Google Removed Our Business Listing – How we restored our biz to the Map and got our reviews back.

I was about to send an email to a potential customer pointing them to our 5-star Google Reviews via our Google Business profile (e.g. the Google Map), hoping this added information about our customers’ past experiences might help me close a deal. But when I checked the Google Reviews link, it was down. And after doing another search for our biz, I realized that our entire Google Business listing had disappeared!

Aaaaah! It turns out that Google suspended our Google Business property.

2 weeks, many hours, and a handful of anxiety-related headaches later, I’m happy to report that our listing is back up:

Why was our Google Business suspended?

I have no idea why our Google Business property was suspended. Google doesn’t tell you why they suspend a property. We didn’t take any action at all to cause the issue – our property was just all of a sudden suspended. Google provided a generic laundry list of things that could cause a property to be suspended, but we weren’t running afoul of any of those items. So I honestly have no idea what happened to get us suspended.

Nevertheless, we persisted.

How did we resolve the issue and get our Google Business property back online?

I made some very minor updates to our website, including updating the SEO meta tags to include our business name and also adding our address to the footer of the website to make it clear that we associate with that physical address. I don’t know if any of this mattered, but I thought, “Why not?”, and at least then I’d be able to tell them I took action on the website to remedy the issue (even though I had no idea if I was actually remedying the issue).

I followed Google’s instructions filled out their “Reinstatement Form”. They replied via email a few days later asking for my Google Business ID, which, it turns out, is very difficult to find when your profile is suspended – Many thanks to Professor M for the help finding my ID!

Then, a few days later, I got this email from Google:

And all was well again. But what a headache!

Originally posted Jan. 31, 2023

UPDATE in June 2023: This happened again! Same thing: I have absolutely no idea why our Google Business page was suspended. Sadly, this time, I had to go through 2 reinstatement cycles, as my first request for reinstatement was declined. About a week later, and we’re back up.

It’s all very frustrating, because Google does not notify you when your listing is suspended, and they don’t tell you why you were suspended in the first place. I did learn that Professor M provides a service to help in cases like this – next time I might just hire him to see if he can learn anything more. Onward!