Most small businesses rely on their Google My Business (GMB) listings to increase brand awareness and drive traffic to their business. Part of getting the most out of your digital marketing strategy is keeping your Google My Business profile up to date, responding to reviews, and answering any questions from visitors. However what if you log into your profile someday and see that it’s been suspended? If your GMB listing gets suspended, all may not be lost. Here are a few of the reasons why that may happen and how you can address them to get your efforts back on track.

How a Google My Business Suspension Can Impact Your Business

If your GMB listing is no longer active, it is a big deal for your business. Considering 64 percent of consumers use Google My Business to locate reviews as well as details about local businesses, having your business absent from the results could spell disaster. Most businesses do not know that their listings have suspended until they try to figure out why they are experiencing a decrease in calls, website traffic, or visits to their location. Doing a quick search online, it becomes clear that you are no longer showing up or there is a suspension notification in your Google My Business dashboard. When Google suspends listing, its intentions are pure. The search engine uses its guidelines to filter our dishonest and illegal businesses, thus the best show up when searchers need them. If your business is honest and trustworthy, it should be able to prevail.

Why Google My Business Listing Was Suspended?

One of the main frustrations with suspensions is that Google does not tell you why your listing got suspended – therefore it often becomes a guessing game. If you sit down at your computer and made a few updates to your Google My Business listing, that additionally can sometimes cause Google to be suspicious as well as trigger a suspension. Here are some other major reasons why GMB listings get suspended:

1. You have more than one listing. Sometimes people forget they made a Google My Business listing & make another one this will flag.
2. Using a P.O. Box or UPS store address.
3. You set up your listing at a virtual office or co-working space address.
4. If another business shares the same address.
5. You have a service-area business and are displaying a physical address
6. You have made a bunch of changes/ edits to your Google My Business profile in one sitting.
7. The URL you add to your GMB profile forwards/redirects to one more website or links to a social media page.
8. Your address or hours do not match what listed on your website or other online business directories/citations
9. A manager on your listing got their Account Suspended – therefore your listing got suspended because they got suspended.
10. You created multiple listings for the same business at the same address (duplicate listings).

How to Address Your GMB Account Suspension

It may be tempting to fire off a quick message to Google and let them know your displeasure about the suspension. But you are not going to get the results you want unless you first correct what’s wrong with your listing. Additionally, avoid the temptation to create a new listing because this will only complicate your situation. Provided you have identified what went wrong, you can address the problem rapidly. If you stuffed a lot of keywords into your business name, remove them. If you have a P.O. Box listed as your business location, change this to a real address. Moreover, if you put a spam website in your business URL section, change the entry to something that is relevant & reputable. Once you have addressed the problems that have caused you headaches, you can complete and submit Google’s reinstatement form. When you fill out the form, you will answer a series of questions, which you should answer honestly & completely. Ensure you also submit any requested documentation along with your request. An appeal usually takes some weeks before you get an email notification of Google’s decision.

We Can Help

We “Star Web Maker” provides marketing services to business owners like you, making us an expert on all things Google My Business. Our local SEO technology helps prevent Google My Business suspensions by matching and locking your business information across the web therefore that there are not any inaccuracies or inconsistencies. Find peace of mind by knowing that your business account is in the hands of Google My Business professionals.