How to learn specifics of non-descriptive “content that violates our policies isn't allowed”

[sixthcitysarah]

We had three client profiles suspended overnight for “Content that violates our policies isn't allowed” and nothing else.

Two of the profiles are over 10 years old with solid reviews (both haven't gotten new reviews in over 6 months) and no keywords or DBA. One of which is a single property with street signage that is an exact match to the business name. The same goes for the website link domain. The other is in an office building in a downtown area, but with signage on the office door and in the building directory. And no edits have been made to the profiles recently, including no new videos or photos. Very basic promotional posts are added to the profile each month, but none have ever been unapproved.

The third profile is the same as above, only difference is this profile is just over 6 months old and has no reviews, and some edits were made last week and were approved. This one is also in an office building with door signage.

Really trying to nail down here what here constitutes a “content” violation, as Google did not state if it was “Deceptive content & behavior” or “Inappropriate content & behavior.”

Thankfully, the client is able to give us all the necessary paperwork and documents for appeal, but would love to be able to tell them what happened and if there is anything we need to avoid moving forward.

 

[keyserholiday]

Honestly, it doesn't matter. Google is extremely vague and has been on a tear lately, suspending GBPs. They get lots of suspensions wrong with it's crappy AI.

 

[fisicx]

Thankfully, the client is able to give us all the necessary paperwork and documents for appeal, but would love to be able to tell them what happened and if there is anything we need to avoid moving forward.

Probably not what you want to hear but you can no longer rely on Google as a source of traffic/leads. It's always been a bit flaky but has now got a lot worse because of AI.

Tell your clients they need to investigate or ramp up other marketing channels. You might find paying for Google Ads will help as it shows Google you are legit. Ads and GBP are not supposed to be linked but who knows how the system really works.

I remember talking to John Mueller some years back and he said no one person at Google knows how everything works. Each engineer understands their little bit of the Algo and nothing else.

 

[sixthcitysarah]

Honestly, it doesn't matter. Google is extremely vague and has been on a tear lately, suspending GBPs. They get lots of suspensions wrong with it's crappy AI.

Figures. Thanks Jason!

 

[InfinityExists]

Joined this form to say i'm in the same situation! The listing is only 3 years old, but solid reviews, etc. We are at the peak of our busy season, and boom. Suspended for "Content that violates our policies isn't allowed".

Did you get your appeal approved?

 

[sixthcitysarah]

Joined this form to say i'm in the same situation! The listing is only 3 years old, but solid reviews, etc. We are at the peak of our busy season, and boom. Suspended for "Content that violates our policies isn't allowed".

Did you get your appeal approved?

Two came back after one appeal, but the third listing (which was one that was over 10 years old) took a month of back and forth for things, but we did get it back just last week! It took 4 appeals in total. Sadly no explanation. We did discover that the owner of that profile was an old personal Gmail, and after we removed that and made our agency profile the owner, it seemed to get approved.

 

[JS Girard]

Two came back after one appeal, but the third listing (which was one that was over 10 years old) took a month of back and forth for things, but we did get it back just last week! It took 4 appeals in total. Sadly no explanation. We did discover that the owner of that profile was an old personal Gmail, and after we removed that and made our agency profile the owner, it seemed to get approved.

My colleagues tell me that GBP support tends to be unhelpful when the problem is a suspended user, which automatically suspend any GBP that account has access to. That is, they will NOT tell you if that is the problem. Whether that is because they are not allowed or they literally can't tell from their side that it is the problem remains unclear at best.

Anyway, did the user icon for that account look unusual? Last time we ran into that, the icon was showing as a grey, barred generic user icon instead of a photo or colored initials as is more usual (I do not unfortunately have a screenshot). There was no other indication whatsoever on the GBP side that the user account was suspended.

 

[sixthcitysarah]

My colleagues tell me that GBP support tends to be unhelpful when the problem is a suspended user, which automatically suspend any GBP that account has access to. That is, they will NOT tell you if that is the problem. Whether that is because they are not allowed or they literally can't tell from their side that it is the problem remains unclear at best.

Anyway, did the user icon for that account look unusual? Last time we ran into that, the icon was showing as a grey, barred generic user icon instead of a photo or colored initials as is more usual (I do not unfortunately have a screenshot). There was no other indication whatsoever on the GBP side that the user account was suspended.

I don't believe it did! I think it was still technically active, but was the only thing we could find that was different (the rest of the managers were employee accounts)

 

[fisicx]

I don't believe it did! I think it was still technically active, but was the only thing we could find that was different (the rest of the managers were employee accounts)

Such is the joy of AI reviews. I doubt even the few humans remaining in the support teams understand why the AI bots do what they do.

TheRegister has an interesting article on the failure agentic AI to do even simple tasks:

https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/29/ai_agents_fail_a_lot/?td=rt-3a

Gemini 2.5 did come out top - but even then only scored 30%.