Google+ Local Lost All Reviews, Lost Score

[Marie Ysais]

Hi there,

I am very new here so if I am posting in the wrong place please let me know. I am still getting the lay of the land around here.

Finally, one of my clients lost all of their reviews. They had about 30 reviews they were all real reviews and they had a very good score. A few weeks ago they lost all of their reviews, their score is now set at No Score and they have fallen out of the local + listings.

When the reviews were lost it happened to be around the same time Mike's blog posted on that very subject. Two weeks after the missing reviews and no score the company no longer ranks locally in the Google+ local map.

Any advice? Has anyone else lost all reviews, lost their score and fell out of the local cluster?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Marie,

Thanks for posting. You are in the right place if you want to just have a general discussion about this. (Plus we have lots of related threads with insights and on-going discussions see similar posts section at bottom of this thread.)

However this could be caused by a variety of issues. Could just be the reviews were marked as spam OR there could be issues with listing itself that could have caused this. If you want us to investigate then we need a link to the listing.

IF you want to go in detail about this client and want to post a link so we can, THEN I'll move this down to the help section which is the right place to post specific client issues in.

(Does that make sense? General discussions here but if need specific client help it goes in the help section.)

 

[Marie Ysais]

Hi Linda, I wouldn't mind posting a link. So, can you move this to the help section and I will try to find it and then post the link.

thanks for the help!
Marie

 

[Linda Buquet]

There you go. Moved to help and now we can dig in to see what we can find out.

 

[Marie Ysais]

Hi Linda,
Phew.......I found the right HELP place! I am really enjoying the forum! My only complaint is I wish I had joined over the weekend instead of a work day!

The company I mentioned above lost all of their reviews a month ago , lost their score and two weeks ago we noticed they fell out of the local cluster.

I checked for dupes, checked their listing, and so far I have found nothing out of the ordinary. They had about 30 or more reviews, all were good reviews and they had a good score. They always did pretty good locally until recently. I also gave their listing a bump while I was looking around (thanks to Linda's blog!)

Here is the places page: https://plus.google.com/104017129930311519407/about?gl=US&hl=en-US

 

[Linda Buquet]

Marie,

I did some research in MapMaker history looking for clues but didn't see too much.

Does all the data in the dashboard exactly match what's showing on the live listing?

Was name or address changed recently on the Place page? I see in MM a few months ago the address matched the format that's one the site, but now is different.
(Don't change anything, just asking re prior changes)

Any changes to web site recently?

Any chance they have another listing claimed in another acct somewhere?

I don't think they are penalized because they still rank for Plumber zip.

And they are #1 in organic, just disconnected.

I don't see any major problems. I mean there is a lot that could be done to optimize the web site better but it's already ranking pretty well. And I would DEF get city out of the G+ Local description as some think that could cause a penalty. But other than that I don't see any obvious problems.

Note: I'm only trying to figure out the ranking drop. As I'm sure you know reviews are being deleted left and right for a number of reasons so not even trying to figure out that one.

# of reviews is not normally a ranking factor in blended from what I've seen. However many of the page one listings do have 10 or more reviews. So I imagine losing reviews could have dropped them in the rankings.

Anyone else have any ideas?

 

[Marie Ysais]

Hi Linda,

The address in the back end looks like this:
8721 S. 1st Street
Austin TX 78748
United States

The front end has the address as you see it (in the change)
8721 South 1st Street Austin, TX 78748‎

I did not issue the change in address in fact they know to keep it exactly the way they have it on their website. But I will see if perhaps any of their team changed the address.

The website has not changed at all in a while and they have always ranked rather well locally and organically. It was only in the last month all of their reviews were lost, loss of score and now disconnected.

Should I dig further into the address in the back end not matching the front end??
so far this is the only thing that stick out to me as an issue.

thanks so much for your thoughts on this and time!

 

[Linda Buquet]

The address change COULD have caused both the dropped reviews and ranking. BUT I don't know if it did.

Address citations

"8721 South 1st Street" "(512) 282-7787" 6 matches (as on live page)

"8721 S. 1st Street" "(512) 282-7787" 200+ for the address in dash.

HOWEVER in doing that research found a TON of duplicate content on a bunch of domains.
Wondering if this could have anything to do with the ranking drop.

1stplumbingservicesbuda.com, 1stplumbingservicesaustin.com and others Both with same title tag so competing for same KWs as well as competing with main site: "Plumbing Repair Austin Texas, Plumber Austin TX, Bentonville - 1st Plumbing Services"

And there are some others so, all with duplicate content. All optimized for same city and keyword, all the the same NAP listed.

Am wondering if they possibly got dinged for this OR the duplicate sites caused confusion and broke the connection between the site and G+ page.

I'd carefully read this thread at Mike's Can a Citation Campaign Cause a Drop in Google Local Rankings? | Understanding Google Places Local Search

He says "correlation is NOT causation." "Search results are a multifaceted and complex animal. Just because a person takes an action A and sees an outcome C doesn’t mean that there is a causal relation."

So trying to figure out the timing is key. Do you know when Google changed the address on the live page? That could POSSIBLY have caused the loss of reviews and rankings.

OR something could have changed with the algo and having multiple sites all competing for the same keywords, with same NAP and similar content could have tripped a filter or caused some type of disconnect.

