Pending listing

[Brian]

I am working with client that has had a pending listing for two or more months.
The Places listing is


? Lacking a description

? Listed as Service area business. Even though they really serve their clients at their place of business

Are these sufficient reasons to have a pending listing. And if they are will completing them lift the pending status. I dont want to mess things up any worse than the are. Would appreciate your feedback.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hi Brian,

I don't think a lack of description could cause a listing to stay in pending mode. Can you post more details?

Is the listing live?

 

[Phil Rozek]

@Brian

I'd be curious to know what is in the listing. Particularly the business name and categories you've specified, as well as what type of address it's at (e.g. office, home, UPS box, virtual office) and whether there are other businesses that use the same address.

 

[Brian]

I am attaching a screenpring

 

[Brian]

HI Phil

Thanks for responding to my query. And you may be on to some thing here. They are in a commercial building that used to be a residential house. There are two other businesses in the building and all three businesses use the same address. No sweet numbers or anything. They go down and divide up the mail each day.

I have posted a screen print of their Places page in a separate post.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Yes it very well may be a location issue as Phil suspected.

Attys especially are notorious for getting in trouble due to shared offices, virtual offices and bogus offices. Many set up fake locations in all the towns they want to rank in and it's not really a full-time staffed office.

So that means even if your client has a totally legit situation they could be lumped it the same basket with the attys above. Google just may not trust the location and maybe needs to investigate. And of course the fact that it looks like a residence on street view does not help with all the service area business problems. That just puts another suspicious black mark on the listing I think.

You said "Listed as Service area business. Even though they really serve their clients at their place of business"

I don't see that part of dash. Are you saying it's set like that in dash? Because fact they are atty AND it looks like a house that's going to trip filters too.

Can you show that part of dash or just explain exactly how service area settings are?

 

[Phil Rozek]

Brian:

As Linda said, it would be handy to see the entire ?edit? area of the dashboard. May not be important, though. Without having seen it, I?d still say it?s kind of odd that the address would be hidden if your clients don?t travel TO their clients (a la roofers or landscapers). If that?s the case, I don?t see any reason to hide the address. Revealing the address won?t put your listing back on the map, but there?s no reason to hide it?s not required.

Then there?s the issue that it looks like a house. I think your best bet would be to hammer out your client?s listings on the major third-party sites: ExpressUpdateUSA.com, LocalEze.com, MyBusinessListingManager.com, YP, SuperPages, CitySearch, SuperPages, and Yelp. If it?s a legit address, those sites should be able to accept it, and Google in turn trusts those sites. You?ll need those sites to support your story: ?Yes, it may look like a house, but it IS a place of business.?

 

[Brian]

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hi Brian,

It doesn't look like you have selected the hide address feature, which I thought you were referring to. However, you will probably want to select the "no, all customers come to this..." option once you get this sorted out.

---------- Post Merged at 09:51 AM ---------- Previous Post was at 09:46 AM ----------

Hmmmm, it makes me wonder if selecting "Yes, this business serves customers at their locations" and NOT hiding the address can trip a filter, or at least cause a potential review....

 

[Linda Buquet]

Colan's 2nd part could be right.

But I also wonder if you are a traditional in-office professional that always has "no, all customers come to here..." but you set it wrong - I wonder if that trips a review filter too. (For instance a Dr that ONLY does house calls would be rare. If they set a service area seems it may trip a filter for further investigation.)

So I would change that. I'd also add a very basic description. Don't mention name, city, phone or do much keyword repetition.

AHHHH one other thing. I wonder if Family Law Attorney is a default? It forces you to pick at least one, so must be. But he's also just an attorney so I'd add that root category. Then hit submit.

Then POKE the listing too, just for good measure. (Click edit again. Don't change anything and hit submit.) Sometimes a poke all by itself will pull a listing out of pending, but before I advise it I just like to be sure the listing is pristine. In this case that one setting was wrong and the other 2 primary fields were missing.

Take 2 beers, wait 5 days and report back what happens.

 

[Brian]

The setting is wrong. All Clients come to the office.

Thank you so much for your help. I will implement all of your suggestions. Although, being in Wisconsin I may need to double down on the beer recommendation.

Brian