Google's Official Guidelines For Moving A Business On Google Maps

We've covered the major issues with moving a business within Google Maps a couple times - in short, it is a scary and upsetting thing to have to deal with - on top of all the other issues with Google Maps.

Google's Jade Wang finally gave official advice on what to do when you do move your business. She wrote in a Google Business Help thread:

Verified business owner of a page, and is your business moving locations? Here's what you do.

Edit your address in Google Places for Business or in the Google+ page admin area, whichever you are using to manage the page. This will either make a new page or edit the address on the existing page. It may take a week or two after editing your address before you see an update. At this point, you may need to go through a verification process again. Don't worry -- this is normal.

If you see a page that's still got the old address, click on Report a problem and mark that location as closed. Provide the link to the new address or information about the new location if possible. You can find more instructions on closing a location here: http://goo.gl/YZIjq

I actually took these steps for my business and it did create two listings. But I do not want to mark my old listing as "closed" because my old listing still is the number one result.I do not want my business to appear as if we closed down.