Listing Catastrophe: Dealing with Agency-Wide Suspensions - Seeking Advice!

[Jaimie S]

Hey everyone,

The dreaded has happened, all listings inside our agency account have suspended. Has anyone else had this or have advice on how to go about this? 2000+ listings went at once.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Hi Joy, if a client flags these reviews from their own verified account do they risk they also risk this happening? What if the reviews are true spam reviews, like bots that Google hasn't caught? Also, what if they're reporting from the review reporting tool and not just from a listing itself?

Their account can get blacklisted if enough of the edits get denied. To clarify I'm talking about using "suggest an edit" on Google Maps to report spam. It shouldn't happen if you are reporting reviews on your own listing.

I'm a little surprised since I've often gone on suggestion waves before, but I've built a significant backdrop of contributions (ca. 4k points). I always tell my coworkers to not do it, but that's because if they do 1) they multi-report the same thing from that account and b) that self-spams the account with the google maps emails.

Yes, definitely a good idea to use the same account when you are suggesting edits, I would just never keep all your clients' listings in that account. I've seen Google wrongly blacklist an account for a guy that used to be a MapMaker Regional Lead - literally the highest level you could get at that point and the most trusted account and he had like100k edits. It was an error and he got his account back, but they do it all the time.

 

[BenFisher]

Well the agency account is not the issue, it is a user somewhere, so it would have happened regardless. That form is the best place to start.

 

[Jaimie S]

Just to clarify, your employee was marking competitor listings as spam using the suggest edit feature..is that right?

Correct