Waves of GBP Suspensions Reflect Google Support Failures
Google has shifted the burden of customer support costs to business owners, volunteers and the public.
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Google has allowed too many fake listings into the local index. So, last year they started to clean up their act. But as with so many things about Google, they often throw out the baby out with the bath water. You can see this in our examination of the Google Business Profile (GBP) help forums post types in general and suspensions posts in particular.
As Google's algorithms swept through the local knowledge graph last year, looking for suspected fake listings, the number of SMBs seeking help in the forums soared, a reflection of both over indexing on the removals and poor support to resolve errors. As is typical with Google's algorithm it's only accurate up to a point. Many of the suspended (as fake) listings were real businesses that depend on Google for new customers.
Poor Support System
The support process Google put in place for dealing with the many wrongful suspensions was primarily email based. It offered no guidance about what the business did wrong or how they should go about getting their listing back up. After the second or third email exchange, Google just stopped responding.
Frustrated, many of these businesses flocked to the forum where volunteer Google Product Experts (PEs) helped businesses comply and navigate the re-inclusion process. This was time consuming and included multiple PE escalations to Google staff to help legit businesses make their way back into the index.
Overall, it was a pretty janky support system that left too many businesses out in the cold, and left Google and the PE volunteers facing a tidal wave of support requests. Google set out to fix it.
Fix Is Not Much Better
The problem is multifaceted and Google's new fix, while better, still ensnares a great many businesses. In an effort to keep the index clean, even small edits to an service-area-business (SAB) listing can trigger the dreaded "your listing is not visible to the public" notification, keeping the number of suspensions high.
To lighten Google's support load and to reduce the seemingly infinite (and unanswered emails), they started to allow only one re-inclusion request and one appeal, which required a business to fill out a form. The form did provide more guidance as to which documents to include. While it limited the email tidal wave it created other problems: the business was only given 60 minutes to submit documents and if they were wrong or something was missing, the business had only one chance to appeal before the case was closed.
Once again SMBs were forced into the forums out of desperation.
The chart above, showing increasing numbers of forum suspension-related posts from early summer, reflects both an uptick in actual suspensions as well as the failure of the new support mechanism. The numbers are starting to decline as Google had to reintroduce additional re-inclusion processes to supplement the automated one, which hit its limits. But too many legitimate businesses are still being impacted.
Who Bears the Costs?
Scaling solutions for creating and curating location ground truth only takes Google so far. This is particularly true with an AI/ML driven process that might only be 75 or 80% accurate. The other issue with an AI-driven solution is that when suspension numbers go down, fake listings go up and vice versa. From Google's perspective, 1,200 posts a month in the forum, reflecting who knows how many actual suspensions, is a tiny percentage of the total listings graph. But to those 1,200 (and who knows how many more) businesses that have lost access to a key demand generator, it is potentially a death knell.
Google has been reluctant or unwilling to spend money on creating an accurate and reliable knowledge graph and even more unwilling to provide adequate human support when they do make mistakes. They effectively push the costs of fixing these issue onto the small business owners, volunteers and the public.
What to Do If You're Suspended
If you are suspended, I strongly recommend that you stop and assess your situation before applying for re-inclusion. It is often quicker and less expensive to partner with a Google Product Expert who specializes in re-inclusions to navigate the complexities of the system and your particular situation. There are several I work with that very good so please reach out if you need a recommendation.