All GMB Posts Suddenly Rejected

[KymM]

Hi, I've ran into a bit of a weird problem and was hoping someone had some insight as to why. All of the GMB posts on one of our client's profiles were suddenly rejected. We had just posted a new post, which was rejected, as were all of the old posts in the account. There was nothing against the rules in the post, and even if it violated the rules somehow, why would all of our posts be suddenly rejected? My concern is that there is something deeper going on with our listing, but it's live and looks fine at the moment. Has anyone encountered something similar?

 

[JoyHawkins]

I have seen a few posts about it at the Google My Business forum. If they're old posts I wouldn't worry about it because they're not live in the Knowledge Panel anyway.

 

[MaxeL]

We realized that the date on all of the photos we've uploaded have been reset to around the time all of the posts were rejected.

I haven't had any rejected posts so far, but I can confirm that the photo time was restarted. In my case it's related with Product catalog. I got access to it about 4 weeks ago after a year of waiting (some time ago in another topic I wrote that I had access for 2 weeks last year in November) and all photos uploaded by me shows that they are 4 weeks old.

 

[cocharleston]

Logged into GMB today and saw that pretty much every single GMB post was retroactively rejected all the way back over a year (past April of last year). I opened a ticket asking for help, but in my own research I've seen people suggest that having a phone number in the post gets it rejected--but that doesn't make sense as the 2 or 3 posts that weren't retroactively rejected have a phone number in the text.

Stumbled upon this forum in search of hope / answers / guidance.

Kind of brutal to do that to a local business.


Edit: I'll also add that I copied / pasted the exact same text from a rejected post and used it for a post this morning and it was not rejected---which also included a phone number. Truly at a loss here.

 

[JoyHawkins]

@cocharleston - did you recently get access to the products feature in the GMB dashboard?

 

[cocharleston]

@cocharleston - did you recently get access to the products feature in the GMB dashboard?

To be 100% honest I'm not sure---I do have access to the products feature, but my business is service based and I've never paid any attention to the products feature(s) at all. My interaction with GMB is adding pictures, posting, covid-19 updates, and recently migrating primary ownership over to a new gmail address (but that was a couple months ago).

On the left panel, though, I do have "products."

 

[JoyHawkins]

I'm seeing an increase in the number of people that are complaining about rejected posts lately so I'll let you know when I hear back from Google on it.

 

[cocharleston]

Just a minor update. My post from the other day remains up using the same verbiage I've been using since covid started. I also rotate the same images along with the posts and used one of the images from my normal rotation. Still no rejection on that post.

Still no reply from GMB.

Out of 99 total posts, only 4 were not retroactively rejected.

So far I've ruled out:

body/contents of the post (this includes having a phone number in the post)
image of the post
website link "Learn More" link

 

[Michael Ferrari]

Just to chime in--I've been noticing this too. It's weird, because one of my clients has 5 GMB profiles but the Posts only seem to get rejected for the same single profile over and over. The same post is accepted in the other profiles--same image, details, everything.

This leads me to believe it's a bug, but it would be great for confirmation. Has anyone heard anything back on this since the most recent post last week?

 

[cocharleston]

I got the same canned response I always get, followed up by a survey on how well they did addressing my problem.

I've noticed that no matter how clearly I express my problem, and the solutions I've tried (I've gone as far as to number my issues / attempted resolutions) I just about always get the same answer followed by a satisfaction survey.

Here's the response:

I understand the effects of the inconvenience caused and I appreciate your patience and co-operation in this matter. Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention.

As per your issue regarding post getting rejected on Google searches, we would like to let you know that based upon the checks we can see that there might be some content violation on the posts which would let your post get reject and also if the posts have repeated content on it then there is a possibility that the post might get rejected.

Also would like to let you know that please try not to use any kind of special characters, Phone number and emojis in you posts. Try adding the address, Phone number in other sections of your dashboard.

I would recommend you to go through the below mentioned link for more Insights:

Prohibited and Restricted Content - Maps User Contributed Content Policy Help

I hope this explains things and the information helps. Should you have any further questions around this, please let me know by replying to this email and I'll be happy to help.

If you have further questions related to this issue, simply reply to this email and we'll be happy to help! For additional support on a different issue, you can always reach us via our Help Center [g.co/gmbhelp].

You may receive an email survey regarding your interaction with GMB Support. We value your feedback.
Have a great day!

Regards,
Suleman

I replied to that pointing out that out of the 90+ they rejected, the ones they didn't reject use the exact same words and images as the ones that were mass rejected. They replied with this:

Thank you for reaching out to Google My Business Support.


As we see that you are facing an issue with publishing your posts on Google. We would like to provide you with the support link of posts content policy for a better understanding of how to display posts on Google.

We would suggest you to refer to the link and also try deleting the posts and trying them again.


If you have further questions related to this issue, simply reply to this email and we'll be happy to help! For additional support on a different issue, you can always reach us via our Help Center [g.co/gmbhelp].

Your cooperation and understanding is highly appreciated.

Super helpful.

 

[Michael Ferrari]

Ugh...that's incredibly frustrating that they keep giving you those canned responses. Either way, thanks for the update. Hopefully this will get resolved soon...

 

[Mindquest]

Any updates on this? Just went into a clients GMB listing and see all of their GMB posts were rejected, even past post.

Is this something I still need to contact GMB support about?

 

[JoyHawkins]

The only thing I've been able to conclude is that when GMB products (the feature) gets added to a listing, it causes a bunch of posts to get rejected.

For other cases where that doesn't apply, I haven't heard anything concrete on why it's happening.

 

[Mindquest]

The only thing I've been able to conclude is that when GMB products (the feature) gets added to a listing, it causes a bunch of posts to get rejected.

For other cases where that doesn't apply, I haven't heard anything concrete on why it's happening.

That is exactly wha happened here, GMB product feature as added.

@JoyHawkins is this a wait till GMB fixes this case or do I need to contact GMB for help to fix it?

 

[JoyHawkins]

I would simply repost the most recent one. I wouldn't worry about the old ones - they weren't live anyway.