Recent content by Stefan Somborac

I spent a considerable amount of time exploring the Google Business Profile help channels for a project, and thought I would summarize my findings here. If you want to know how to contact GBP support by email, this list provides a support channel for most GBP problems. The Five "Main" Forms...

Two more possibilities for documents for the satellite location: City-issued business license (if the city issues licenses) Certificate of insurance Google's guidance on suspensions lists only four document types: Business registration Business licence Utility bill Tax registration So, I...

There's some strange behaviour with suspended GBPs these days, making it unclear whether the profile is a) suspended/disabled or b) if it needs to be verified. 1.) When a suspended profile gets reinstated, merchants sometimes get an email saying it needs to be verified. But when you try to...

@patrick71 - I used the word "franchise" loosely, as a reference. An easier way to look at it is to draw a comparison between two physical locations. Say you have a pizza restaurant and decide to open a second location in the neighbouring city. That second location will have: A unique address...

@patrick71 - There's a fine detail here. To quote the Guidelines: "Service-area businesses, or businesses that serve customers at their locations, should have one profile for the central office or location with a designated service area." In other words, a service area business cannot use an...

I spend lots of time in the Google community forum, and I see lots of fake review complaints. I thought it might be helpful to share the reasons you can give when reporting a review that I’ve found are most likely to get Google to take action. (See this post for a detailed breakdown of the steps...

I second @JS Girard - This is amazing! Thanks for sharing that with the community.

When you claim an existing Business Profile, verifying it is the last step in the process. At this point in the process, you should see an unverified instance of the profile in your Business Profile Manager. Check https://business.google.com/locations If you see it there, try to verify it. If...

@fshehu - That form is for denied appeals which, for North American users, means it's for suspension cases. It is linked from this support document: Fix suspended or disabled profiles I don't think it would produce results if you tried to use it for a verification-related issue. If you've used...

If you get a “No more ways to verify” error message when trying to verify your Google Business Profile, you need to contact the support team. There’s a trick to that. Start with the verification status tool: https://support.google.com/business/workflow/12825603 When the verification status...

@luischavez0104 - Here's a huge leap forward thanks to @timcapper and @krystaltaing. Google Actions Center offers a collection of integrations which includes restaurant bookings, things to do bookings for tours, etc. See https://developers.google.com/actions-center. The "Book online" button is...

@retrovertigo - It appears this process is in flux. Google recently told me that it was intentional for merge requests to send users to the verification status tool. They have since changed that; merge requests should be handled by the general form: https://support.google.com/business/gethelp -...

@Stormverb - I don't have all the answers, but made some observations that might be helpful. 1.) I spoofed my location to the spa address and searched for "botox" and "microneedling". On Maps, Coastal Health was first for both. No surprise; you'd expect them to be first when searching for a...

@retrovertigo - You're starting with the "Get Help" form. https://support.google.com/business/gethelp. It is a catchall for problems that don't have a "specialized" contact form. There are three such specialized forms: Reviews: https://support.google.com/business/workflow/9945796 Suspensions...

Local Falcon as a Spam Fighting Tool Joy wrote a comprehensive post on how to report map span. It focuses on gathering proof and taking action. For the very first step—finding potential spam—a geogrid tool is great. Simply click a pin to see which profiles are ranking at that location. See a...