Changes made in our Client's GMB listing - help

[morganbloom]

Hello all! Hoping I could get some advice... I went into one of our client's GMB and there were some weird changes that were not made by us or the client. The tracking phone number was removed, a new number we don't recognize was put in there, the URL with the UTM parameter was removed and the name of the client was altered. We didn't get notified and did not make the changes, any idea how this can happen and how to get notified of any changes like this?

 

[Phil Rozek]

@morganbloom, based on what you describe, those sound like auto-updates Google made because of the business info (or lack thereof) on the website, particularly on the landing page URL. You'll want the preferred name and number on the landing page and probably throughout the site.

The UTM parameter getting stripped out is odd, though. I suspect Google won't continue to tinker with that if you've removed its inclination to tinker with the other info.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Most of the time when we've had automatic updates made to listings, it's coming from a 3rd party source like Yext or SEMRush that has access to the GMB account.

 

[morganbloom]

Thank you @Phil Rozek & @JoyHawkins . This is the information I needed to think about. It was very scary to see those changes with no notification and we have pretty much become confident the client did not make them. We are using Bright Local for building citations and use their 3rd party aggregators for additional citations. Do you recommend talking to them about this? Not sure where to go from here as we didn't get notified and do not want ANY 3rd party to make changes. We didn't even know that 3rd parties "could" make changes to a GMB.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Morgan,

They would only have access if you granted it from the GMB section inside BrightLocal. You can see what apps currently have access to change your account here: Sign in - Google Accounts. Look for things listed under the third-party apps section that say they have access to manage business listings.

 

[morganbloom]

@JoyHawkins thank you so much for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate all your help!