I am so fed up with Google!!!

[Dmacc]

I need to rant about this, and I know many of you will relate, so I’m doing it here.

I work with small to medium-sized businesses in Australia. Real people, trying to punch above their weight, not get drowned out and honestly, I feel like I’m not doing them justice because of the bullshit going with Google Business Profiles.

We’ve been experiencing a litany of issues with Google like scrutiny on “high-risk” industry categories, suspensions over minor changes, endless verification issues and despite doing our damndest to follow Google’s guidelines, we’re getting nowhere and no reply emails.

I was helping one of our clients who is currently facing two bugs you may be familiar with:

1. Cannot toggle address on their Google Business Profile. We suspect this is a glitch that Google will eventually catch onto where the toggle simply doesn’t work right now. We contacted Google but I received a no-reply email.
2. Service Area Business Map location bug – clicking on the business sometimes redirects users to the middle of the ocean, just below Africa. Which is a bad client experiencing seeing that and damaging to our credibility when its just platform of Google.

While I was there I decide to look into the competition, I come across blatant abuse: multiple listings, all live and registered at the same addresses. For example:

• 42 Manilla St East Brisbane QLD
• 16 McDougall St Milton QLD

Just two of many. Look at many businesses they have listed!!

It’s infuriating. Google mass-suspends legitimate listings and disables features for those following the rules, while others running black-hat tactics seem to thrive likely at a lower cost, too. No wonder marketing agencies opt to this as it’s cheaper, faster, and unfortunately, more effective than doing things the right way.

We want to play fair, but right now it feels like we're being punished for it.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Have you posted in the Google Business Profile community about these bugs? The first one I heard about yesterday on X and probably will get fixed fairly quickly.

 

[JS Girard]

1. Cannot toggle address on their Google Business Profile. We suspect this is a glitch that Google will eventually catch onto where the toggle simply doesn’t work right now. We contacted Google but I received a no-reply email.
2. Service Area Business Map location bug – clicking on the business sometimes redirects users to the middle of the ocean, just below Africa. Which is a bad client experiencing seeing that and damaging to our credibility when its just platform of Google.

I just had a colleague ask me about #1 earlier today! They were trying to hide the address and found it impossible. I thought it was a "google employee unilaterally blocked this change from being made" kind of thing, but after checking a few random profiles, this IS a general bug right now!

#2 seems to be working "as intended" right now, sadly, however, have you double-checked that this business actually displays a service area correctly otherwise? Something similar (the "Casey Antarctic Base bug") also happens if a service area includes only elements that are pins instead of being traced limits and google sometimes will outright refuse to let you use the version that has limits, or even switch from it to the pin one! it's maddening.