name in a business profile is the name the business uses away from search as well. Additions such as the trade or the town are not permitted and can lead to the profile being suspended (Google Business Profile Help).
- A second phone number is a decision, not a slip: the main number should be local and managed directly by the business, while further numbers belong in the additional fields (Google Business Profile Help).
- A move is an edit, not a new entry. A second profile for the same location is not allowed and typically costs more time than correcting the old entry would have cost.
- 88 percent of trade businesses rely on entries in online directories (Bitkom). Reconciliation therefore concerns almost every business, not only the one that has just moved.
Where the entries come from that nobody created
A directory entry rarely appears because a business registered for it. It appears from data deliveries, from old trade registrations, from a contract somebody signed years ago, and from hints left by users. Map services provide for this route explicitly: users can give feedback so that a decision about changing a place can be made, and anyone who owns or manages a business can correct its details (Google Maps Help). That is useful as long as the hints are correct. It also means the details about a business can change without the business doing anything.
The scale behind this is not a niche issue. 1,038,126 businesses (ZDH) are entered in the German trade registers and in the register of trade-like occupations. How widespread an online presence is among trade businesses was surveyed by Bitkom Research in 2025 in a telephone survey of 504 skilled-trade companies: 94 percent of those surveyed run their own website, 88 percent rely on entries in online directories and 40 percent on an entry with a review platform (multiple answers possible). Because multiple answers were possible, these shares overlap: a business is therefore frequently present in more than one place online. Each of those places has its own state, its own maintenance history and its own login that frequently nobody remembers.
Reconciliation is therefore a different job from setting things up. Anyone creating a profile fills empty fields and is then finished; how that works is covered in the article on the business profile for trade businesses. Anyone reconciling has to work out first which state is actually the correct one, who controls each entry and whether it can still be changed at all. That is less work than it sounds, but it is a different order.
- Entries from the founding years, created by a family member with a private address as the login
- Entries that came from a data delivery and name the business after its trade rather than its company name
- Entries carrying the number of a former line that was cancelled long ago
- Entries showing the owner's home address because the business was once run from home
- Duplicate entries created by a change of legal form or a handover to the next generation
The last point is the most awkward one, because correcting does not solve it. Two entries for the same location split everything an entry collects: views, enquiries, reviews. The principle is stated plainly: for each location of a business there should be no more than one single page, neither within one account nor across several accounts (Google Business Profile Help).
The five fields this is actually about
Reconciliation across every conceivable field cannot be completed. In practice five are enough: name, street with house number, postcode with town, phone number and opening hours. These five decide whether a caller reaches the right business and whether a driver finds the right entrance. Everything else – categories, services, photos, description – is expansion and belongs in a second pass.
| Field | What typically differs | What reconciliation is measured against |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Trade or town inside the name, an old legal form, spellings with and without a hyphen | the name the business uses away from search: on the sign, on the invoice, on the van |
| Street and house number | the address before the move, the owner's home address, a missing house number | the address from the legal notice, spelled exactly as it is on the invoice |
| Postcode and town | a district instead of the municipality, an old postcode after a boundary change | the official spelling of the municipality, not the familiar district name |
| Phone | a second number, the owner's mobile, a cancelled line | a local number that is managed directly by the business |
| Opening hours | hours from the founding years, Saturday slots with nobody in, missing public holidays | the hours when somebody actually answers the phone, not the workshop hours |
The third column is the important one. Reconciliation without an agreed reference state ends with five entries corrected in five different ways. The reference state is therefore settled first and written down, in a place that is binding anyway.
The legal notice is the reference state
The legal notice on your own website is the only statement about the business that is legally bound. Under section 5(1) no. 1 DDG, providers of commercial digital services, normally provided for remuneration, must keep permanently available the name and the address at which they are established (DDG); for legal entities the legal form and the authorised representative are added. A business that has to maintain these details anyway already holds the state against which every directory entry can be measured. What the legal notice says applies – and anything that differs from it is a deviation, not a matter of taste.
