The Ultimate Guide to Dominating Google Business Profile by Dennis Yu - HTML preview

What can get your GBP suspended and then

what do you do when that time comes?

People don't even think about getting suspended until it happens. And when it happens, you are probably going to be in the most helpless space that you've ever been in, because there's nothing that you can do.

The only thing that you can do is look for reinstatement, or seek professional assistance because Google will also tell you sometimes, “Sorry, you're just not in compliance”.

They don't give you a heads up and give you a reason. They just say, sorry, we're not going to reinstate you and then you have to scratch your head and figure it out.

What causes a Google Business Profile suspension?

1. You have intentionally done something wrong and those things can be

very simple such as naming your business as not actually the name of your business.

For example, you listed your business name as ‘Dennis Yu, the best real estate agent in San Diego who will find you the best house,’ but your actual name is ‘Dennis Yu Real Estate Agent.’

So in that case, you're just putting keywords into your business name, just because you want to rank for those keywords.

Why?

Because everybody else is doing it. So it looks like a great idea but it’s not.

Adding keywords to your business name can get reported. Often, someone will suggest those keywords be removed, you’ll add them back, they’ll remove them again — and you’ll repeat the cycle. Every time you do that, You’re literally rolling the dice — especially in real estate, which is considered a duress category — and people will report you.

There’s a 60–70% chance you’ll get suspended by changing your name back and forth. It's considered suspicious activity.

Another situation that can happen in cases like this is somebody will just go ahead and suggest your name change and when you change it back, they will use what's called the Redressal form.

They submit the Redressal form, which goes to Google’s Spam Ops team, who then say, “‘We can see the history of this. The user keeps changing the name back, even though it's suggested otherwise it is misleading. It is actually fraudulent in nature.” So Google will suspend your listing.

Sometimes, they’ll suspend every listing in your account if location spam is suspected.

2. Location spam

It comes in multiple formats. The most common that's going to be for a realtor is going to be that they are listing their home address publicly on Google Business Profile. They haven't hidden the address.

If you don't know how to hide your address, you just go to the info tab and then click on your address, and have your address cleared or removed completely.

A lot of people don't do this because their SEO person told them, or they think that they will not rank well if they don’t show their address. This is actually a violation of Google's guidelines because it's usually a home address and you don't have signage. So there is no way for a user to actually find your business, except by coming to your address.

Another thing that will lead to Location Spam is somebody who's using a fake or virtual address.

What that means is if you're getting an address at a UPS store or PO box, because even though you have given an address, again, it's not something somebody can just come to and do business with.

There’s that, and then there’s using virtual addresses — like Regis, DaVinci, or even WeWork.

With those, you’re usually dealing with empty office spaces filled with desks and rented out to hundreds of companies. So there are a hundred people at this address and you are one of those, but nobody's actually there.

So when somebody from Google is hunting down spam or fake companies basically to help companies rank, the first thing they do is look at your address.

So for agencies that work from home — what should they do?

Agencies that work from home should definitely clear their address straight up.

If you’re an agency and one client gets suspended — which happens regularly — all your clients will start getting emails and now you're getting all these phone calls because all your clients are saying, “What did you do?”

So one client getting suspended could cause a cascade, the trigger for all the clients and for the agency's account.

Let’s say you’re an SEO company making suggested edits on profiles with name stuffing — and you don’t do your research. You go ahead and make willy-nilly suggestions without checking their website.

Each edit on Google Maps or Google Business Profile affects your trust level — based on quality review and score. It's connected to your local guide score.

When you keep making bad edits, they often get rejected — but sometimes they go through. Then your Local Guide account might get suspended — or it might not.

But this trust level is going to a certain point where they don't trust your accounts anymore.

The same thing goes for pay-per-click agencies.

Pay-per-click agencies often use the same email for managing PPC, MTC, and their GBP account. It's a very common practice because it makes sense and that's how pay-per-click accounts get banned all the time.

You might work with a pay-per-click agency that’s white-labeling another agency. Their account gets suspended. The agency that's white labeling doesn't, but it cascades into your Google Business Profile.

So what do you do?

