Business Listings Deleted by Google - Do Not Support Location Update

[rick s]

i received the google postcard,my address is 951 caroline st. google support thanked us for clarifying and reinstated our listing.it was live for 1 day

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Rick,

I'm confused, help me understand. In 2 different comments you made it sound like your listing was only live for a day.

It's still live and it's even verified and merged with Google+. This is your listing, right?
Florida Keys Boat Rentals - About - Google+

 

[Simon James]

i received the google postcard,my address is 951 caroline st. google support thanked us for clarifying and reinstated our listing.it was live for 1 day

I found you on Places for the phrase "Boat Rental Service key west". You were down on page 11.
Position 108 out of 514 listings... Phew, that is one crowded market you are in!
I think AdWords is going to be a better bet for you in the short to medium term; and in the meantime start doing some content marketing to boost your website (and consequently your Places) rankings.

 

[rick s]

i believe that is a dupe,our listing we manage had over 20 reviews and ranked highly.google has told us we dont need to do anything.the original listing went live again on nov 7 and the next day it was gone

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I wonder if split listings are emerging once again, and if that might be the case here?

I have a client who split last week. All reviews and some photos on one listing. Proper title and business description on the other.

 

[Linda Buquet]

i believe that is a dupe,our listing we manage had over 20 reviews and ranked highly.google has told us we dont need to do anything.the original listing went live again on nov 7 and the next day it was gone

I believe that's your new listing. It's not ranking because it's brand new and not fully populated yet.
(It's missing the "similar places" section at bottom of page.) That tells me it's a brand new listing and has not worked back in the local database yet. So it will probably take about 6 weeks before it ranks again.

Florida Keys Boat Rentals - About - Google+

Reviews are being lost and deleted left and right for MANY reasons. Plus reviews are tied in part to CID so if this is a brand new listing, it's a different CID. Reviews could have been lost and it could be temporary and they could find their way back as long as the name, address, phone didn't change on the new listing.

QUESTION: When did you merge the Place page with Google+ Business page?

Also the intro is: "Spend the day on the Key West waters on our rental boats"

Is that description in your Places dashboard or your G+ listing? Take out Key West and just put beautiful ocean or something. City in description can give a ranking penalty sometimes. But again that's not the problem now. The problem is brand new listing.

Last point, were you aware, once you merge you should not make changes in the Places dashboard any more? Make edits in Google+.

 

[Linda Buquet]

YAY Jason's listing is back up!

Jade let us know Monday that most (not all) of the listings that were mistakenly removed had been restored last week. I just checked Jason's and discovered it's back up. Thank God for small favors and it's about time!

Rossi Rovetti Flowers - About - Google+

I'm surprised after all the energy we put into trying to get exposure for his problem here to help try to force a solution and with all the folks that tried to help him in the Google forum, that he didn't let us know his listing issue was resolved. I'm thinking he possibly doesn't know yet??? But I would think with all the back and forth most folks were doing with Google support, they would have let them know the listing was back.

I'll email him and see if he's aware and see if we can get an update on recent communications from Google.

Looks like the listing is not ranking yet. I'm curious to hear from Jason if that's a new listing (new CID) or if they resurrected the old one. If it's a brand new listing then I assume it will have to start over in the 6 - 8 week cycle before it starts ranking again. It's displaying as a brand new listing and there are no reviews, so I assume it's a new one.

But also it looks like Google search is broken for his keyword right now too. It's only showing one page of Place search and maps search for San Francisco Florist, so looks like pagination is borked again.

Anyone else have any "do not support" listings show up in the past week?
If you've been waiting for resurrection, try a map search to see if they are back!

 

[Colan Nielsen]

That's great news!

Linda, is this specifically for non SAB's?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Well, I don't have specifics to share and comments were fairly general, but the feeling I get is that this particular recent restoration of listings was mainly SABs that were WRONGLY removed. For instance Jason does deliveries. so is a SAB, but also has a B&M retail location and should not have been removed. Also I assume some of the listings that DID properly have their address hidden, but were removed by mistake anyway were revives. And I think but am not sure, even some of the listings that WERE in violation, but were in that black hole and could not be restored were revived.

HOWEVER I'm not positive and don't have the big picture on this, so part of my comments are based on assumptions and positive thinking.

Would love to see a rash of people reporting, YAY my listing is back too!
(Rose colored glasses on today!)

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Would love to see a rash of people reporting, YAY my listing is back too!
(Rose colored glasses on today!)

So would I!!

I just checked on a SAB with hidden address that has been lights out since this all started. Still no live listing

 

[Linda Buquet]

Oh darn! Sorry to hear Colan.

I have not had time to check on any of the others I've tried to help over the past few months.
Hopefully some have been revived. Hopefully yours will come back soon too!

 

[jasonCbraatz]

YAY Jason's listing is back up!

..

I'm surprised after all the energy we put into trying to get exposure for his problem here to help try to force a solution and with all the folks that tried to help him in the Google forum, that he didn't let us know his listing issue was resolved. I'm thinking he possibly doesn't know yet??? But I would think with all the back and forth most folks were doing with Google support, they would have let them know the listing was back.

I'm definitely VERY APPRECIATIVE - Linda, your ability to shed light on this problem definitely showed - you are amazing, and without you and a lot of others, there's no doubt in my mind that this wouldn't have been much of an internal priority for them.

I admit though I didn't know about it until you sent me an email ; I have been watching our listing from a distance (mapmaker & just checking the top 100 rankings) and hadn't seen it.. so that's why it didn't really flag to me that this was even remotely up. (I probably should have been watching the Google Forum, but I admit that to me Jade acknowledged the problem but simply moved onto other issues, so I quit reading it awhile ago).

