Ranking Drops for Service Area Businesses

[julie-b]

I have already brought this problem to the community (Client's business profile suddenly not visible on desktop and dropped significantly on mobile - Google Business Profile Community)

My locksmith client's profile (KLS Locks) is no longer visible at all on desktop (although his profile is not suspended) and it has dropped over 30 places on mobile. Before this issue, he was usually appearing ~ #2 on desktop and mobile for 'locksmith Orpington'. He is a service area business with no address visible.

When I brought this problem to the community (Client's business profile suddenly not visible on desktop and dropped significantly on mobile - Google Business Profile Community), it was suggested that maybe because he has another business profile (Google Maps) the service area locations may be overlapping and causing a problem. I have tried to separate out the service areas to rule this out. However, my client was getting very worried about the large drop in business and decided to remove the second GBP (Google Maps)

I'm just worried that there's still something wrong with his main profile. He is losing a lot of business because of this and would be very grateful for your help.

 

[JoyHawkins]

I wanted to add that I'm actually seeing this as well for Sterling Sky's listing. We don't really care about our GBP much because it's not how we get clients so I don't often pay attention to it. We had it get suspended a little over a month ago and what was odd was that when I filled in the reinstatement form, the support team acted confused when they responded to me and said the listing was live (but it absolutely was suspended - I have the email alert telling me so).

Did either of you experience suspensions recently?

 

[Jezcor]

I wanted to add that I'm actually seeing this as well for Sterling Sky's listing. We don't really care about our GBP much because it's not how we get clients so I don't often pay attention to it. We had it get suspended a little over a month ago and what was odd was that when I filled in the reinstatement form, the support team acted confused when they responded to me and said the listing was live (but it absolutely was suspended - I have the email alert telling me so).

Did either of you experience suspensions recently?

We did experience a suspension around April 2022.

 

[Adam Di Frisco]

Hey all, wanted to chime in here. I have a SAB client that saw a complete drop from maps and local map pack as well. The drop seemed to start on September 6th, and now everything is reporting zero views of the GBP.

This company is a relatively niche business consulting firm in NYC. They also rank top 5 for a few great keywords and have lost no rank in organic search. Little more than half of the traffic came from the map pack though, which is now completely absent.

No suspensions in its history, only a switch from address to SAB about 6 months ago.

 

[BWrightTLM]

@AndrewbTree not sure if you have more than one page on your website but I don’t see a menu on the site from mobile. My guess.. if you don’t have many pages, you might benefit from adding more. More times than not, I’d assume a website with “helpful content” would probably have more than one page.

This is not a thread you saw before; I am new here.

The listing is still live, but it isn't on maps, for the most part. Here is the link to it: Andy’s Tree Service.

If a person does a search for tree service escondido, I do not show up on the map. For that search term I was #1 for many years. Also if you search Andy's Tree Service in the address bar, my map page does not show up either. This happened I think last Thursday or thereabouts.

 

[Joey Abna]

I noticed a few listings like this on Friday. I just assumed it was a glitch and would clear up shortly. Of the listings I can remember they are back to normal today.

 

[Beth Evans]

We are on the same page. It's incredibly frustrating. Lets hope for the best and keep digging.

Yes. I will post on here if I find anything out.

 

[Jezcor]

If anybody has the option, I added the address back to one of my SABs and sure enough within hours we're back at the top of local map rankings. This client is a true SAB, but had a home address for a long time. A while back I convinced them to change to a SAB for fear of suspension. We switched it back to that address (no re-verification required *for now*) and everything went back to normal in less than 4 hours.

Thank you for sharing!

 

[Jezcor]

Update: Still not showing in Local Pack BUT now we show #1 for organic search results

 

[Beth Evans]

We are on the same page. It's incredibly frustrating. Lets hope for the best and keep digging.

Someone told me there has been a bug (the Kansas bug) that has resurfaced in SABS in the time frame that this has happened. I was told to hold on until Monday and if the listing returns and if it doesn’t to contact google again.

It essentially removed back end information about your location and effectively relocated your business to the middle of Kansas.

I hope if gets sorted out soon.

 

[keyserholiday]

Someone told me there has been a bug (the Kansas bug)
that has resurfaced in SABS in the
timeframe that this has happened. I was told to hold on until Monday and if the listing returns and if it doesn’t to contact google again.

It essentially removed backend
information about your location and
effectively relocated your business to the middle of Kansas.
I hope if gets sorted out soon.

I would reach out to Google support ASAP and not wait to see if it fixes itself by Monday. It's hard to believe that anybody would know that it can be fixed by Monday. A lot of issues with Google take a while to get fixed.

 

[keyserholiday]

Yes I did reach out. I only had the option to email so I did that. I’m worried i will end up with someone that has no idea about this. I saw a post on the community page about google not helping.

