Meredith's husband: 0:24

This episode we're talking about Google suspensions suspensions to your Google business profile, how you can prevent them and how you can restore your business if it's already happened to you. Do you remember about a year ago when I started, I officially I got the domain name Meredith's husbandcom and I was setting it up in Google. I set up my my Google local business profile and it got suspended.

Meredith: 0:50

Yes, right off the bat.

Meredith's husband: 0:51

Yes, In my case, that was because of the business name. The business name was flagged. They didn't believe it was a real business and so they shut it down. I actually had to go out and register the business name Meredith's husband and then send them proof that it was a business and they put it back on. And then send them proof that it was a business and they put it back on.

Meredith's husband: 1:09

But this issue that issue having your Google local business profile suspended is not uncommon for local business owners. It seems that it happens. Yeah, it's fairly common actually, and, on the flip side, it's also really important to have your business profile not be suspended. As a local business owner, you really want to have it there, so it can be a frustrating situation. Yeah, because, like I said, there's I don't, in fact, I think it's probably for a local, a small local business owner. I think it's more common for them to have issues with this than to not have any issues, like you have not had any issues with yours, because I've been maintaining it from the beginning and doing some stuff to ensure that it doesn't get suspended.

Meredith: 1:54

My question is what can we do when it gets suspended and what can we do then to help it not get suspended?

Meredith's husband: 2:06

Those are two questions I'm actually going to answer. So in my case, it was my business name that got my profile flagged. It's usually an address situation, and the reason for that the reason why Google is so careful about verifying addresses is that so many people have tried to spam this system over the years. I would say less than reputable SEO firms and SEOs and business owners. They try to set up several local businesses so that they can have more than one listing on that front page of Google.

Meredith: 2:37

For example, just like in New York, would they say Park Avenue and make imaginary addresses?

Meredith's husband: 2:43

They've tried that. They've tried literally everything, but what happens is or what has happened, the one that I know of as being the most common is they'll get several different business addresses. They'll just go get a mailbox If you're in Manhattan, let's say, you'll get a mailbox in Midtown, a mailbox on the Upper West Side, upper East Side, downtown, union Square, all these different places in effort to grab more business, and people have gone to pretty great lengths, I would say, to spam the system, and so Google has tried to combat that, I think, erring on the side of caution.

Meredith: 3:16

Right.

Meredith's husband: 3:17

And that's why people tend to get suspended, especially when it has to do with addresses. Now, the theory that most people have when their business is suspended, like this I should say a lot of people, a lot of business owners. Is that somebody you know? They think oh, somebody reported my business as being closed and so Google shut it down.

Meredith: 3:37

Oh, I would just think I'm you know like, oh, there's something I did wrong and now I'm getting in trouble. Yeah, no, there's number one.

Meredith's husband: 3:44

There's nothing you did wrong. But also that's I've never heard of that happening, like reporting that another business is closed and then Google just shutting down the business.

Meredith: 3:53

Yeah, why wouldn't they double check that with people?

Meredith's husband: 3:56

Yeah, I'll cover that a little bit. But what does happen sometimes is you can go onto Google and you can suggest an edit to somebody else's business and you can move their address. Suggest an edit to somebody else's business and you can move their address. You can literally, I think, say move the pin and you can move the pin to a different location. Now what has been happening recently is, as the business owner, when you notice this and you go back in and you change your address again, then your listing is suspended.

Meredith: 4:29

When you do it back from when the people do it.

Meredith's husband: 4:32

I don't know why it happens like this, and this will probably be a temporary situation. One thing about these Google business listings is that Google does change their methodology a little bit from like every year. Yeah, so this might. This case is what's happening right now. It hopefully will not be happening in a year, but yeah, what happens is, let's say, you're a local photographer. One of your competitor photographers goes online and says oh no, meredith's address is in Westchester or something, because they want to get rid of you. They want to get rid of their competition. So then Google makes that change.

Meredith: 5:08

See why isn't it flagged at the first time?

Meredith's husband: 5:11

Well, I'll get to that. But then what happens? But it just changes the address.

Meredith: 5:16

Immediately.

Meredith's husband: 5:17

And then you, not immediately, but soon.

Meredith: 5:20

Seconds later, like a day or two or a week.

Meredith's husband: 5:23

What you do is then you go in and you say oh, my address is wrong, and you change it back, and then your listing gets suspended.

Meredith: 5:29

Okay.

Meredith's husband: 5:29

So in that case, if your listing has already been suspended, there is only one solution you have to go to Google. You have to go through their support there I will link it below. I'll put a link to where you go and submit a request below and you have to go and you have to contact them and they will contact you back and then you start a dialogue with somebody at Google. Now, the downside is that this takes time. Remember, this is not a service you're paying for. This is something Google is doing for free, so they are probably under providing support services. However, they do eventually get back to you.

