Someone added Special Hours for the busiest day of the year and set it to closed...

[Simon Cox]

For UK Florists the 30th March is their busiest day of the year. So to my surprise, I found that one of our clients had her GMB listed with a Special Hours addition for the 30 March and it was set to 'Closed'. I talked to her and she was shocked immediately suspecting a local competitor of making this change - but I did not think that was possible as I thought only the Owner or verified persons could make such changes. How wrong am I?

 

[JoyHawkins]

I'd say it was a competitor. They can 100% edit your listing and this type of spam is actually very common in some industries, unfortunately

Recent example:

 

[Simon Cox]

Thank you Joy. We think we know who it is - judging by the number of backlinks a competitor site has recently got and a duplicate map pack (now in 2 and 3 with my client at 1). Shitty tactics but Karma will get them.

 

[Simon Cox]

Google My Business team have just replied to my email me saying that the primary owner made the change a while back. Except that she told me she did not - I am more likely to believe her.

 

[Simon Cox]

Oddly I have had several more emails from Google telling me there is a fault and they are fixing it. The way the email was worded suggests to me that they are working on a way to fix the updates without approval issue - which would be nice

 

[JoyHawkins]

Yeah I think this is one spamming tactic they can likely fix.

 

[Mike Vannington]

You'd think that if a listing is claimed, Google would limit access to things like business hours to only the account holder.