Google Listings Suspended

[jvinasco]

Hi community. We have a restaurant with two locations and a couple of weeks ago both Google listings appeared suspended. We contacted Google Support and they replied that the listings were suspended for not following their guidelines. We reviewed all the guidelines and we didn't find anything that we were not following. We appealed the decision and requested reinstatement and received an automated response that says that our business is not eligible to display on Google Maps. We replied that response arguing that we are a restaurant (which it's a type of business eligible to display on Google) and we keep receiving the same automated response. In the meantime, our Google Ads campaigns attached to those listings keep working normally (and charging for it). We have been trying unsuccessfully to reach a real person at Google to get a specific reason for the suspension (like which guideline we are not following) and fix the problem. Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[StephanieNewton]

Hi @jvinasco,

GMB suspensions can be a real pain! I'd highly recommend cross-referencing the steps you've taken against this article by GMB Product Expert Ben Fisher. Suspensions can be triggered by things out of your control, or can result from minor issues you wouldn't think twice about. Ben also did a Q&A on this topic which may be helpful to you, too.

Best of luck with it all!

 

[jvinasco]

Thank you so much, Stephanie. Will follow the recommendations.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Do you want to list the details of your business (name, address) listings? It might be easier to see why they got suspended.

 

[jvinasco]

Thanks Joy. The business name is Tequila Sunrise Mexican Restaurant. We have two locations in Indiana, USA. Both locations (listings) were suspended. The addresses are 11653 Fishers Station Dr, Fishers, IN 46038, and 1551 N Green St, Brownsburg, IN 46112.
After reading Stephanie's suggestions (she posted an article on this thread) I deleted all users and left only one with a new email address that is actually from a G-Suite account, and adjusted the name of the business. The listing was under Tequila Sunrise Mexican Cuisine and that's what the sign and the logo say, but the business is legally registered as Tequila Sunrise Mexican Restaurant, so I changed the listing to that.
A couple of hours ago from the time I'm writing this, they reinstated one of the listings (the address from Fishers, Indiana, USA), the other one is still suspended but I made the same changes so I hope they reinstate that one soon.
We still don't know why they suspended the listings in the first place so I would appreciate any input to not make the same mistakes in the future. Thank you very much.
Jairo

 

[JoyHawkins]

Sounds like it was likely one of the users on the listing. It's really uncommon for restaurants to get suspended like this. You should have no issue using Tequila Sunrise Mexican Cuisine as the business name as that's what's listed on Street View.

The other possibility is that the suspension just triggered in error due to there being other restaurants using the same address in Brownsburg. What categories were you using on the listing?

 

[jvinasco]

I used only "Mexican Restaurant" for the category. That's another thing I changed recently. I had a couple more before but in the article that Stephanie referenced it said that another common reason for suspension could be to have a category that would not reflect the services of the business. The other I had did, but I was just trying to cover as much as possible.
The Brownsburg location is located inside a strip mall, which means that the address is for the mall and several businesses share the same address. I just added the door marker to the listing to differentiate from the others and see if that works. Thank you so much for your advice.

 

[BenFisher]

Hope the article was of help

 

[JoyHawkins]

@jvinasco
Google is responding to reinstatement requests pretty quickly these days so you should hopefully hear back from them this week.

 

[jvinasco]

Hope the article was of help

It was Ben, thank you VERY much. Google just responded a few minutes ago saying that they reinstated the second listing that was suspended. So I was able to get both listings reinstated only applying the recommendations in your article. So in other words, you saved the day. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

 

[jvinasco]

@jvinasco
Google is responding to reinstatement requests pretty quickly these days so you should hopefully hear back from them this week.

@JoyHawkins They just did and both listings are now reinstated. Thank you very much for your support. You guys saved the day!

 

[BenFisher]

It was Ben, thank you VERY much. Google just responded a few minutes ago saying that they reinstated the second listing that was suspended. So I was able to get both listings reinstated only applying the recommendations in your article. So in other words, you saved the day. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Hah fantastic!!!!