GMB listing suspended - anything I can do?

[jlwilson]

Hi,

I just woke up to my GMB listing being suspended. We are a real, brick and mortar business (my husband and I own it), we have around 50 5-star reviews, 15 employees, we have 360 video & pictures of our storefront in our account... I haven't made changes in weeks to my account. It's the only account I manage - it's just me who manages it.

Almost all of our business comes from maps - especially in March! This is our busiest month. I estimate that we will lose about $3000-$5000 for every day we are not on maps, and will go out of business without it.

I am so, so sick. I have submitted for reinstatement, but I have read weeks until it may be reinstated. I honestly don't know how we can last that long!! We really depend on our location & coming up in maps searches, as we offer an on-demand service!

Does anyone know of anything I can do? This is a nightmare scenario for us.

 

[chadkimball]

what type of business is it?

 

[jlwilson]

what type of business is it?

It's a medical spa/clinic

 

[chadkimball]

did you try calling google? faster than a reinstatement form if they can fix it right there. If you're logged into google try this link, does it let you request them to call you?

Sign in - Google Accounts

 

[jlwilson]

did you try calling google? faster than a reinstatement form if they can fix it right there. If you're logged into google try this link, does it let you request them to call you?

Sign in - Google Accounts

Yup, I called them, and they told me to wait 3 days and if nothing has changed they sent me an email I can reply back to with pictures of my storefront and my business license, and it could take 7+ days.

Then I called my Google Ads rep because I spend a ton of money over there, and I do the best with the maps/location extension, so I was curious if maybe they could vouch for me or escalate it in some way since now they are actually losing a little money from my maps extension not working, so maybe that would make them more likely to help me? They recommended I start a new GMB page for my business so that it could be linked back up with my Ads account sooner.

So I called GMB support back to run that idea by them, because I really don't want to violate any terms or make things even more complicated. They recommend I NOT do that, and just wait it out, as it's been sent to the tech team already. Very hard to do when this is my family's only source of income, but I feel helpless!

It's a nightmare for us, we've already had multiple people call, upset that they can't get directions because we don't popup in maps. We even had a customer sent by maps directions over to our competitor!! Luckily they weren't open yet, so she called us wondering what had happened. No info card/phone number/address shows up when you google our business name. It's devastating, calls are down about 60% and this is typically a day that people call to book for weekend spa services. A huge chunk of our business in March is from out-of-town visitors who use Google Maps/reviews to find local businesses.

I'm terrified they are just going to decide I can't exist on maps with no recourse! Did I pick a wrong category? Did I write something wrong somewhere? It's a real brick & mortar business with a real clinic in the middle of Scottsdale - what more can I do?! It feels so out of the blue.

 

[chadkimball]

Since you're a brick and mortar with tons of video/photo proof you'll get back up on maps I"m sure. But the issue is time! Maybe one of the mods here could escalate the issue for ya
JoyHawkins
@JoyHawkins ?

 

[JoyHawkins]

I can escalate it but there is no way to get around the waiting time. If they're telling you it takes about 7 days, that sounds accurate. The wait times are based on the volume of reinstatement requests so they're hard to predict.

 

[jlwilson]

I can escalate it but there is no way to get around the waiting time. If they're telling you it takes about 7 days, that sounds accurate. The wait times are based on the volume of reinstatement requests so they're hard to predict.

Gotcha. Thanks for the reassurance that things should eventually be reinstated. So stressful! Hopefully this all gets resolved & things go back to normal quickly. Coincidentally we just hired 5 more people yesterday to be ready for our March rush, so I'm looking at higher expenses and far less revenue until this gets resolved - hence the stress! Why do I own a business again??

 

[chadkimball]

Did you escalate it, Joy?

 

[JoyHawkins]

It sounds like @jlwilson has already spoken to Google about it so if it's already in progress, me submitting another report will just back things up for them further. I'd suggest waiting until they get back to you.

Suspensions are frustrating so I hear you on that!

 

[chadkimball]

It sounds like @jlwilson has already spoken to Google about it so if it's already in progress, me submitting another report will just back things up for them further. I'd suggest waiting until they get back to you.

Suspensions are frustrating so I hear you on that!

like I've said before. Follow google's TOS, get suspended. Ignore google's TOS, get suspended.

 

[judyorr]

Just jumping in here. We are a service area business with over 200 locations. A franchise. All of our listings went down. We are also told to wait the 3 days. Well today is 3 days. The listings actually went down Saturday, and it's Wednesday. Also, we are at our national conference so the timing couldn't be worse. We are calling every hour and being told the following

technical bug​

internal error​

google issue​

former owner flagged account for violation​

​

Now, could a former agency actually do something to take our whole account down? How can we track this? Will google give us the email of who flagged the account for suspension?

 

[judyorr]

Hey all,
On Saturday all of our franchisee's gmb's were suspended. We have them managed under one email. We are a service area business. The owners work out of their homes, we have addresses hidden, in December we did an audit and cleaned up each one's service area with google's new guidelines of 20 zips/cities/counties limits.

We are getting from support " a previous owner on this account had recent activity that was in violation of google's policys"

We are in the 72 hours wait period and we are calling every hour. The first rep told us the above. Then we had another google gmb rep tell us the same thing. All other support people every hour that we call say "internal technical issue". And we still have to wait 72 hours.

Any thoughts? Is there a way to know that another user violated our account on purpose?

 

[chadkimball]

Just jumping in here. We are a service area business with over 200 locations. A franchise. All of our listings went down. We are also told to wait the 3 days. Well today is 3 days. The listings actually went down Saturday, and it's Wednesday. Also, we are at our national conference so the timing couldn't be worse. We are calling every hour and being told the following

technical bug​

internal error​

google issue​

former owner flagged account for violation​

​

Now, could a former agency actually do something to take our whole account down? How can we track this? Will google give us the email of who flagged the account for suspension?

again, were you following google's TOS? Or were you bending the rules? Not that it matters with google but will help us assess the situation.
what is the business name/franchise name?
did you post a thread in the google maps support forum and/or twitter/fb ?
assuming this is a bulk uploads account?

 

[judyorr]

Chad. Can you send me your email so I can speak to you privately

 

[djbaxter]

Chad. Can you send me your email so I can speak to you privately

@judyorr Just click on the private Conversation icon top right of the navigation bar, right next to your member name. Then click start new conversation and send it to chadkimball

When ready, click the start conversation button at the bottom below your message.

 

[JoyHawkins]

@judyorr yes it's very possible for an agency who didn't follow guidelines to have their account suspended which, in turn, would suspend your listings. I would suggest removing everyone from the account other than yourself and apply for reinstatement.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hey @judyorr did you remove any owners or managers on the account that might have been flagged by Google? It sounds like this is an account/user related issue.

 

[Belen C]

Hi, we had the same response when we had our listings suspended. It looks that is an account suspension. As Colan mention, you should remove the email account (if theres only one first give access to a new one) And then ask for the reinstate.

If you have several accounts managing the listing i recommend you to find the one in common for them. Or see if for example one email that manage them, as well manage another ones that have not be suspended.

In our case the account that was suspendes was because that person was doing suggesting edits on the map that Google consider them as spam.
That person (reputation manager) had created a new email to answer the reviews.

 

[judyorr]

Hey @judyorr did you remove any owners or managers on the account that might have been flagged by Google? It sounds like this is an account/user related issue.

We went thru the account yesterday and some of the listings that we are NOT primary owner have the old owner on them. The location that has this listing and has themselves as primary owner would not give us at corporate that level. Could a former owner have gone in and done things to pull the whole account down?