What to Do If You Have Two Listings

If you run one daycare, you want one listing. Two listings for the same daycare split the families who find you: some land on one, some on the other, and whichever one you are not keeping current is the one quietly giving parents your old phone number.

It happens easily enough. The most common way is filling in the "add a listing" form on the public site when you already have a listing from before you signed up. Both end up under your account, and from the dashboard they look much the same.

Sorting it out takes about five minutes, but there is one decision to make first, and it is worth making deliberately.

Check which listing families can actually see

Open your dashboard. Each listing shows whether it is Published, Unpublished or Archived.

Only a published listing appears in search and on the directory. An unpublished one is invisible to families no matter how complete it is. Filling in a listing and publishing it are two separate steps, which is covered in how to fill out your listing.

The listing you have been updating is often the newer one, and the newer one is often the unpublished one. So the listing parents are reading can be the older, thinner one, carrying details you replaced months ago.

Open both. Compare them properly: the phone number, the description, your hours, meals, ages, and whether the photos are current. One of them is usually clearly the better listing once you see them side by side.

Decide which one to keep

There are two ways to go, and the right one depends on which listing holds the better information.

Keep the newer listing. If the newer one has the detail you want parents to see, open it, choose Edit, set Listing visibility to Published at the top of the form, and save. Then open the older listing and delete it. This is the fastest route.

Keep the older listing. If the older one is already published and has a history you would rather not lose, copy across whatever the newer one has that it does not: the hours, the description, the phone number, the amenities. Then delete the newer one. More typing, and you keep the listing that has been live the longest.

Either works. Leaving both up is the one option that costs you something.

Check what the older listing is carrying

Before you delete anything, open the listing you are about to remove and look at two things.

Waitlist entries. If families have applied through it, those applications belong to that listing and go with it. Move anyone you still want to hear from onto the listing you are keeping, or note their details first. How to set up a waitlist covers where they live.

Openings. If the listing has open spots posted, those are what put it in the Saturday email to families. Post them again on the listing you keep, or you will drop out of that email until you do.

Photos, hours and your description are quick to retype. A waitlist is not.

Delete the other one

Open the listing you are removing from your dashboard, and in the Quick actions box on the right choose Delete listing, then confirm.

Deleting is not reversible from your side, so do the comparison before you do this, not after. If the listing you are deleting has waitlist entries or inquiries attached, those go with it, so it is worth a look first if the listing has been live for a while.

What happens to the web address

Each listing has its own web address, and that address stays with the listing it was created for. Deleting a listing does not hand its address to the one you kept, so if the listing you keep has an address ending in -1, it keeps it.

Families reach listings through the search, the city and province pages, and the Saturday openings email, all of which work from the listing itself rather than its address. The exception is if you have put the address on a flyer, a Facebook post or your own website. If you have, check it still opens, and update it where it does not.

Keeping it to one

Once you are down to one listing, your views and inquiries are counted in one place, and there is one set of details to keep current.

If you run more than one site, more than one listing is right: a second location, or a centre alongside a home daycare. Keep both, and keep both current.

If you are not sure which listing to keep, or something does not look right after you delete one, email us at [email protected] with the name of your daycare and we will take a look with you.