GBP suddenly ranking in a different state

[Brian - TGL]

This one has me at a loss, I'm guessing @JS Girard or @Colan Nielsen will probably have some suggestions that haven't occurred to me.

I have a customer with a SAB who initially verified his address in New Windsor, NY and subsequently moved about an hour south. We are in the process of setting up a new profile with a DBA which includes their primary KW with a new local number (I combined ideas from @JoyHawkins article about updating SAB locations and the recent YT series by @whitespark for his wedding makeup customer). After the new profile gets verified, we will go through the process of having the business migrated from the previous GBP to the new GBP (and hopefully the reviews from the previous one, although there aren't a massive amount so it's not the end of the world if that ends up not being the case, I will post my results in the forum).

The strange part is this customer had a previous business in another state 750 miles away and last week he started getting calls from the area where the previous business was sold and stopped getting local calls.

We did some research and he is ranking in the map pack for several main KWs just by searching "kw + city".

There is no connection between his new GBP and the previous business that I can find. We double-checked phone numbers, email addresses, content on the websites, verified that the Google account he uses to manage the new business was not still attached to the old GBP (he gave full access and all assets to the new owner).

I attached a geogrid for NY (the correct location) and IN (the location that has never been associated with this GBP).

You can see he dropped off the map entirely in NY and is crushing it in IN.

 

[whitespark]

I have a theory.

Was the address showing on the profile, and then when you removed the address they shifted to Indiana?

If so, my theory is based around this sentence “this customer had a previous business in another state 750 miles away”

I suspect that the previous business had a GBP, and when he created the new business, he kept the same GBP and just updated it with the new business info.

So, that GBP was verified in Indiana, then moved to the new location.

Then when the address was hidden, Google doesn’t have an address to base ranking on anymore so the rankings shift to the only location they have associated with the listing: the address used to verify.

I show how this works in this video:
Can You Hide Your GBP/GMB Address WITHOUT Losing Rankings? | Service Area Business Case Study


But I’m just guessing. If the address was always hidden, my theory doesn’t hold up.

My backup theory would be around the defined service areas. I’ve been hearing hints that they may have an impact now.

 

[Brian - TGL]

I have a theory. Was the address showing on the profile, and then when you removed the address they shifted to Indiana?

Nope, he gave the previous GBP to the new owner which also ranks in the same area.

The current company was a brand new GBP that he set up from scratch and verified in New Windsor, NY.

Also, we haven't modified anything to do with the address, it has been set as a SAB since I have been working with him the past 2 months. As soon as he mentioned to me that there was a previous location he was doing business I started asking those same questions to see if this GBP was ever associated with that previous location and from the information he has given me, it doesn't seem like it ever was.

The more Whitespark content I watch, the more I think I may have to give the local rank-tracking tool a try.

 

[whitespark]

My content is working!

Ok, then my other theories are:

1. Maybe someone dragged map pin? Check it.
2. Weird service areas? Check then.
3. Some super weird merging thing that Google did with the "back end address" on the profile. A bug. Only Google support could fix, but getting support to even understand what you're talking about and help you feels like an impossible dream.

 

[Brian - TGL]

@whitespark your content is working, good to see a fellow Canadian doing it right (I spend part of every year in the Red Deer area).

No pin as it's a SAB
Service areas attached (nothing outside of about a 30-mile radius)

Worst case scenario, we can move ahead with the new GBP and NOT move the previous business. We have everything in a brand new silo (new Google Accounts to set up the brand new GBP). This would definitely suck for someone that was relying solely on the GBP for new leads!

 

[whitespark]

I'm out of theories and look forward to hearing from @JS Girard and @Colan Nielsen. I'd be curious to hear what @Yan Gilbert thinks too.

 

[Brian - TGL]

Sometime last night, a re-verification was triggered on this location.

Something I just noticed on the public view . . . all the products are visible, all of the posts are visible, but none of the photos are visible in the gallery (including the photos that are attached to reviews), no cover photo either.

 

[Brian - TGL]

@whitespark Darren, did you ever see the results of triggering a re-verification on one of your SAB clients to see if the rankings stuck to the newly verified address after hiding the address again?

 

[JS Girard]

Wow, thank you for the callout, Darren! Sadly, I admit I'm about as stumped as you are. Some mysterious unreported merger seems the most likely cause, but how would one even verify that??

Could this be somehow related to the Kansas bug?

Honestly, at this point, my default recommandation for any SAB weirdness is "find a way to show the address"

 

[whitespark]

I did see the results. Re-verification has no impact on resetting the verified address for ranking purposes. Google is broken. The only way to solve this is @JoyHawkins's method described here:

3 Steps to Move Your Service Area Business Google Business Profile Without Destroying Your Ranking

Many business owners aren’t sure what to do when they operate out of their house and then have to move. In many cases, these moves aren’t close by and the business owner is trying to figure out if they have to start from scratch.

www.sterlingsky.ca

 

[Brian - TGL]

I did see the results. Re-verification has no impact on resetting the verified address for ranking purposes. Google is broken. The only way to solve this is @JoyHawkins's method described here:

3 Steps to Move Your Service Area Business Google Business Profile Without Destroying Your Ranking

Many business owners aren’t sure what to do when they operate out of their house and then have to move. In many cases, these moves aren’t close by and the business owner is trying to figure out if they have to start from scratch.

www.sterlingsky.ca

That's what we are in the process of doing right now . . . never a dull moment in the world of Google.

 

[JS Girard]

Good luck. We haven't attempted this at our agency because we absolutely do not have the confidence that we could sweet-talk google into transferring reviews between profiles...

 

[Brian - TGL]

Good luck. We haven't attempted this at our agency because we absolutely do not have the confidence that we could sweet-talk google into transferring reviews between profiles...

Well, in this case, there are only about 20 reviews over the last few years so not the end of the world if they don't get transferred. I think the effort would be much better spent on setting up review management as this company has 5 to 15 new customers weekly with an entry-level $400 spend for each new customer.

Owner-operated businesses seem to often feel like asking for a review is pandering.

I tell them to be excited to get reviews and let their customers know a genuine review helps learn anything that can be improved and helps put the business in front of more great customers like them.

 

[Brian - TGL]

It blows my mind how well this GBP is incorrectly ranking . . . I just ran this 13 by 13 grid with 10 MILES between points . . . I have to reconsider all the information I have seen for the limitations on how far you can rank a GBP on the map (especially considering this is a SAB) . . . 16,900 square miles.