GBP phone number disappeared 4 days ago with no notice! How do I find out how this happened?

[mattstephenskc]

Hi. This afternoon, I noticed that one of our office GBPs was inexplicably missing its phone numbers! Both our "regular" and CallRail tracking number were GONE. I checked the number's call history in CallRail, and the last call we got at the number was Monday afternoon! We normally get 5-10 calls per weekday on this number.

This is obviously very bad. I'm flabbergasted that we got no notice of the numbers being removed. Surely some tool we have running would have caught and reported this to us in a timely manner. Is there any way for us to find out how the numbers disappeared? Someone (or a Google bot?) removed it -- a competitor, a vendor who didn't know what they were doing, a disgruntled caller, an opposing party or counsel. We need to know who.

How do we find out who did this, and how they did it?

How do we prevent it from happening again?

Are there any tools that we can set up to notify us the moment our number is deleted or reported to Google for some violation?

Please help!

 

[Tim Colling]

It is unlikely that you will be able to find out why this happened, or who caused it to happen.
Have you been able to edit the GBP and add the number(s) back successfully now?

As far as monitoring for this in the future, the only tool I know of that will do this is Local Viking, but I am probably just not familiar with other ones that could also do it.

 

[mattstephenskc]

It is unlikely that you will be able to find out why this happened, or who caused it to happen.
Have you been able to edit the GBP and add the number(s) back successfully now?

As far as monitoring for this in the future, the only tool I know of that will do this is Local Viking, but I am probably just not familiar with other ones that could also do it.

That's awful. Competitors can just sabotage each other? How does this kind of thing happen?

I re-added our numbers, and Google rejected them, offering no explanation. What gives?

 

[Tim Colling]

I wish I had answers for you about this, but I don't. Google acts in a manner that is arbitrary and high-handed a lot of the time now. One suggestion: you mentioned Callrail - have you asked them for help?

 

[mattstephenskc]

I wish I had answers for you about this, but I don't. Google acts in a manner that is arbitrary and high-handed a lot of the time now. One suggestion: you mentioned Callrail - have you asked them for help?

I haven't. Figured I should exhaust my Google research first. I'll hit CallRail up and see if they've had customers with this issue before.

I may be onto something, though. We did some listing optimization work on Monday (the last day our phone number was up) and added a (heretofore trustworthy) third-party admin. Most of the work was in FB. We swapped out a few social links on our GBP, removed a service sub-type on one, and reordered service sub-types on another.

We verified all our GBPs a couple of years ago, when the stricter verification protocol was rolled out. So this was unexpected and hard to understand.

 

[mattstephenskc]

All: @Tim Colling mentioned Local Viking had a feature that would notify GBP owners/managers of updates they did not initiate, particularly changes like the business's phone number being removed. Does anyone know of other tools that have this feature or any means of setting up such an alert? This is a high priority for us, but we'd like to find a no-or-low-cost solution, preferably that's already part of our current tech stack (LocalFalcon, Ahrefs, SEMRush, GA4, GSC, umm... GBP itself?). Suggestions, friends?

 

[JS Girard]

Before @whitespark comes in, they launched their tool for this recently.

Generally I'm surprised though because last time I tried, you could not simply remove the phone number as an admin. Google wouldn't let you you save the change.

 

[whitespark]

Thanks for the mention, @JS Girard. Yes, this is exactly the kind of thing our $1/month GBP monitoring/alerting software is designed to help with.

Get Alerts & Reject Updates on Your Google Business Profile | GBP Management | Google Updates | Google Business Management | Manage GMB | Whitespark

Incorrect information on your Google Business Profile negatively impacts your business. Get notified of all unwanted changes as they happen. Correct them with a single click.

whitespark.ca

 

[mattstephenskc]

Before @whitespark comes in, they launched their tool for this recently.

Generally I'm surprised though because last time I tried, you could not simply remove the phone number as an admin. Google wouldn't let you you save the change.

Thank you. If that's still true, then Google must have removed the numbers themselves -- due either to a fluke or suspicion of nefarious activity. No one with access to our account would remove our number.

Another thought: could pushing updates through to GBP from a third-party listing management tool (Birdeye) trigger a red flag or penalty from Google? I may have done this once recently before learning that this was a risky practice. I definitely didn't touch the phone numbers, though.

 

[mattstephenskc]

Thanks for the mention, @JS Girard. Yes, this is exactly the kind of thing our $1/month GBP monitoring/alerting software is designed to help with.

Get Alerts & Reject Updates on Your Google Business Profile | GBP Management | Google Updates | Google Business Management | Manage GMB | Whitespark

Incorrect information on your Google Business Profile negatively impacts your business. Get notified of all unwanted changes as they happen. Correct them with a single click.

whitespark.ca

$1! That's awesome. If I confirm that this isn't available within our current tech stack, I'm sure we'll be subscribing soon. Thanks for the tip!

 

[whitespark]

$1! That's awesome. If I confirm that this isn't available within our current tech stack, I'm sure we'll be subscribing soon. Thanks for the tip!

There are many services that claim they do this, but many users have reported to us that while Yext, Birdeye, or whatever say they have this feature, they never get any alerts while our system doesn't miss a thing.

 

[dale-jepto]

We have that feature in Jepto too Google Business Profile Change History — Jepto Help Center