Recent content by JoyHawkins

Reposting this thread we got on our subreddit. This user is saying they are seeing service area pages (pages targeting a specific city with the goal to rank organically in that city) getting hit by the August 2026 Spam Update. Anyone here seeing this? Examples?

I'm definitely seeing this with human users as well although it's possible it might be more extreme with incognito sessions. That would be a very tough study to do. Not sure I have a million humans sitting around that can help lol. Schieler's study was done by humans though and he came to the...

So if you rank high in the local pack, and your listing links to a page that ranks organically for that same keyword, that organic ranking will be worse because Google basically filters it out as already being on the page. I've done videos and wrote about this (the diversity update) but I'm not...

I would use the same account.

I have Google transfer reviews between profiles all the time. They also will transfer them for an SAB who has moved since they are told to create a brand new profile. You want a different support agent. I would create a new case or post on the GBP community.

Yes, but it's not the death sentence it used to be. New profiles can rank just fine.

Yeah so they are telling you the profile can't be moved, which is correct. You need to get them to just move the reviews. At this point, I would start a new support ticket and simply tell them you need to move reviews from a deleted profile to the correct one that is live.

Tell them you just wanna move the reviews over (not reinstate the listing). They should be able to do that. You likely need to provide them copies of the reviews.

This is a known issue - definitely not just you. I'm asking around to see if there is a workaround for it.

What industry & country is the business in?

I asked some of the Product Experts and James Cant said if you send an owner invite, it should work. Manager invites are not working. Since it's the business owner you would definitely want them to have owner access.

Just echoing Jason + Tony. You need a new listing.

Yeah so it should technically get appealed but I can see how Google thinks it's not allowed. It's not a very common scenario. You should be able to submit a second appeal here.

Do any of the categories overlap whatsoever?

Does the corporate office do face-to-face business with customers at the location? It sounds like it's only used for training employees based on what you described. What is the purpose of the corporate listing? Why do they want a profile for it?