If you’re following the guidelines correctly, Google Business Profile (GBP) suspensions should just be for major problems, right? And, getting your profile reinstated shouldn’t take weeks upon weeks, either. But, for a few weeks in October, it seemed that all it took to get suspended was looking at your GBP the wrong way, and the current response time for profile reinstatement is nearly a month. So what’s been going on? What happened: a bug caused Google Business Profile suspensions to skyrocketBen Fisher, Google Diamond Product Expert and owner of Steady Demand, explained to BrightLocal over email that there were a number of causes for suspension at the time:
As you can see from our quick poll on Twitter, more people have been affected by unprecedented suspensions in recent weeks.
What did the local SEO community experience?Over email and Twitter DM, we spoke to local SEO experts who had experienced suspensions for a number of small reasons. Harmony Huskinson, Local SEO Specialist at Portent told us:
Ashley Romer of PaperStreet, who works with a number of clients in the law industry, was equally as frustrated by what has happened:
Bug Fixed, but Reinstatement Times Still AffectedAs of the afternoon of Friday, October 21, 2022, the suspension bug has been fixed.
But the reinstatements are still taking a long, long time. So we’ve been talking to the experts about the problem to see what you need to know, and what you can do. Tim Capper, Google Platinum Product Expert, and owner of Online Ownership, says:
Tim explained that the bug kicked in when you got a response to your reinstatement request. A normal response is:
A nonstandard (bug) response is:
While the bug was active, when you replied to either of the above responses, you got the exact same response a few days later. So perhaps this may be described as more of a reinstatement loop. If this ever happens, your profile’s reinstatement has landed in the bug cycle! You may have noticed that GBP displays your case ID and progress status on all business support pages, support requests, and also on the help forums home page.
The progress status also refreshes every time you get a non-standard response, so you think a human is viewing your request, but unfortunately not. Google Business Product Expert Stephen Somborac (of Marketing Metrology), shared the experience he’s had with helping reinstatements on the forum:
What can you do to avoid any reinstatement issues?If you are aiming to get reinstated, all the advice strongly recommends you double, maybe even triple, check your GBP and the reasons it was suspended. Create a strong case and make sure you provide Google with a thorough explanation, with documentation, that proves why your GBP should be reinstated. As Amy Toman, Local SEO at Digital Law Marketing and Google Gold Product Expert, explains:
Elizabeth Rule, Local SEO Analyst at Sterling Sky and Google Gold Product Expert, echoes Amy’s advice:
Joy Hawkins, owner of Sterling Sky, told us that her business hadn’t been affected by the suspensions bug, but gave some excellent advice on ensuring GBP quality so your profiles do not get suspended in the future:
In summaryOur key takeaways from the current issues with GBP suspensions and reinstatements:
Now that the suspension bug has been fixed, things shouldn’t be quite as bad for local businesses and marketers. It’s worth stating that while many suspensions happened for seemingly superficial reasons, sticking within Google’s guidelines for GBP is essential. This is particularly the case with the slow reinstatement issue. via BrightLocal https://ift.tt/lJquhnV Check out more SEO posts onhttps://seouk41.blogspot.com/
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