eggheadvcr
Member
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2024
- Messages
- 2
- Reaction score
- 1
Hi folks. I've had a SAB business GBP since 2014 using my residential address. Let's call this address "A" In 2019 I moved to another city, and thinking that my service-area was was mattered at the end of the day for ranking, I directly updated my GBP to the new address 'B' and was verified shortly after via post card. As it turns out, for the past 5 years, despite the so-called SAB bug, I've been ranking at address 'B' just fine, and not at all ranking anywhere near address 'A' Which would be great, except for the fact that we don't even service the city I've moved into, nor is our content or SEO efforts in any way optimised for address 'B'
The past 5 years has seen a slow but dramatic change for the worse for my business but I mainly attributed that to the state of the economy, and increased competition in my market. But only after doing an audit of where we've lost customers that I realised that 90%+ of the loss is attributable to customers not finding us on maps. To be honest, this whole "checking my local rankings" with local grid tools like the ones we use now with Brightlocal never crossed my mind. I didn't even know such tools existed, I just figured, naively, that it's Google, and I'm sure their system is sound. That's on me, no excuses here.
I've since read very thoroughly on the SAB address change bug, local ranking factors in general, and have followed @JoyHawkins' posts/videos, and content for any updates. In short: I wish I knew that service-area had nothing to do with ranking, and that address is the only factor, even when hidden. Had I known, I would have kept the company registered at address 'A' as that's where we want to rank.
Anyhow, because I apparently love chaos, last month we moved back into the home we originally left in address 'A', changed business registration, and citations to reflect this change, and once again directly changed our address on GBP back to address "A" which was done without any fuss or re-verification requests from Google. I also toggled on to show physical address, again without any re-verification request, kept it that way for about half a day, then hid it again.
It's been about 10 days now and I can see we're still ranking in address "B" So the bug didn't occur when I wasn't even aware of it, but wish that it actually had in retrospect because it would have kept me ranking at address 'A', and now the bug has occurred since I've become aware of it, and wish that it actually hadn't. Good stuff, this.
My questions:
1. Should I wait a week or more and see if the change occurs? When I changed in 2019 the bug seem to have no effect, so maybe there is a chance? Pretty please maybe?
2. What is the likelihood that some or all of our reviews may be lost when we attempt to create a new GBP with the "move" instructions suggested by Joy?
3. Our current GBP is 10+ years old. Is there any ranking value that would be lost when we move to a new profile?
4. When I create the new GBP should I verify it before I contact support and ask for the move from the current profile?
Appreciate any words of wisdom. Thanks peeps.
The past 5 years has seen a slow but dramatic change for the worse for my business but I mainly attributed that to the state of the economy, and increased competition in my market. But only after doing an audit of where we've lost customers that I realised that 90%+ of the loss is attributable to customers not finding us on maps. To be honest, this whole "checking my local rankings" with local grid tools like the ones we use now with Brightlocal never crossed my mind. I didn't even know such tools existed, I just figured, naively, that it's Google, and I'm sure their system is sound. That's on me, no excuses here.
I've since read very thoroughly on the SAB address change bug, local ranking factors in general, and have followed @JoyHawkins' posts/videos, and content for any updates. In short: I wish I knew that service-area had nothing to do with ranking, and that address is the only factor, even when hidden. Had I known, I would have kept the company registered at address 'A' as that's where we want to rank.
Anyhow, because I apparently love chaos, last month we moved back into the home we originally left in address 'A', changed business registration, and citations to reflect this change, and once again directly changed our address on GBP back to address "A" which was done without any fuss or re-verification requests from Google. I also toggled on to show physical address, again without any re-verification request, kept it that way for about half a day, then hid it again.
It's been about 10 days now and I can see we're still ranking in address "B" So the bug didn't occur when I wasn't even aware of it, but wish that it actually had in retrospect because it would have kept me ranking at address 'A', and now the bug has occurred since I've become aware of it, and wish that it actually hadn't. Good stuff, this.
My questions:
1. Should I wait a week or more and see if the change occurs? When I changed in 2019 the bug seem to have no effect, so maybe there is a chance? Pretty please maybe?
2. What is the likelihood that some or all of our reviews may be lost when we attempt to create a new GBP with the "move" instructions suggested by Joy?
3. Our current GBP is 10+ years old. Is there any ranking value that would be lost when we move to a new profile?
4. When I create the new GBP should I verify it before I contact support and ask for the move from the current profile?
Appreciate any words of wisdom. Thanks peeps.
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