Can shared phone number lead to listing suspension?

[NevenaIvanova]

Hello,

I have recently experienced several penalized GMB listings in the hospitality industry. What happens is Business A is being marked as duplicate of Business B and Business A is instantly being removed from Google Maps and all its data is being transferred to the other page.

All these cases have something in common and this is the lack of individual phone number. There are times when hotels part of one brand are in close proximity to each other and hotel management decided to install just one line.

There are other scenarios when a restaurant in a hotel is using the same phone number in both reality and GMB dashboard and I worry that it may result in listing's suspension as well.

I don't see this explicitly noted in GMB guidelines, so I am kindly asking you to share your opinion/knowledge on the above.

Thank you,
Nevena

 

[JoyHawkins]

Are they also sharing the same address or website?

 

[NevenaIvanova]

Hi Joy,

For hotels, they are usually sharing one address (sometimes the street number differs) and websites URLs are always unique.

For restaurants in hotel, they can share same phone, address and website.

Kind Regards,
Nevena

 

[JoyHawkins]

I would definitely suggest that you use a different phone number in that case. The categories also shouldn't overlap at all.

 

[stevedavey]

I have a similar issue where my clients main listing has been labeled duplicate in the gmb dashboard because of a second listing with a suite at our address. It's been 3 weeks and other than send an email I can't get any help with google, not even from my ad rep. Any advice on how to get out of duplicate status and back live again?

 

[JoyHawkins]

@stevedavey

If you want to post over at the GMB forum, I can escalate the thread and ask Google to fix it. Please make sure you post the details (name, address, link to listing) for the business in question. DM me the thread once you've posted it.

 

[NevenaIvanova]

I would definitely suggest that you use a different phone number in that case. The categories also shouldn't overlap at all.

Thank you for the advice, Joy.

For restaurants located in a hotel, do you think we should aim to have a separate line considering the fact that they always have different category, entrance, etc?

 

[JoyHawkins]

Yes, I would always aim to have a separate phone number.

 

[NevenaIvanova]

I would love to share with you insights on the phone line that I just received from one of my clients:

"we run the properties as cluster and the line is programmed for the 3 hotels - when you call the auto message will say press 1 for Hotel A, 2 for Hotel B and 3 for Hotel C"

In reality, many businesses share one line and this shouldn't cause their penalization, especially when they have different business names, as in this case.

Do you think that this can be forwarded to Google so they can re-evaluate their suspension policy, as currently, this does not serve in the best interest of business owners?

 

[JoyHawkins]

It's not a violation to share a phone number, it's just a bad idea. Google's systems are automated so by using the same phone number you are more likely to trigger a suspension or duplicate status. You should still be able to get the listing reinstated manually if you fill in the reinstatement request.

 

[NevenaIvanova]

Thank you, Joy.

That means that sharing one phone number is acceptable and this is a contradiction with the current algorithm that can easily ban a legit business listing.

Can you please forward this feedback to the specialist team, as I believe that you would agree this isn't serving well for business owners. I should note that all my recent suspended pages have been in perfect compliance with the GMB guidelines for years and it's very disappointing to lose all the page content (including reviews) due to a glitch with the algorithm.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Google isn't going to change this. Although the automatic system does fail some legit businesses (like yourselves), it keeps duplicate listings from being created and makes it harder for people to create listings that do violate the guidelines. That's why I suggested having different phone numbers. You're technically not doing anything wrong but by sharing a phone number you are basically going to have more headaches due to how the system is designed.

You can request reinstatement (if you haven't already done so) here: Google My Business local business reinstatement request - Google My Business Help