As Google continues to expand its Local product set and its importance to businesses it must also work towards making its system more transparent. Google Local search results still continue to be the wild west of online marketing with almost zero transparency and zero customer service for those affected.
For an increasing number of local businesses a majority of their search traffic and conversions are generated from their Google Places listings but what happens when the traffic is turned off? There is no email notification to advise the account holder that anything has happened until they log into their accounts, it’s only lucky that I try to login once every 3-4 weeks that I noticed the rejected listing.
Recently I logged in to Google Places to notice that one of my client’s listings Brisbane Car Services had been rejected because it didn’t meet quality guidelines. The problem was that the detail around why it was rejected was so general it would likely confuse even the most intelligent consultants.
While Google makes it clear that your business listing must have all the correct information as they appear in the real world, and yes they reserve the right to suspend access to businesses violating these listing guidelines. The problem is it appears to be making up the rules as it goes along and shifts and blurs the lines to suit larger advertisers. It almost appears that the review team is killing off local listings….
So I took the time to follow the guidelines as to why it’s Google Places listing had been rejected following Google’s own guidelines. Following each point I checked and found that the listing had not violated anything obvious that I could see.
Ownership
Only business owners or authorized representatives may verify their business listings on Google, and this listing was done with the owner’s permission.
Business Name
Google Places states that the listing must represent your business exactly as it appears in the offline world. The name on Google should match the business name, as should the address, phone number and website. Do not attempt to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords or a description of your business into the business name.
The business is listed as “Sunnybank Hills Car Care” which matching the trading name registered with Queensland state government. It does not include or try to manipulate search results by adding extraneous keywords or description of the business into its business name. The only question could be that maybe the domain didn’t exactly match the business listing, which is likely to rule out a majority of businesses who are unable to secure their business name as a domain name.
Business Categories
The only element of the listing that I could see that might cause the listing to be flagged was the use of custom categories, so I tested by using mainly the suggested categories.
Previous Business Categories
- Mechanic
- Service Station
- Tyres
- Log Book
- Brake
Newly updated Business Categories
- Mechanic
- Service Station
- Tyres (not Tires)
- Auto Repair Shop
- Brake Shop
I have seen that Google Places has started to advise limited use of the custom categories but is it really fair that they can reject a business listing based on custom listings. The biggest issue is that many of the suggested categories are based on US English such as “Tires”, which can potentially alienate businesses in other countries.
Google doesn’t care about small advertisers
Just as Google Places doesn’t notify businesses when they have been rejected they also don’t proactively contact businesses once their flagged listings have been reviewed. The continuing closed loop points to Google being its own secret police only focused on world domination via its sponsored places at the expense of organic local results.
What does Google Places team monitor?
Google Places apparently monitors a variety of terms and formatting which may or may not be appropriate depending on their context, which even they admit because of their ambiguity, they often require a manual review. But even that statement has too much ambiguity to be called transparent.
When can my Google Places listing be flagged?
The problem is that your Google Places listing maybe rejected at any point in the future when Google decides to change its listings rules not just when it is first created. If you have optimised your listing it’s only a matter of time when Google may consider your business part of the problem and it will burn you from its Local search results.
How long will it take for my listing to be reviewed?
More problems for business as Google states that the review time is highly variable and that new tickets are generally reviewed within 4 weeks, but that is enough to hurt a business enough that it would elect to use Google’s new paid promoted places. The interesting point which shows it’s a possible commercially motivated is that Google has started promoting the promoted places via a 30 day free trial at the top of the Google Places Policies: Quality guidelines page.
It’s only a matter of time before your listing is likely flagged for a review or rejected so here is the link to lodge a support request.
Are landing pages allowed?
Reading the guidelines it appears one of the many reasons that might get your Google Places listing flagged for a review is the use of landing pages, we haven’t been using them but I’m now considering it. Landing pages offer increased conversion rates and offer a better experience for consumers but it doesn’t suit Google, unless you are a big business?
1. Enterprise
2. Avis
3. Budget
The above local listings links were taken from a Google Places result and all make use of landing pages from their Google Places listing, and I even think it improves the result and should be encouraged.
Are you allowed to use call centres?
Google has been cracking down on the use of campaign phone tracking solutions and they prefer the individual location phone number is used. For my client that can try calling the phone number listed and speaking with the mechanics direct if they are unsure.
Google Places now being policed by big brother!
- Don’t use keyword friendly business names
- Don’t use names like 1800 Flowers
- Don’t use URLs in names like Travel.com
- Don’t list if you are in a business park
- Don’t list if you have multiple locations
- Don’t use phone tracking numbers unless supplied by Google
- Don’t use keywords Google doesn’t like
Google’s Policy of Allowed Terms
While I understand that Google has constantly blocked search agencies from showing in the search results, I did find it interesting when my Google Places notification was updated to reflect that “this listing does not comply with our policy of allowed terms”. The notification shown below has disappeared since the screenshot below was taken last night, so great to see once again a complete lack of transparency by Google Places.
So you understand they are only trying to protect the consumer, and its likely that I must have been really pushing the boundaries of all moral and ethical standards and generally spamming the system beyond what a normal person would. The terms that you must ensure you avoid at all costs or risk having your Google Places account rejected is:
- Marketing Consultant
- Marketing Agency
- Advertising Agency
- Internet Marketing Service
- Website Designer
You can see from the list above that there is very little that is not specifically relevant to my consulting services except maybe the website designer, if this is not a clean cut example of Google stomping down business using its free local service. All of the above categories are the suggested categories and are not customised to take advantage of keywords I want to show in Google Local results, but I admit I did recently create a second account using all customised terms for the fun of it both are under review.
What you can do?
There is actually very little you can do besides lodging a request via the support form and wait around 4 weeks, until then apply for a business loan and start buying Google AdWords traffic to keep the local search traffic flowing to your website. Google has plans to dominate the world and if you don’t play nice expect to have your hand bitten…