This assumes the legal notice itself is correct. In practice it is often the oldest page on the website and still carries the state it had on launch day. Reconciliation therefore starts there and not in the first directory. What belongs on that page and what does not is covered in detail in the article on the legal notice and privacy policy for trade websites.
{
"name": "Mustermann Heating and Plumbing Ltd",
"street": "Musterstraße 12",
"postcode": "31185",
"town": "Söhlde",
"phone": "+49 30 23125 000",
"phoneSecondary": "emergency line, outside opening hours only",
"openingHours": {
"mondayToThursday": "07:00-16:30",
"friday": "07:00-13:00",
"saturday": "closed"
},
"website": "https://www.beispielbetrieb.invalid/",
"legalNoticeCheckedOn": "2026-09-11",
"entries": ["own website", "business profile", "map service", "trade directory", "review portal"]
}The file does not have to look technical; a sheet of paper in a folder does the same job. What matters is that it holds a single version and that everyone in the business knows where it is. The example address above deliberately uses a domain ending that cannot be registered, so that it belongs to nobody.
The name is the hardest field
Two interests collide in the name field. The business wants to be found and therefore likes to add the trade and the town. The guidelines do not provide for that. The name in the profile should be the name the business uses elsewhere, and additions are expressly not permitted (Google Business Profile Help).
To help customers find your business online, accurately represent your business name. Your name should reflect your business’s real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website, stationery, and as known to customers.
The consequence of breaching this is not theoretical. Adding unnecessary information to a business name is not permitted, and failure to observe this can result in the profile being suspended (Google Business Profile Help). A suspended profile disappears from the map, and restoring it typically takes longer than the addition ever earned. A business that wants to be found by trade and town works with categories, services and the pages of its own website instead. Which terms are worth targeting at all is covered in the article on finding local search terms in the trades.
The same thought applies when reconciling across several entries. Consistent names and categories should be used for all locations of a business so that customers find it more quickly (Google Business Profile Help). A business with two locations that runs the limited company name in one place and the family name in the other is working against itself – and does not notice, because each entry looks fine on its own.
Two phone numbers are a decision
The second phone number is the most common finding in the trades. It is also the most harmless one, as long as it is clear which number is the main one. The requirements are narrow: state a number that reaches the specific business location, preferably a local number rather than a hotline, and the number has to be managed directly by the business (Google Business Profile Help). Forwarding numbers that do not connect users directly with the business are ruled out.
For a trade business that usually means the office landline is the main number and the owner's mobile is not. Further phone numbers can be listed in addition (Google Business Profile Help), and the emergency line belongs visibly on the website rather than in the name field. How a website takes the call when nobody is in the office is described in the article on availability and the calls that get lost.
The old address: edit rather than recreate
After a move the reflex is to create a new entry and leave the old one standing. That is the most expensive route. The old entry does not disappear by itself, it keeps its reviews and its history, and it then competes with the new one. The correct move is to change the existing entry to the new address, so that everything the entry has gathered over the years moves with it.
Clear limits apply to the address itself. Use the correct address and the precise service area; post office boxes or mailboxes at locations that are not the business are not permitted (Google Business Profile Help). Nor may the address lines contain information unrelated to the business location, such as website addresses or keywords (Google Business Profile Help). A business without a fixed shopfront that works at the customer's premises states a service area instead – what that looks like on your own website is shown in the article on showing your service area.
- Find the existing entry and check whether it belongs to the business or came from a data delivery
- Confirm ownership before changing anything – without confirmation every change is only a suggestion
- Change the address in the existing entry rather than creating a second one
- Adjust the service area if the radius shifted along with the location
- Mark old duplicate entries as permanently closed once the new state is in place
- Look again after four weeks, because changes to places are reviewed and do not take effect immediately
The last point is the one most often missing. Changes aimed at substantially altering a business may be rejected (Google Maps Help) – and a new address is exactly such a change. Anyone who does not look again after submitting is mistaking a suggestion for a result.
