Suspended Location - Appeal Denied without Obvious Cause

[willy_evans]

Hello Local Search Experts,

Our company has several hundred retail locations across the US, but one of our new GBPs has been suspended and we can't get it reinstated. It was suspended for "misrepresentation", but there's nothing on the profile that could qualify as misrepresentation and it's consistent with the rest of our profiles. The NAP details are accurate and consistent, our categories match our other profiles, and we haven't added keywords stuffing or other black hat tactics anywhere in the profile.

We've been caught in a support loop for a while now, and it seems like it's must be a bug or error.

Does anyone have any advice on how we can get this flagged by a real person? Would it be better off to delete the profile and start over since it's a new location? Any advice would be helpful. Thanks!

 

[Stefan Somborac]

@willy_evans - IMO, there often much value in knowing if your profile was suspended for "misrepresentation" or "deceptive content" or whatever. Most of those descriptions are too vague to be helpful. And in most cases, the solution is exactly the same: make sure your profile follows the guidelines, gather good evidence and submit an appeal.

Exception: if the reason has to do with a user account, then you need to address that user account problem before you'll get reinstated.

 

[willy_evans]

@willy_evans - IMO, there often much value in knowing if your profile was suspended for "misrepresentation" or "deceptive content" or whatever. Most of those descriptions are too vague to be helpful. And in most cases, the solution is exactly the same: make sure your profile follows the guidelines, gather good evidence and submit an appeal.

Exception: if the reason has to do with a user account, then you need to address that user account problem before you'll get reinstated.

Thanks. I'm transitioning from agency work to an in-house role, so I've dealt with a lot of GBP suspensions in the past. The issue here is that an appeal was submitted before I entered this role by someone who didn't have much experience with the process. I'm not sure what evidence they included in their appeal but it was apparently insufficient. Now we have the issue of our appeal being denied and being caught in a support loop with Google.

I've gone over the profile with a fine tooth comb and it 100% follows the guidelines.

 

[searchscope]

Your only option left at this point is probably to post in the GBP help forum explaining everything in detail (how you have addressed any potential issues), link to a G drive (public) all your documents, and request a review. A product expert might review it and escalate it. Good luck

 

[willy_evans]

Okay, I've been fighting with Google Support (very politely) for over a month, and they're driving me up a wall.

The issue is that our profile's business name is (company name)[mall location] rather than just (company name) which is on all of our signage. This wasn't my decision, but comes directly from the CEO who prefers to name stores that way. We've done this for a couple hundred locations without it being a problem.

After putting in a support ticket, they told me that was the issue.

I updated the business profile name to match the signage exactly, but now Google is demanding additional proof for verification. I provided a recent utility bill, but that's apparently not sufficient and they need a business license or tax document. I'm now having to cut through the red tape of the leasing/legal team to get redacted versions of these documents to send to Google.

Meanwhile, company leadership is banging on my door to get this fixed because it's a very high traffic store.

I really really really hate working with GBP support sometimes.