Primary category keeps changing??

[georgebizpro]

Hi all, I have a lawyer client who is a personal injury attorney. On 3 different occasions, his primary category has changed from personal injury attorney (which is what we want it to be) back to general practice attorney. How could this be possible? Who would be making this change, Google? Does someone have access to his GMB or is it possible that a competitor is suggesting the change to drop him in the rankings? Wondering if anyone has ever seen this happen before?

 

[heckler]

It's possible someone is submitting a change request, but I'd check your citations, especially aggregators. You likely have that category somewhere and Google is pulling it into GMB.

I've had a similar issue with a client who was using their Yelp page as their GMB URL. It ended up seeding on some random citations and Google kept updating it back to the Yelp page after we changed it to their new website... (for a couple weeks)

 

[chadkimball]

In your industry I wouldnt be surprised if it was a competitor. be careful out there

 

[Colan Nielsen]

George,

Care to share the actual example so we can take a look for you? Have you checked the edit history in Map Maker? It would be a good idea to do that before Map Maker goes bye-bye in a couple weeks.

Thanks

 

[chadkimball]

curious, did you find a solution for this?

 

[SmallBizGeek]

My issue has always been the lack of or absence of appropriate categories. For clients I have often been forced to pick some generic top-level category. I didn't know a competitor could make a change request though.