Opening hours age fastest
Of the five fields, opening hours are the one that becomes wrong without anyone touching it. A business that entered its hours six years ago has since shortened Friday, dropped Saturday and has not recorded the works holiday. State your regular opening hours, with the option of setting special hours for public holidays and particular occasions (Google Business Profile Help). A business that works by appointment only is better off entering no hours than wrong ones.
For a trade business the useful question is not when the workshop is open but when somebody picks up the phone. Those are rarely the same hours. If the crew leaves at seven and the office is staffed from eight, then eight belongs in the field. The alternative is a caller at 7:15 who gives up after the third ring and moves on to the next entry.
What reconciliation achieves – and what it does not promise
The honest part first: better local ranking cannot be demanded, not even in exchange for payment (Google Business Profile Help). Anyone selling reconciliation while promising a position is promising something they cannot deliver. What can be said is the direction: local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence (Google Business Profile Help), and two of those three factors depend on the data discussed here.
Relevance covers how well a profile matches what someone is looking for; complete and detailed information helps to match the entry to the appropriate search (Google Business Profile Help). Prominence draws among other things on how many websites link to the business and how many reviews it has received (Google Business Profile Help). And the most sober sentence of all: businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to appear in local results, and if the information is not accurate the profile may not appear for relevant searches in the area (Google Business Profile Help).
Reconciliation is a precondition, not a lever
That is where the second pass begins. Once the five fields are settled, expansion pays off: services separated properly instead of bundled into one page, as described in the article on service pages instead of one combined page, and a routine that produces reviews regularly, as covered in the article on collecting reviews in the trades.
Who does the work and how long it takes
Take stock
Search separately for the business name, the old and the new address and every phone number you know of. Every hit goes into a list with its web address and the state you found. For a business with five entries this stocktake typically takes one to two hours, and it is the part nobody should skip.
Sort out the logins
Every entry has a login, and every login has an address for electronic mail behind it. Frequently that address sits with a former employee or a service provider. Before the first edit, establish who holds the login, otherwise every correction stays a suggestion without effect.
Correct and document
Edit against the reference state, field by field, with a screenshot before and after the change. That sounds like effort, but it saves the discussion six months later when an entry looks different again and nobody remembers what it used to say.
Follow up
Four weeks after the last change, work through the list once more. Typically one or two entries have not been taken over yet or have reverted. After that a quarterly look is enough, sensibly combined with the rest of your maintenance and support.
The effort is manageable, but it is distributed unevenly: the stocktake and sorting out the logins take most of the time, while the actual correcting is done within an hour. Businesses that hand the work over are therefore well advised to hand over the stocktake rather than the correcting. How maintenance stays inside the business afterwards is described in the article on maintaining the site after handover.
A relaunch is a special case. Rebuilding a website often changes addresses and page structure at the same time – and then it goes unnoticed that the directories still point at old addresses. Reconciliation therefore belongs in the same week as the move of the website; what else to watch out for is covered in the article on a relaunch without losing visibility.
Consistent details are a routine, not a project
Reconciliation that happens once lasts roughly until the next change inside the business. A new phone number, an additional location, a change in management – each of those events creates deviations again. Businesses whose details stay correct therefore have less discipline than system: the reference state sits in one place, the list of entries sits next to it, and both are touched as soon as something changes.
That is the whole method. It costs half a day in the first pass and a quarter of an hour per quarter afterwards. The return is unspectacular and therefore easy to overlook: calls that arrive, fitters who drive to the right entrance, and a profile that is not suspended over an addition to the name. If you would rather not do the stocktake yourself, we take it on as part of the business profile or of local visibility – an overview of everything else is on the page about our services, and the starting point is a conversation about your business.
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