Suspension - First one in a long time

[chadkimball]

Sadly, it's beginning to be a close call between Google and Yelp as to which is the more high-handed, arbitrary and capricious in the way it treats businesses.

Any update, Tim?

 

[Tim Colling]

None. It's been over a month now for the first one.

 

[Cordell Crowley]

We had just under 40 listings total get suspended (both hard and soft- about a 65-35% ratio) through the month of June, and we are now at 17 total suspended. So they are slowly being reinstated, which is something I guess.

The weird thing is that there is no consistency on who gets unsuspended & when. Most have taken right between 2 & 3 weeks and others are now going on 5 weeks, while some others were re-opened within 3-4 days. I'm not sure how Google is prioritizing them or if it is just random chance.

 

[Tim Colling]

In many cases, we can just express disgust over how ham-handed and clumsy Google is when they make mistakes like this. However, in these cases, the affected businesses are actually being harmed by being unreasonably and unfairly excluded from the SERPs and losing out on potential revenue for that reason.

In other words, in this case, Google is actually harming the affected businesses, not just being almost amusingly but benignly incompetent as is so often the case.

 

[djbaxter]

Their attitude does seem to be quite cavalier sometimes.

Is "Don't be evil" still their motto?

 

[Tim Colling]

Their attitude does seem to be quite cavalier sometimes.

Is "Don't be evil" still their motto?

That was officially removed from their corporate code of conduct over a year ago. See Google Removes 'Don't Be Evil' Clause From Its Code of Conduct and Don't be evil - Wikipedia

 

[djbaxter]

Uh oh.

 

[Tim Colling]

To be fair, they now say, "Do the right thing" or something like that, instead.

But they're not living up to it when they do harm on this scale without fixing it promptly.

 

[kathleen.rhodes]

I had a client whose listing was suspended, thankfully only one (in contrast to @Cordell Crowley), but it was particularly nerve-wracking as the business owner had just added me as a manager right before it happened. The listing is for a legitimate landscape designer. When it was first suspended, the "friendly" folks in India said that they needed to have the guy's license number, which I provided before the call was over (but why did I even need to supply it as the license number wasn't required in setting up his GMB listing). They "escalated" the issue - ha, it took over 3 weeks for the issue to be finally resolved in my client's favor. But as @Tim Colling wrote, it adversely affected my client as he was effectively removed from search results for that time period. Plus, it adversely affected my income, as the billing was to start WHEN I began to optimize his listing. Of course, I couldn't do that while the listing was suspended. During this process, I called and emailed Google multiple times, reached out via the Facebook support page, and also through Twitter - they kept saying (a week after each time I reached out) that "We appreciate your patience as we work through significantly higher volumes."

 

[Tim Colling]

they kept saying (a week after each time I reached out) that "We appreciate your patience as we work through significantly higher volumes."

...that we [Google] caused by our incompetent suspension of thousands (perhaps millions?) of location listings for no good reason."
<sigh>

 

[Conor Treacy]

Just an update with regards to the suspensions on our end.

1 recovered yesterday, the other is still suspended. Still nothing from Google

If it wasn't for the reviews attached to the GMB, it would almost certainly have been quicker to just delete the account and create a new one. And then that creates it's own set of spammy listings in doing that

Frustrating to say the least.

 

[HoosierBuff]

I had a business suspended on june 10th, and I heard back from Google today.

I'm pretty sure they were suspended because they were using a home address. I changed them to a service area business, and resubmitted. Of course, all they said today was:

"We've looked at your account and it looks like your business is not eligible to display on Google Maps per our quality guidelines. "

I responded with "we are a service area business". Hopefully they get back to me prior to one month.

 

[boydlake]

I just had 8 of ten suspensions lifted for a client last week, so I see signs of them responding, but I also have clients that have no reason to be suspended still in suspension. Most of those don't show falling rank though, which has been good to see at least while we work through it. One client is in an industry that had a ton of GMB spam, and I am wondering if Google ever does "blanket" suspensions to clean house. Not likely but I still wonder about that. Tim, has there been any more updates for your listing?

 

[Cordell Crowley]

So I'm guessing we've all seen the "reports" that Google has rolled out a fix for "missing and suspended" listings, but I haven't had anything be fixed on my end. I had 4 listings reinstated on Thursday last week, bringing our total # of suspended listings down to 13, and we are still at 13 as of this morning- so no movement in 5 days.

Has anyone noticed any tangible movement on listings being reinstated these last couple days?

 

[JoyHawkins]

That fix they were talking about was for a different issue discussed here. It was for listings that vanished even though they weren't suspended.

The backlog of suspensions that started weeks before is still ongoing and isn't a technical issue so it is still pretty slow moving.

 

[Lanerizz]

I don't know if this adds anything to the conversation, but I am on week 4 now for one of my clients. The 2-3 week time frame is not holding up it sounds like.

 

[Rich Owings]

Are new suspensions still happening after minor changes? I've asked a few clients to make one change at a time, but I've been afraid to touch any listings directly. Is it safe to do so again?

 

[JoyHawkins]

Are new suspensions still happening after minor changes? I've asked a few clients to make one change at a time, but I've been afraid to touch any listings directly. Is it safe to do so again?

I'm still avoiding multiple changes at the same time. I might be paranoid but we haven't had a single suspension yet.

 

[Tim Colling]

I'm still avoiding multiple changes at the same time.

That seems wise.
A question about that, Joy: are you waiting any specific amount of time between multiple changes to the same GMB listing?

 

[Rich Owings]

Also, Joy... It sounds like you are making individual changes, right?