Google automatically changing times, phone number on listings?

[ccastell88]

Hi Guys,

We have a business account with Google Places with 50+ locations.

We are having issues where the Google will automatically update business listings with new phone numbers and change opening times.

I'm not sure why - as the listing is verified in our account and we want ways to prevent this?

Also to be notified when Google changes any details on our accounts.

Any ideas why this happens and how to prevent it?

Cheers.

 

[lighthouseweb]

Google asks for feedback from people that visit the location. This could be causing the issue. We have seen instances where hours, services, numbers, and such have been submitted for review.

Google does notify you that changes need to be reviewed or they are automatically applied. Since you have so many locations this is a big bear. Break you locations up and go in about every two weeks to monitor for changes that have been submitted.

I hope this helps.
Richelle

 

[Greg Schueler]

I have seen Google auto update business hours too. A client updated their website and changed the hours on their site. Within a few hours Google sent a notice that they updated the hours on the GMB listing.

 

[Dan]

I have a similar problem. Every other month, for 5 months (it has happened 3 times now) my brick and mortar business of 35 years has had its telephone number changed on GMB. I go and fix it and it lasts about two months.

I believe I created this problem when manually creating citations. It was not clear if the website wanted the contact information of the business or the person creating the listing such as an agency so they could contact me if necessary. Unfortunately, I gave it my contact information which included my personal home telephone number. I did not keep a record of the sites I visited.

Now Google picks up my telephone number and YEXT has distributed my telephone number to it's 50 plus directory sites and I can not get it fixed. One of the major YEXT controlled websites is MapQuest which I am unable to correct.

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Broland]

This is quite relevant to my interests... because it can provide more insight into how Google identifies and processes biz info.

There are a lot of ways that Google finds and processes business data. For example they have a patent about updating online business listings using information like a signature block in company email. It also includes:

"communications application, such as an email application (e.g. Gmail provided by Google Inc.), a social networking application, a voice and/or text messaging application and/or any other suitable communications application that allows users to transmit electronic communications between one another."

They of course also use an identified authority website for a business - like a contact page. So if you have different info on your website contact page, or another authority website that can be a cause.

@Dan - I would be willing to dig into your situation if you want to PM me the business info. It would be beneficial to me to possibly learn more and gather some insights into Google's algo's from your situation, and could be some free advice/consulting for you.
Being a 35 year old business means there could be some aggregators that scraped the info long ago and distributed it - but I don't think Yext would have done this unless you signed up and paid for Yext at any point. Also I'm confident Mapquest and many others can all be fixed - we've done this very many times. I'm not saying I'll go fix all of your online listings for free but I'm sure I can at least provide you with some good insight and direction.