To Claim a Google Plus Business Page or Not To Claim?

I get a lot of questions on whether it’s a good idea to claim BOTH the Google Places listing and the Google Plus page for Business. Today I did some more testing for the LRT tool and had something happen that is a little disappointing.

After claiming the google places listing for coastal Childrens Learning Center I decided to also CLAIM the Google plus Business page for this business as well. This required a second PIN number to be retrieved.

After I claimed the google Plus business page the Business page merged with the Places listing and the BUSINESS PAGE became the main source of data. Here is the page…https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/103519103409559036260/103519103409559036260/about

Whats also frustrating as our primary category used to be Preschools and Day Care and now its Education and I cant figure out how to change it.

THE RANKINGS IMMEDIATELY DROPPED for the keyword phrase “preschool costa mesa”. This business has been A on google for least 6 years for its primary keyword and now has dropped to C.

So, at this point I would beware of claiming BOTH places and the plus business page. I am contemplating delting the Google plus business page altogether.

I will post any updates as I discover them.