Why is my Google Business listing displaying for business categories not on my profile?

[mattstephenskc]

I work for a law firm. We offer specific services. I do my best to include those services in our GBP profiles (5 office locations) and exclude those we do not provide. Today, Google showed this result for a query for which we should not be appearing:

Nowhere in our GBP copy, GBP service categories, or our website do we hold ourselves out as offering free consultations for wrongful termination. Hell, we don't even want paying clients for wrongful termination matters!

Assuming there is nothing in our copy or service categories about wrongful termination or free consultations, why in the world would Google be suggesting us for that query, and how can we stop them from doing it again? We got a call from this dubious search result which resulted in an angry customer who is probably going to leave a hateful 1-star review on our GBP.

Advice? Please? TIA

 

[Stefan Somborac]

@mattstephenskc - That blue checkmark icon indicates that this is pulled from your Services menu.

Is "Free Initial Consultation" listed as one of your services?

 

[mattstephenskc]

@mattstephenskc - That blue checkmark icon indicates that this is pulled from your Services menu.

Is "Free Initial Consultation" listed as one of your services?

We’re actually the third listing there, and free consultations isn’t listed among our services. On the other hand, termination could be considered a synonym for death, and we have personal injury/wrongful death attorneys. So maybe the semantic algorithm went a bridge too far…?

 

[Stefan Somborac]

I don't think Google would confuse personal injury/wrongful death with employment termination.

I see a 316 area code: Wichita, Kansas. It's a smaller city. So my next guess would be that there aren't many firms using the category "Employment attorney", forcing Google to grab the next best thing to fill the 3-pack: a firm in the general category "Law firm".

 

[mattstephenskc]

I don't think Google would confuse personal injury/wrongful death with employment termination.

I see a 316 area code: Wichita, Kansas. It's a smaller city. So my next guess would be that there aren't many firms using the category "Employment attorney", forcing Google to grab the next best thing to fill the 3-pack: a firm in the general category "Law firm".

I didn't think that was plausible either, but the attached screenshot seems to suggest otherwise. My guess is that no one in Wichita is advertising for wrongful termination, because 999/1000 of those calls are dead ends. Therefore, in a dearth of material from which to draw, Google simply matched "wrongful," because it was the best they could find. That's my hypothesis.

Assuming for the sake of argument that this is so, is there a way to report this error to Google and request an adjustment to the algorithm?

 

[Stefan Somborac]

There's a "Send feedback" link at the bottom of the SERPs

 

[mattstephenskc]

It's very obscure, but I found it and submitted the feedback. Fortunately, I was able to get the same results as the person who reported it to me, even though I'm in a different city.