Meredith's husband: 6:07

It usually takes weeks, but I have never heard of a case where Google support does not get back to you and not resolve this situation. That's the downside. The upside is that you then have a contact at Google, you have a dialogue with somebody working an email thread and then say oh, by the way, since you're helping me with this, I have this other issue, and the other issue gets taken care of. Now, having that sort of access to Google is pretty much unheard of.

Meredith: 6:48

So there's kind of a silver lining if your website is suspended. When your site is suspended, what does that mean? Does that mean people? Yeah, what does it mean?

Meredith's husband: 6:57

So that means that your business is going to stop appearing in the map search? Oh gosh, you're going to stop appearing as a local business and you're also. You know the panel on the right-hand side of the screen if you do a Google. If I did a search for Meredith's Dinner Photography, there's going to be a knowledge panel on the right hand of the screen and it's your business, your name, your address, phone number, a whole bunch of stuff that will disappear, that's no longer going to appear, and this is my theory, but this is probably going to harm your SEO rank, your organic rankings as well.

Meredith's husband: 7:29

Good thing, remember the recent Google leak.

Meredith: 7:32

Yes.

Meredith's husband: 7:32

We did a couple episodes about that, but in there it became evident how important entities are. Your local business is an entity as far as Google is concerned, so it is pretty likely that the ramifications go beyond just your local business listing, unfortunately.

Meredith: 7:51

I would partake in that theory.

Meredith's husband: 7:55

So if you're already suspended, that's the only resolution. That's what you have to do. If your business listing has not been suspended, there's a couple things you can do to help prevent it.

Meredith: 8:08

Yeah.

Meredith's husband: 8:08

There's nothing you can do that will guarantee that it won't happen, but there are a couple of things you can do to help prevent it, and they're pretty simple. So number one you've got to monitor your listing. You've got to know if somebody else suggests that your address has changed. You don't want to catch that one, two, three, four, six months into the future. You want to catch that as soon as possible.

Meredith: 8:31

And you're not notified about that.

Meredith's husband: 8:33

No, you're not notified. No, you have to monitor it. It's your job to monitor your own listing. Now, if you go to Google Business Profile and log in, it will say yes, somebody has suggested that your address be changed. But Google is not going to reach out to every business owner and say hey, somebody suggested this, do you agree?

Meredith: 8:53

Do you think it would be that hard for them?

Meredith's husband: 8:55

You know, like I said, they're doing this for free.

Meredith: 8:59

Is it their responsibility?

Meredith's husband: 9:00

I don't know, but it's pretty easy to monitor. Now you remember WhiteSpark We've talked about WhiteSpark in the past and how you can manage your what we call your local citations, your local business listings with WhiteSpark. Whitespark. Whitespark also has a service and I just discovered this fairly recently where you can monitor your business listing every month and if there is a change then you will be notified and you can also make your changes within WhiteSpark. It's really nice. It's a monthly service. Guess what this monthly service costs $500. Guess again $2.

Meredith's husband: 9:32

No Too high, it's $1 a month.

Meredith: 9:35

Oh really. Yeah it's $1 a month. You know again, I will invest in that. That is worth it to me.

Meredith's husband: 9:44

It's worth a lot more, in my opinion, than $1.

Meredith: 9:46

Yeah.

Meredith's husband: 9:47

Now that price, like I said, this, I think, is a relatively new service they're offering. So the price might increase at some point down the line In fact I probably think it will, but for $1 a month. I suggest everybody do this. I've done it for myself, I've done it for your business, I've done it for my clients. It's a no-brainer. I'll put the link below yeah, that's great.

Meredith's husband: 10:08

So then, what happens if, now that you're monitoring your listing, if you do notice somebody suggested that your address has changed? Here's what you should do, instead of going directly into your Google business profile and changing your address back. This is what's working right now, and this is something. If you're listening to this, a year from now, this method might not work anymore. This is one of those things that Google will probably change, but right now, what seems to be working is you log out of Google. You log out of the account you use to manage your Google local business. You log into a totally separate Gmail account that does not control any local business listings.

Meredith: 10:47

Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Time, time, time, time, time time. You have to. Let's just say, you don't have a non-business Gmail, you have to create one.

Meredith's husband: 10:55

Right.

Meredith: 10:55

Okay, I'm just, I want to be basic. Get all the you know information.

