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One question that a lot of webmasters and small business owners who manage their own local business websites have is: How do I delete a Google My Business listing?

This is a common question and a commonly included item on FAQs for local SEO websites and online forums, but it’s certainly a very complicated answer for a such a simple question.

There are going to be several possible scenarios and cases for why a business owner might want to go ahead and delete a Google My Business listing, and the correct way to manage your individual situation may not be deleting the listing.

If deletion is what you want to do, the steps are pretty straightforward, especially if you’ve been managing your GMB listing up until now.

Google says:

“You can delete a business account if you no longer want to use it to manage locations. Deleting a business account cannot be undone. If you’re no longer responsible for a set of locations in an account, transfer ownership of the account rather than delete it.”

Steps to Delete a Google My Business Listing

The steps to take are:

To delete a business account, you must be an owner of the account and must first delete or transfer all locations within the account.

1. Sign in to Google My Business.
2. On the account, you want to delete, click the three-dot menu icon, and click Delete.
3. Click OK to continue. You may need to sign in to your GMB account again.
4. Review the info on your screen. Select the boxes to confirm you want to delete
5. Click “Delete account” to permanently delete your business account and all of its data.

But before you go and delete the account, be sure first that this is really the best thing to do to address the specific reasons you have for wanting to delete it. There might be a better option that fits perfectly for your scenario.

Managing a Google My Business Listing

Moz has a chart with steps to take in a number of given scenarios for a business owner who may be considering deletion of a listing, and not all of them involving deleting your listing, but instead managing GMB to help your business the most rather than harm it.

Covered in the chart are scenarios such as:

Unverify a Verified Listing You Control

Verify an Unverified Listing to Gain Control

Take Control of a Listing Someone Else Verified

Manage a Duplicate Listing for a Brick-and-Mortar Business

Manage a Duplicate Listing for a Service Area Business (SAB)

Manage an Unwanted Listing for a Multi-Practitioner Business

Manage a Listing When a Business Moves

Manage a Listing Marked “Permanently Closed”

Manage a Merger/Acquisition

Manage a Spam Listing

Manage a Listing with Bad Reviews