The challenge
Samaroh Banquets runs banquet halls in Thane West. When new owners took over the venue in 2025, its Google profile came with the previous owner's reviews, and many of them were poor. So the new owners started a fresh profile for the same halls.
We worked on the new profile, and it grew from no calls to about 70 to 80 calls a month.
Then, in November or December 2025, Google marked the new profile as a duplicate. Because of that, it also sent the original profile back for verification. The venue now had one profile Google had shut out and one it no longer trusted.
The reason is one of Google's basic rules: "There should only be one profile per business." A change of owner doesn't make a new business. Google's guidelines say that if you take over a business, the previous owner should add you to the existing profile and transfer it to you, rather than you starting another one.
What we did
The fix had to happen in the right order, because Google won't merge two profiles until it trusts the one that stays.
- Two profilesThe original and the duplicate
- Verify the originalProof the business is real and run by the new owners
- MergeThe duplicate folded into the original
- One profileReviews and calls in one place
Verifying the original profile
Verification didn't go through on the first route. We tried other options before Google accepted it, and the original profile was verified again in January or February 2026, two to three months after the duplicate flag.
Merging the duplicate
Once the original profile was verified, we asked Google to merge the duplicate into it. Around 200 reviews from the two profiles now sit on the one verified profile. The steps for a merge, and what happens to the reviews, are in our guide to duplicate Google Business Profiles.
The results
With one verified profile and its reviews in one place, we went back to the SEO work on the original profile, the one with more reviews. Its calls rose from 108 in July 2026 to 185 in September, which the leads case study covers in full.
What it adds up to
A fresh profile looks like a clean start after a change of owner, but Google sees two profiles for one business. It flagged the duplicate just as the new profile had started to bring in calls, and it pulled the original's verification with it. The way back was to verify the original, merge the duplicate into it and keep every review, good and bad, on one profile.
If Google has asked you to verify your profile again, our verification service starts with a Product Expert reading your case. If your profile is suspended, see our reinstatement service.