Meredith's husband: 11:02

Right, create a free Gmail account. Okay, go to your business listing and suggest. Recommend to them. Recommend to Google, by using this suggest and edit feature, that your address be changed back. Okay to Google, by using this suggest and edit feature, that your address be changed back. Because if, like I said, remember, if you go right into your Google business profile then change the address, you're likely, or it's much more likely, that you're then going to be suspended. That's so weird.

Meredith: 11:25

Even though it's coming from within your account.

Meredith's husband: 11:28

Right, but for some reason and I don't know what spams have led Google to take this action, but I guarantee there are people trying to take advantage of the system that Google is preventing by doing this.

Meredith: 11:41

Undoubtedly.

Meredith's husband: 11:42

And, like I said, people are going to continue to come up with new scams and Google's going to have to change these methods, but this is what's working right now, okay.

Meredith: 11:51

Okay, that's a good protection.

Meredith's husband: 11:53

Okay, the other thing you can do.

Meredith: 11:55

Yes.

Meredith's husband: 11:56

To prevent this. Yes, if you have not done this already, you have to manage your own business citations. Remember again, in WhiteSpark, whitespark is a solution to do this. Your business citations are the other business listings you have on like Yellow Pages on Yelp, on Facebook, all these others.

Meredith's husband: 12:18

If you have, say, five dozen other business listings out there, all with your address, and somebody suggests to Google that your address is not correct, it's going to be less likely that Google is going to change your address to begin with, because it can verify it across five dozen other websites. If you have not done that, if you have not set up to manage your local citations and you don't have those other business listings, google has less information to verify your address with and it is more likely to change it.

Meredith: 12:49

Okay.

Meredith's husband: 12:49

I recommend doing that. We've done one or perhaps even two podcast episodes about that, and I have a tutorial on exactly how to do that.

Meredith: 12:57

Okay, can you link that below?

Meredith's husband: 13:00

I will link that below.

Meredith: 13:01

Just in case you're a first-time listener, hello and welcome. Then somebody may not have any idea what you're talking about, so it'll sound, I will link it below. Perfect, so you can look at that.

Meredith's husband: 13:15

And this is also a white spark service that I do recommend, and one of the reasons I think it's a good solution is because you can start really small. You do need a budget. This is a paid service, but you can start, and I cover this in the tutorial. You can start with a very small number of listings, like very inexpensively. Then, if you see there are problems and by problems what I mean is If your business has ever changed address, if you've moved your home and your home address is your business address, or you've moved from an office to your home or your home to an office if you've ever changed your domain name or a different office.

Meredith's husband: 13:53

If you've changed your domain name, if you've changed your phone number, then you're going to have conflicting citations out there, conflicting local business information, and that's not good either. If you go to Whitespark and you do the smallest package, they will come back and they will tell you if there are conflicts out there, then you should take the next step and go further and resolve those conflicts on as many directories as you can. If your business has never changed address, never changed phone number, never changed website name, then you probably will not have any conflicting listings.

Meredith: 14:26

Right, I kind of whenever you mention white sparks, do you think of white stripes, the white stripes, the band.

Meredith's husband: 14:33

No, I don't.

Meredith: 14:34

Me neither.

Meredith's husband: 14:36

Glad we got that.

Meredith: 14:37

It's just a very important question that everybody is everybody listening, right is thinking I knew it.

Meredith's husband: 14:44

But that's it. It's relatively easy.

Meredith: 14:47

Thank you, that's a very, very topical tip.

Meredith's husband: 14:51

Oh, one thing A portion of the photography industry that seems to be hit with this more than others is the boudoir photography space. Huh, because you're kind of verging on adult content there.

Meredith: 15:04

Interesting.

Meredith's husband: 15:05

If you're, for example, if your images have a lot of skin tone in them. That is one of the ways that Google for many, many years, identified pornography is the amount of skin tone that was shown in an image or video.

Meredith's husband: 15:20

So if you have a lot of skin, in your images a machine is probably going to flag your images right off the bat. So, no matter what, if you're dealing with this, google is not picking on you. It's not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong. Like I said, this is fairly common, and when you consider that Google is sending or presenting your business to dozens or hundreds or thousands, or even tens of thousands of people for free, right, this is something you're not paying for.

Meredith: 15:51

Yeah.

Meredith's husband: 15:52

I think it's fair for Google to say okay, you have to jump through a couple hoops for us.

Meredith: 15:57

That's fair enough, I agree, I agree.

Meredith's husband: 15:59

I think so. It's worth the price, Even if your business gets suspended. I know it's frustrating. I know, it's frustrating, but it's time really well invested to reach out to Google get it reinstated. I've never seen a business listing not be reinstated. Okay, unless it's actually a fake business yeah, okay.