GBP disappeared (suspended?) or was it deleted or removed?

[Marc Charette]

I've landed on a confusing case recently with a client who tells me that their Google Business Profile literally had gone missing. Now we all know how often clients make silly mistakes and maybe they were suspended but I don't see signs of that. They're interior staging company, very well established, over 20 years in business. They had a GBP with about 50 reviews on it. The owner, about 6 months ago noticed they could not find their profile. So she created a new one (first ooops).

Then since it was new, had forgotten how to sign in, and made a duplicate, but using a different email. Both were verified. But that obviously didn't magically make the old reviews come back. Forward to 4 weeks ago, when I was referred to her and tried to figure out this mess. I was able to see a number of emails from Google for the new reviews coming in, some going back 6 years so I had those as a reference. When clicking through the link to respond to those reviews, it ended up on a 404 Error page. That tells me that the profile is either deleted, removed or simply inaccessible ( I have manager access and I tried access from the client's computer as owner with the same result).

When contacting Google to create a case, their response is that the profile is up and everything's fine. Like... really? I had supplied them with a detailed worksheet of the missing reviews, the current profile and its duplicate and the suspected ID to the old profile too as extracted from the links in the old review emails from Google.

I'm now a bit stumped on how to proceed. Is this just a lost cause? Or have I just got to try submitting this a few more times until a Google rep actually does a bit more research and doesn't give me a canned answer that essentially everything's fine?

Thanks in advance for any ideas that might help.

 

[keyserholiday]

I removed the duplicate with no reviews. What you need to do is contact support and ask if they can find the old reviews and transfer them to the new GBP. If that doesn't work, post on the help forum.

 

[Marc Charette]

I removed the duplicate with no reviews. What you need to do is contact support and ask if they can find the old reviews and transfer them to the new GBP. If that doesn't work, post on the help forum.

Thanks Jason! That's what I had done. Here's what they replied:
---------
Hello,

Thanks for reaching out to us.

After working on your query, we found out that the reviews are live on business profile. Learn more about our policies.

To protect business owners and customers, we have systems in place that remove reviews which include any of the following:

Inappropriate content

Advertising

Spam

Off–topic reviews

Conflicts of interest

Our policies help protect the integrity of reviews for you and your customers.

This email address can't accept replies as the request is complete. We apologize for any inconvenience.

For general info about your Business Profile, we recommend our Help Center, Help Community, and YouTube channel.



Regards,

The Google Support team
----------------
..... And then I thought, maybe I just got someone who didn't bother reading the attachment I'd sent.

So I opened a new case, and ther reply was this ....

--------------

Thanks for contacting Google Business Profile support!

I understand that one or more reviews are missing from your Business Profile. From the info you gave us, we believe that the issue is one of the following:

• Review shows on Search but not Maps, or vice versa
  Sometimes, a review takes longer to show on Google Search than on Google Maps, or the other way around. Wait a few days and see if this fixes the issue. If not, you’ll know the issue is something else and you should contact us again for help.
  
• Reviews after reinstatement
  If your reviews went missing after we reinstated your disabled or suspended profile, reply to this email. We'll investigate for you.
  
• The review had prohibited or restricted content
  • To protect you and your customers, and to provide a fair environment for both business owners and users, we remove reviews that violate our policies, such as reviews that contain inappropriate content, advertising, are abusive, off-topic, or have a conflict of interest. Learn about our review policies and our Maps user generated content policy .
  • We also reserve the right to temporarily disable user created content for business profiles and business categories to prevent abuse.

Learn more about missing reviews.

For general info about your Business Profile, we recommend our Help Center, Help Community, and YouTube channel. If you need more help than these resources give, reply to this email. We'll be glad to assist.

Thanks,

The Google Business Profile support team

___________________________


Neither answer from Google is really addressing the issue directly. I don't think they even bothered to look at the case.

Again , Thanks Jason!! Really appreciate your help with this.
Marc C.