6 year old GMB listing suspended!

[Tscplumbing]

We are a local plumbing business located in a small town. We launched in 2013 and have had a GMB listing since inception, without issue. We recently moved to a new shop, and followed the instructions our PPC / Marketing agency recommended and changed the address on our existing location. Got the post card in the mail, confirmed it, listing was changed and was live for the last 1.5 weeks. We discovered 2 days ago that our ENTIRE listing was GONE. TOTAL hard suspension. Freaked out, called GMB which is all foreign overseas and little help. We took photos of our location, sent business license, utility bill, and still no help. We are losing thousands of dollars per day in revenue and our employees are terrified. What in the hell can we do?? I've tweeted GMB, sent their reinstatement form, called them, and direct messaged without response on Twitter. Help!

 

[Phil Rozek]

@Tscplumbing:

1. Does the new address show on the page, or did you fill out the "Areas Served" section instead?

2. Did you also update the address on your site and on your non-Google listings (Yelp, YP, BBB, etc.)?

 

[Tscplumbing]

Hi Phil. We changed our physical address, nothing else was changed.

Our phone number, web url, services offered, areas served, EVERYTHING else was not altered. We simply moved to a new office. Our marketing team has the new address and was scheduled to push the update live across all public citations, but obviously that takes a few weeks to take effect everywhere.

 

[Mike Vannington]

If the situation is as dire as you say, I'd hire a reputable Local SEO immediately. You could spend months trying to figure this out on your own, while a good LSEO with the specific name of your business, address, etc... could figure it out almost immediately.

I don't know if or who did your LSEO in the past, but you should have been prepared for at least some of this. It's common knowledge that when a business changes location, it's position in the SERPs is going to change dramatically for the worse. The point is to mitigate it to the greatest extent possible. NAP consistency.

Your PPC/Marketing agency, I'm going to guess here, makes their money PPC, so giving you "free" Google juice by preparing for this address change is not in their best financial interest. This is a meaty, substative situation requiring full LSEO help, IMO. I also wouldn't trust whoever you were working with before, because, at least based on what I understand of the situation, they should have seen this coming the moment they became aware of the location change.

 

[NinjaBombSEO]

<Insert Nasty Buzzer Sound Here> Wrong answer Mike. What nobody is addressing here is the fact that Google is just derpy the last couple of weeks. Businesses just like this plumbing company are being suspended for normal use of the platform. They've moved and gone thru the normal intended use of the GMB platform to have their address updated by receiving the postcard at their new address.

There is no reason why their listing should be suspended, and yet their case is just one in hundreds that we have seen or heard of in the last couple of weeks alone. The simple fact here is that Google has a messed up platform at the moment and it is causing massive damage.

@Tscplumbing, can you post the email reply here from Google from when you submitted your business license and utility bill? That should at least give us an indication of what is going on. If you didn't do this via email support, I would recommend that you immediately escalate it with email support. We have had EXCELLENT success with that in the last couple of weeks. Blessings!

 

[Rich Owings]

It takes a week or so to hear from GMB via Twitter these days. Hopefully they will get back to you soon. Make sure you've updated the address on your website.

 

[JoyHawkins]

<Insert Nasty Buzzer Sound Here> Wrong answer Mike.

Both answers can be correct. Google is increasing the number of suspensions but there is also a possibility that the PPC agency is not familiar with guidelines for Google My Business. It's impossible to say without knowing the specifics which none of us here do.

 

[Tscplumbing]

<Insert Nasty Buzzer Sound Here> Wrong answer Mike. What nobody is addressing here is the fact that Google is just derpy the last couple of weeks. Businesses just like this plumbing company are being suspended for normal use of the platform. They've moved and gone thru the normal intended use of the GMB platform to have their address updated by receiving the postcard at their new address.

There is no reason why their listing should be suspended, and yet their case is just one in hundreds that we have seen or heard of in the last couple of weeks alone. The simple fact here is that Google has a messed up platform at the moment and it is causing massive damage.

@Tscplumbing, can you post the email reply here from Google from when you submitted your business license and utility bill? That should at least give us an indication of what is going on. If you didn't do this via email support, I would recommend that you immediately escalate it with email support. We have had EXCELLENT success with that in the last couple of weeks. Blessings!

Do you mean via the reinstatement request form or is there another email for support? We've tried escalating via their GMB hotline (what a joke!) And also via Twitter direct message and tweets to GMB - there are dozens of requests just like ours. Today GMB rep tells me "sorry, there is an internal glitch, you'll just have to allow more time. No idea how much more time, sorry". Our losses are in TENS of thousands now. We don't exist online and my husband and I are desperately trying to keep our doors open. We got NO response from the agent we emailed the documents and photos to.

 

[JoyHawkins]

@Tscplumbing was this Twitter support that said it was a glitch?

 

[Tscplumbing]

@Tscplumbing was this Twitter support that said it was a glitch?

No, it was the agent I spoke with at the GMB phone # - when I questioned him further, he said it was an internal glitch and to allow more time. When I asked him if they had an expectation of how long until this "glitch" was fixed, he said he had no idea, sorry! Nobody is able to help and there seems to be no true escalation process whatsoever.

My business is dying, and I can't fail 2 other families that rely on us as employers too.

 

[JoyHawkins]

What did Twitter support say when you contacted them?

 

[Tscplumbing]

I got a generic Response asking me to DM them further details. I did that and haven't received any response in a week after multiple requests to help :-/

 

[JoyHawkins]

What's your Twitter handle? I'll see what I can do to get a response for you.

 

[Tscplumbing]

Thank you! Its tsc_plumbing

 

[DAScom]

Our experience has been identical TSC, even down to being told it's a tech issue and not getting a response on Twitter. One rep even gave us a phony phone number and told us they'd be open on weekends. May not help but you're not alone.

 

[ausworkshop]

I really feel for you. I've been going through similar issues myself and the support is shocking. Especially when there is so many suffering. We've come to rely on all this tech they encourage us to use and then when it breaks no one seems to understand what it can do to families. I know it doesn't help you much now but I've been thinking recently of other ways to make a living. After 15 years online, I just can't rely on any of it anymore. It's like a toddler is in charge of the algorithm, experimenting with machine learning and it's going up and down all over the place, I can't rely on an income from my website anymore.