You're screwed and you just have to use different email addresses. If you want to protect yourself, then you don't suggest edits with the same account that you use for Google Business Profile and if you don't use it well, you must be really careful who you use for pay-per-click, that one's really difficult to insulate yourself from. Except for the fact that most pay-per-click agencies don't need access to your Google Business Profile Listing.

3. Too vague in your Office Hours

You've got yourself listed as 24 hours. So that means that somebody is going to be able to come at 2:00 AM and knock on your door and get serviced. Probably not going to happen because they probably would get terrified.

4. Google Sweep

Sometimes your Google Business Profile listing can get suspended for no reason. Google Sweep is where GBP is going out their spam ops team. And they're going to usually choose a very specific geographic area, say, San Diego and they're going after a specific category such as real estate and they are basically running an algorithm that states that “Here are our new spam signals. Here are our existing spam signals. Now let's do a test.”

They’ll run a Mendel test, which is built to expect X false positives. If they get more than that, they’ll start shutting people down.

If you’re following the guidelines, you probably won’t be hurt by it.

If you are suspended, make sure you’re prepared to appeal. Right now, only 4% of businesses are actually prepared and ready to be reinstated.

If you’re not in compliance, and it takes weeks to figure out why not, your ranking is going to tank.

Even if you think you're within the guidelines, you probably aren't and you'll get caught up in one of those sweeps.

And based on the statistics of it, that is 30% of businesses will be suspended, whether they're in the guidelines or not in any given year. So what's worse is that 4% of businesses that are suspended are prepared and ready to be reinstated.

Why is that number really important? That's four out of 100 businesses. And the reason that's important is that when you are in compliance with Google Business Profile and you submit for reinstatement, if you are in compliance, you'll be reinstated in 24 hours. Guaranteed.

But if you're not in compliance, you'll submit a reinstatement then you will still get a response in 24 hours but it won't be the response you wanted. It'll be that dreaded, “You're not in compliance.” Go read the guidelines in which everybody says “I read the guidelines. I'm in compliance.” but in reality, nobody reads the guidelines. And even the ones that do, don't understand it.

So that should have only been a one-day down and an additional 72 hours. So four days total to gain your ranking back. Because when you submit reinstatement, the 24-hour period is basically the morning, usually around 6:00 AM.

So you're looking at four days of no exposure and lost visibility at the minimum. But if you're not in compliance, take those four days, expand out and it could take you weeks to figure it out.

How much revenue would you be losing with your GBP suspended for one month?

A lot. We're talking millions in lost revenue — plus clients can’t find you or read your reviews.

5. Duress

If you’re in a Duress category like real estate, editing your name, business

info, phone, hours, or website can get you suspended.

A suspension could happen at any time. It could happen once per year. There is a 36% chance in any 12-month period that a business in a Duress category will be suspended.

What are the other Duress categories?

● Locksmiths

● Lawyers

● Different kinds of doctors

● Chiropractors

● Med spas

● Doctors

● Dentists

They do get suspended, but they usually get suspended because they're doing things like location spam, and name spam.

6. Duplicates

For example, doctors with multiple locations can have multiple profiles — but if they don’t update hours properly, they’ll get suspended.

Q&A: 5 Questions To Ask On Your Google

Business Profile

1. Sorting Question:

What stage of business? (This helps us find the language and needs of each

client type.) We have 5 stages of the business journey model which allow us

to do this.)

2. Why/Need Question:

Why did you buy/hire (insert product name)? (What's the need?)

3. Content/Marketing Question:

What piece of content or thing did I share that caused you to want to buy?

4. Differentiation Question:

Why did you buy from us? (Or if it's a personal brand-driven business: 'Why'd you buy from Todd?')

5. Biggest Win Question:

What would be the biggest win you could get at the end of the program?

Process:

Call customer --> Record Call --> Send the recording to Rev.com --> Copy responses from each question into the corresponding cell in the spreadsheet next to client

name --> copy responses from a column into tagcrowd.com to capture words people use --> highlight the best lines/stories/situations people give you --> this content becomes subject lines, headlines, product names, stories you share.