OR it could be something else. As stated in Mike's blog there are so many factors and moving parts it's just really hard to know sometimes.

 

[Marie Ysais]

Hi Linda, I had actually read that very article earlier that day. I can trace the change in address to the sudden loss of reviews and drop in local listings to be four days a part. The address changed and four days later the drop occurred.

I would like to test it out and change the address back. Do you have any thoughts on the matter on testing?

I will then report back if anything works or doesn't work!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Oh so you did notice the address change right around that time? That could be the culprit.

Although one would THINK a straight forward Street abbreviation should NOT rock the boat AND some people say she matches stuff like that up with no problem. I think I've even seen Mike say that as far as citations anyway, she can tell Street from St and match just fine.

But I say she does NOT always match up and get things right. Otherwise we'd never have dupes that were EXACTLY the same with the only diff being Street vs St. Plus I've seen her lose reviews when the only address change was moving suite from line one to line 2. So address still looked exactly the same on the listing, but reviews dropped due to the change.

Perfect Marie. Check your rankings now then use the incorrect troubleshooter (logged into client account) to report that the address is wrong. It could take them a week or so to get back with you.

Then there is no predicting for sure what will happen, but IF the address change is what caused the loss of reviews and the drop then with luck, within 6 weeks ranking COULD return and reviews COULD reattach. But that's best case scenario with a little wishful thinking thrown in - cuz you know Google.

Do keep us posted on your progress.

 

[Marie Ysais]

Hi Linda, Yes, with such a big puzzle I was a little excited to see the dates around the time of the troubles! It gave me a glimmer of hope!
This is actually the part I love, to wiggle the wires and see if anything is re-stored.
And of course we may never truly know what or why it is or isn't restored but we can wiggle the wires a bit and see what happens!

I am going to check the rankings and then report it as you suggested. It might turn out to be a good blog post......who knows!

Thanks for taking the time to check things out! I will post any updates as they occur!
and with a little luck , who knows!

 

[Linda Buquet]

This is actually the part I love, to wiggle the wires and see if anything is re-stored. And of course we may never truly know what or why it is or isn't restored but we can wiggle the wires a bit and see what happens!

Wiggle the wires. LOVE that analogy!

 

[Marie Ysais]

Hi Again. So, I edited the listing just as you described and I received this email less than a week later:

Thanks again for sharing your local expertise with other Google users! We have reviewed 1st Plumbing Services because of your report.

If there is still anything wrong in our information about 1st Plumbing Services on Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/maps/p<wbr>lace?cid=7261471574398760100), please consider updating it via the "edit" link again, or by using the "report a problem" link.

Thanks for your help,
The Google Maps team

The back end address still does not match the front end address. Would you report this again?
At what point do you give up and rebuild the citations to match the new address? Pulling out my hair on this one! I just can't figure out what how to get that address changed.
thanks! Marie

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Marie,

My recommendation was to use the troubleshooter.

It does not sound like you did that? Sounds like you used report a problem instead because that's the type of message you get using it.

The reason I recommended using the troubleshooter is you would have gotten an email from a REAL person and could have replied back to say still not fixed.

But I would not sweat it if Street vs St is the only issue. If you are working on multiple clients you likely have much bigger problems to deal with and like I said, I think G is pretty good at basic abbreviations.

BUT HUGE tip worth saying again - USE TROUBLESHOOTER from now on for almost any kind of problem - not report a problem. (In my training I call the Troubleshooter your new best friend.) Report a problem just gives you a dead end one way answer like you got. Troubleshooter let's you go back and forth with support to either explain more OR follow up if the problem is not resolved.

 

[Marie Ysais]

Okay, so I thought I had used the trouble shooter but perhaps I did not!
Can you send me a link to the troubleshooter so I can see what I did wrong.

 

[Marie Ysais]

I posted the change here:

Contact Us - Places for business Help

I think that is the right spot. thanks!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Well that's not what I would bookmark or where I would start because that skips a couple other important menu options.

Start here: My listing has incorrect information

HOWEVER that reply you got was a reply from submitting a problem via report a problem. You sure that time you didn't hit report a problem on the listing or on maps?

 

[Marie Ysais]

Thanks Linda! Okay, I was in the right spot and started where you suggested. I just grabbed the URL in the middle.
So, I will wait and for a response. The response I received was perhaps prompted by someone else wiggling the wires. I will check and wait!
In the mean time the company is loosing a lot of business by being out of the maps so that is why it is worrisome. thanks again for the input!
And BTW, this forum is packed with so much knowledge and information I always stay longer than I intended! well done!!

 

[Marie Ysais]

I did hear back from Google again regarding the issue of the address back end not matching the address front end. This time the human response you said I would eventually get. Here is the response:

Thanks for informing us about your address appearing differently on your local Google+ page than it does on your dashboard. After looking further, we've determined that "8721 S. 1st Street Austin, TX 78748" is an appropriate way for your listing to be displayed.

Note that the address on your page might be different from what you've input into your dashboard. Our processes might alter user-input addresses to make them more standardized and easier for users to access.

Thanks for understanding.

It sounds like to me the address is being altered as a way to standardize the address. I have never run into the back end not matching the front end. So, now to move forward as the address displayed is going to stick as it is now.

What do you think Linda?