To your assessment, this is a new listing - not the old one. When Google first advised to everyone with this problem through their suppoort that those with blackholed listings should 'delete' them and 'recreate' them, then they recanted and said not to.. well.. I wish I could go back in time on this one as it's not a happy thing now that we're starting from scratch. That being said, at least we're starting somewhere.

A couple of questions for y'all:

1. It looks to me like Google Places is definitely/definitely/definitely merging with Google+ -- almost to the point that I feel to some extent that the whole concept of Google places may just merge into a big G+ thing. Anyone get this sense? Reason why I ask is this: how much time does one take to continually enhance the G+ page.. or is it more valuable to go after the tactics of rebuilding the review base, etc? Linda I'd love to hear your opinion on this.

2. Are there optimization techniques available once we're 'ranked.' Did Penguin affect on the local algo level, and does it make sense to hire an expert (Catalyst) at some point to help on such a resurrection?

Thanks again Linda & crew!!!

Jason
Rossi & Rovetti Flowers
- San Francisco Florist - Flowers San Francisco, Rossi & Rovetti Flowers-Fastest Same Day Delivery!

 

[rick s]

as of yesterday my listing appeared also

 

[Linda Buquet]

YAY again Jason, so glad your listing is back up and on the road to recovery!

Re #1 I wanted to ask you.... DID YOU set up and merge the Google+ Business page? Because it's a combo/merged page now. Was it like that before or is that how Google set it up for you???

#2 I didn't do any analysis of your site, BUT when I searched San Francisco Florist, you rank #2 organic which is pretty good. AND you rank above the local blended listings which may even get you better click through because you have the big keyword rich paragraph instead of the little stripped down local listing.

Possibly your site could be improved but: A) I think the main issue is G+L related. B) Yes Panda/Penquin affect local listings too, but you didn't get dinged or you would not be ranking #2 organic. C) Catalyst no longer does optimization for businesses. Only training for SEOs and agencies. But I do still do consulting to help businesses that need troubleshooting or ranking tips. I just no longer do the hands on. But if you need actual hand's on help, I could refer you to one of my consultants.

SO SUPPORT NEVER EMAILED YOU TO LET YOU KNOW? I wonder when the listing came back???

 

[rick s]

just got the phone call from google again today.i hope my listing doesnt disappear again

 

[Linda Buquet]

YAY! Rick is back too! Fingers crossed it stays that way Rick!

 

[jasonCbraatz]

Re #1 I wanted to ask you.... DID YOU set up and merge the Google+ Business page? Because it's a combo/merged page now. Was it like that before or is that how Google set it up for you???

This is how Google set it up when I recreated the listing (as per Google's instructions to do so). Which makes me wonder if the original 'Places' is going somewhere and it'll all merge to G+. There was no place to specify a merge.. I did have an old G+ page up (when I played around with it some time ago) and they used that page in place of our Google local listings page. Interesting?

#2 I didn't do any analysis of your site, BUT when I searched San Francisco Florist, you rank #2 organic which is pretty good. AND you rank above the local blended listings which may even get you better click through because you have the big keyword rich paragraph instead of the little stripped down local listing.

Actually on the short and long tails we're better today than we've been, though we used to outperform the norm by quite a bit on the organic side (everything from 'florist 94104' to 'florist sf', etc). Locally in SF when someone does an organic search just for 'florist,' we're organically off there too. Which is what makes me believe it to be a Penguin/Panda thing.

Possibly your site could be improved but: A) I think the main issue is G+L related. B) Yes Panda/Penquin affect local listings too, but you didn't get dinged or you would not be ranking #2 organic. C) Catalyst no longer does optimization for businesses. Only training for SEOs and agencies. But I do still do consulting to help businesses that need troubleshooting or ranking tips. I just no longer do the hands on. But if you need actual hand's on help I could refer you to one of my consultants.

..cool. I have actually always done our own SEO, so I may investigate learning from you anyway -- the best here ;-) -- but I asked in the context of figuring out a roadmap for us. Any recommendations would be terrific too.

SO SUPPORT NEVER EMAILED YOU TO LET YOU KNOW? I wonder when the listing came back???

Nope! The last I heard from them was just a short email saying that there'd be a "path" to get something back online within a week, but that never transpired. I later tried to follow up with them.. but nada. No response.

Thanks again Linda!!
Jason

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks for all the replies to my Qs Jason.

Not sure I'm clear on what happened with the G+ page but it's merged/verified now.

Sure, let me know if you want consulting help but let's wait and see how you rank after your local listing works back into the local index.

Weird after ALL that heartache and all the pleas for help and all the time support already invested in communications, you'd think that they would not do a follow up to let you know it was finally fixed. Just weird and really bad customer support.

You'd think, after all the negative PR they've gotten over this fiasco, they'd want to have a bunch of business owners saying "YAY, Google support just got back with me to let me know my listing is fixed."

 

[Andrew Sawyer]

I hate to think of all the SAB features I deleted during this timeframe via Map Maker. Luckily most of them were true spam. RERs were always told that SABs will never show up in GMM if the address is hidden. Seems like that horse ran out of the stable...

 

[Colan Nielsen]

RERs were always told that SABs will never show up in GMM if the address is hidden. Seems like that horse ran out of the stable...

I've seen a couple SAB's with a hidden address in the places dash and their address displays on MM

Any thoughts on that Andrew?

Why would that happen?