Attorney buys and renames bankruptcy practice; loses GMB listing after 2 years of reviews

[Rich Owings]

Here's a bit more detail... The old practice was a bankruptcy law firm (something like Law Offices of John Smith). A new attorney bought the practice and website (something like CityNameDebtLaw.com), renamed the firm to Law Offices of New Guy but kept the domain.

So far so good, but then he changed the name on the GMB listing around May of 2017 to City Name Debt Law. Since they took over the firm, they had gotten 20 new reviews, but the GMB listing was taken down in early August 2019. I'm assuming this was due to business name keyword stuffing.

I'm thinking I should just go to GMB social support, explain the situation and ask them to reinstate it under a proper name. But I wanted to check in here first and see if anyone thinks I'm missing something or should take a different approach.

 

[Tim Colling]

@Rich Owings I would think about calling GMB support for this one, since it will take a fair bit of explanation.

 

[Amanda Putney]

@Tim Colling Would it be worth fixing the listing before contacting GMB to show the issue has been identified and resolved?

 

[BipperMedia]

@Rich Owings -- 100% agree with @Tim Colling -- simply call GMB support and they can either resolve it or tell you the steps to take to resolve it.

 

[Rich Owings]

I've had poor experiences calling them, usually getting someone off-shore with limited expertise. Which is why I usually turn to social. @Tim Colling what's your experience been?

 

[BipperMedia]

I've had poor experiences calling them, usually getting someone off-shore with limited expertise. Which is why I usually turn to social. @Tim Colling what's your experience been?

I definitely understand your experience calling them... we have the same frustrating experiences on occasion.

However, this doesn't negate the recommendation -- even though it may be frustrating to call them, in our experience we always get the issues resolved that we are calling them for.

 

[Tim Colling]

I prefer calling partly because sometimes the social support can be very, very slow.

More importantly, I prefer talking with people to typing messages back and forth with them, when I am looking for help. I know that sometimes it may be hard to understand them due to accent problems and connection issues, but I have had some pretty good luck with calling, recently.

In my limited experience with Google social support channels, I never got the impression that those personnel were any more knowledgeable than the ones on phone support.

Heck, I'm an old dude anyway. I prefer talking over texting/messaging.

 

[keyserholiday]

Hey @Rich Owings I sent you a DM.

 

[Rich Owings]

I prefer calling partly because sometimes the social support can be very, very slow.

You must be able to understand them better than me!

 

[Tim Colling]

You must be able to understand them better than me!

Are you referring to their accents?

 

[Rich Owings]

Exactly. Makes me feel so mono-cultural!