I see that it's a trending issue so that's promising.

 

[JoyHawkins]

The filter rarely impacts service area businesses but you can learn more about it here: Is Your Google My Business Listing Getting Filtered? - Sterling Sky Inc

 

[ServiceLifter]

Hey everyone, Schieler here from ServiceLifter!

I know there's been some very popular discussion lately regarding SABs falling off of Google! Currently, we manage over 220 GBPs and are seeing it on six of them. Multiple companies are also coming to us and asking for help to get them back into the map section. I've included pictures below from local Viking of two companies' scans for their branded search terms.

So far, between the listings that have vanished, I have found some common factors:

1. Even if the address was cleared, all GBPs that have gone missing had a residential/virtual office/PO box address attached to it at one point. We know that Google keeps the address in the back-end even when cleared so I'm wondering if this has less to do with an error and more to do with forcing commercial spaces. I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but we do have clients who opted to go SAB even with a commercial address because they thought it would get them further reach via the Service Location section.

2. All business posts have been declined recently. Some of the companies had been using hashtags prior to our management. I noticed this as a correlation with no definitive thoughts on it yet.

We're going to attempt to "Shock" the GMBs with new commercial addresses to see if this fixes it. I know there have been talks of setting up residential addresses and transferring reviews, but we have seen multiple instances of reviews not transferring when this happens and Google leaving us without much support.

Does anyone else have any working theories?

Note: Our companies who are experiencing this are still ranking very high organically, positions 1-5 on page 1 for their primary and secondary keywords.

 

[gregmcbrien]

I have a client that has been affected by this bug as well.

Similar to what has been said already, if you add an address into the SAB listing, it appears live again within a few hours. If you remove the address (like it should be for an SAB) the listing goes back into "only visible to managers" mode. Here is how I determine if a listing is affected by this issue, note the instructions assume you are a manager of the GMB.

1. Open google.com
2. Perform a search for the company name
3. Scroll down the results, past the Map pack
4. If you are affected by the issue you will see a box similar to the screenshot below which shows "You manage this Business Profile" then in the sub-text, "Only visible to managers". You won't see the full knowledge panel for the brand name or any of the usual "Your business on Google" management options.

 

[sangfroidweb]

Hi Joy,

We are also experiencing similar issues where we are not showing up at all in Local Pack.

The listing is live on maps. Here it is: North State Garage Doors, Llc

I can confirm the issue started Friday 09/09/2022 so we were showing up before then.

Hi, is the address for your business a residence, a p.o. box (like a UPS store/PostNet), a virtual office, or co-working space? We have an SAB client affected by this -- trying to compare notes and look for a common thread.

 

[Ryanmu]

Hey guys. Here is Google's response for my particular case. Looks like I'm screwed

 

[Ryanmu]

Social support acknowledge it was a bug on Thursday and the GBP team admitted on Friday that it's a bug. It took multiple rounds with Google educating their 3rd party support team on how to fix the issue until Google fixed it the last time. It was an ongoing issue for over 6 months. I don't think it will take 6 months this round, but I have no way of knowing.

I really hope not. I do deck staining and I'm coming up on the end of my season and a rush of people trying to winterize their deck and house Washes before the holidays. This is really bad timing as business has severely been affected. Can you give me any advice on how I might be able to word my response to GMB to where they might acknowledge my issue? I really can't mentally take too many more times of them telling me "Everything is fine!"I tell like they're gas lighting me at this point lol

 

[keyserholiday]

Thank you so much Joy. Would anyone know if there is a way I can tell if I'm being filtered for sure? Will Google support tell me?

Are the businesses using the same categories? No, Google support won't be able to tell you if you are being filtered nor will they be able to provide you with advice.

 

[keyserholiday]

I'm not 100% sure how to view those insights by day, but if I look at discovery search vs direct it goes to zero in the last week vs the last month is 200. So I think it is more recent than Sept 7 which makes me think it's filtering. My husband's profile was created about 6 weeks ago.

That’s not the SAB bug. It’s unrelated.

 

[Wendy Moon]

I have two clients that have experienced this bug.

One is an electrician, their rankings returned to normal on 9/29 without any action being taken.

The other is a carpet cleaning service. They were caught up in the Kansas bug last year- after several attempts to contact support, we opted to add his address on the dashboard, got suspended, and then reinstated. They returned to maps, but not in the three-pack as they were before.

This time I contacted support and got a canned reply- I replied to that email requesting that they add the address to the backend. I got a phone call from GBP support and tried without success to explain, but all I could get from the rep were suggestions on how I could rank higher on Google. He did say that an address was included on the backend. We still have a verified listing that appears nowhere when I search for "carpet cleaners" or "carpet cleaning" in their city. I am tempted to try adding the address and getting suspended again- any suggestions?