GMB Listing Not Showing For Direct Searches

[Jeffrey]

Hi everyone!!

A client of mine who does LASIK Surgery has 3 offices in Texas. Two offices are in the suburbs of Sugar Land and Pearland, and one is in Houston. Two weeks ago their Houston listing got marked as permanently closed on Google. We were able to login and reopen their listing shortly after, but now their Houston office will no longer come up when searching for even their exact business name and address. Before the listing got marked as closed it had been doing very well.

Primary Category: LASIK Surgeon
Status in GMB: Verified
# of users: 2 legitimate including myself

I'm not sure what is going on so I'm turning to you guys for help.

 

[Phil Rozek]

@Jeffrey, what do you see when you search for it in Maps, and what do you see in the GMB dashboard?

 

[Phil Rozek]

@Jeffrey, if it's showing up in Maps just fine, but not in the main search results, and the GMB page hasn't been pulled, then I'd wager the appropriate location will show up in search soon. Google just needs to get used to having the until-recently "permanently closed" pages around again.

If you haven't done so already, you'll want to check over what's in the GMB dashboard for that one location, to make sure nothing important (like the landing page URL) has been washed out.

 

[Jeffrey]

Thanks @Phil Rozek!

 

[lukeelliott]

This is more of an opinion, but Google may not trust the business as much if the listing was allowed to be listed as permanently closed. It may take some time, fresh reviews, for Google to verify the business is still operating in that location. You should encourage the practice to hang "leave us a review on Google, we'd really appreciate it!" posters on the walls inside their practice. Or there are other ways of encouraging people to leave reviews on Google that you can research yourself. I've always noticed some of the top-ranked results are those with the most reviews and good reviews too. Fresh reviews can make the practice much more favorable in the eyes of Google and they will reward you later. Also listings with updated photos of the location, but inside and outside the building, makes for a good Google Business Listing. Also the business categories. Google said themselves it's better to list the business in 1 or 2 primary categories than a bunch of them. It just depends on the immediate actions you take when the issue may be resolved. But it may take a bit of time, or could be relatively quick. You never really know with Google.

 

[Jeffrey]

Thanks @lukeelliott!

These are all super smart things to do. I'm happy to say that the business is showing back up for their direct searches! The only change that I made was switching their URL to point towards their location page instead of their homepage. This change along with just waiting it out helped

 

[lukeelliott]

Thanks @lukeelliott!

These are all super smart things to do. I'm happy to say that the business is showing back up for their direct searches! The only change that I made was switching their URL to point towards their location page instead of their homepage. This change along with just waiting it out helped

That's awesome! Glad you got it worked out.

Question: when you say "you switched the landing page to point twards their location page instead of the homepage" does the landing page list all 3 locations, or is it a unique landing page for that particular location?

 

[Jeffrey]

Hi @lukeelliott
Originally their GMB was linking to their homepage. I made the edit to link it to their particular location page. This page is unique to that particular location.