Has Anyone Experienced Automatic Suspension After Verifying Location

[joonseo]

Hello,

I had something new happen to me. We have a client who verified a location with Google and then received a suspension on his listing. The client was told to put in a reinstatement with Google and they did. After 5 weeks they get this email below. Normally they would ask for evidence like video, business license, pictures, and a lease agreement but this time they flat out denied our client. I noticed 3 other clients experienced the same thing from another SEO company I talk with. Without any evidence they just sent these blanket emails. Anyone experiencing that?

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Google My Business team.

We've looked at your account and it looks like your business is not eligible to display on Google Maps per our quality guidelines. Check out our guidelines for representing your business on Google to see what types of businesses are eligible to be on Google Maps.

If you have any further questions please consult the Google My Business Help Center.

 

[StephanieNewton]

Hi there!

Can I ask what business your client operates and if you're certain it qualifies for a Google My Business listing?

I know there have been a lot of problems with mass suspensions lately, but if Google is outright saying your client's business goes against its guidelines, then that's a little more worrisome. If your client's business does go against Google's guidelines, it might be the case that trying to verify it alerted Google to that and so they've had no choice but to remove it.

 

[StephanieNewton]

Do they greet customers at their location? And do you know if the office is shared or digital at all? I'm just wondering what might have caused Google to suspend their listing

 

[joonseo]

Do they greet customers at their location? And do you know if the office is shared or digital at all? I'm just wondering what might have caused Google to suspend their listing

Yes, they meet clients at this location and have a dedicated suite #. It is not a virtual office and they have a business license with the correct name. Do you think because they named there law firm City + Name is causing the issue. We had them get a business license with that name. It is not keyword stuffed they literally have all there branding, business license, business cards with this name.

 

[StephanieNewton]

Hm, that is peculiar. Have you been able to speak to the other SEO company to work out if there are any patterns among both your clients? It's hard for me to make any claims without having seen the GMB listing in the first place.

It might be worth cross-referencing your client's GMB with these guidelines shared by Whitespark. There's also this blog by GMB product expert Ben Fisher which might be useful.

Once you've read both of those and checked your client is definitely in compliance, I'd suggest appealing to Google support via Twitter or Facebook with any supporting evidence you can — e.g. photos of the office, signage, business cards with the right name on, staff operating on the premises during specified opening hours, etc.

If you haven't already, I'd also suggest posting this on the GMB community forum. Product experts are always really helpful on there and will likely have a lot of expertise in this area given the number of suspensions lately.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

In the blog by Ben Fisher that @StephanieNewton listed, I would check out this section as it sounds like it could apply to you.

Account Issues
Sometimes an account manager or owner has had their own account suspended. Maybe it’s the representative of an SEO company that has a user account and submits a ton of spammy map edits, or maybe it’s a user that does other things that violate other guidelines.

When an account gets a suspension they will usually have all listings in the account receive a suspension. I need to note here that I very often see accounts that have multiple bad listings (10+ virtual offices or spammy listings) get suspended wholesale.

If you’re managing multiple GMB accounts and most are suspended but one or more aren’t, then your account is not at fault. It will instead be a manager on a listing that is on a suspended account. If this happens to you, you either need to do what I call an “owner swap” (basically removing the current owners and replacing them with a new Google account, preferably connected to Gsuite) or you need to remove all managers before attempting a reinstatement.

 

[AndySimpson]

Yes, HVAC friend who's listing did exactly this. It took about a week to have the suspension lifted and now his photographs do not appear in the GMB listing.

It's now been about 5 weeks since I first reported the photograph issue to GMB Facebook support, the issue has been "elevated" to a higher power apparently.