I am conflicted over this. On the one hand, it is totally unfair that pretty much all the listings that rank in maps are spam by definition. At least the personal attorney listings in Los Angeles.

On the other hand, it is unfair to have the account deleted if you relied upon a third party to do your LBC listings. But I see some firms blatantly using multiple addresses in the same town, and multiple keyword stuffed names. They are ALL still there and nothing is happening.

For example, there is a Ventura motorcycle accident lawyer who keyword stuffed his title with Los Angeles and he is beating me, even though he is not even downtown and I am.

@Web Talk

I am not sure if it is so much bully as overworked and stretched out…I don’t think it comes from malice but from doing too many products in too many languages and a few too many kiddy coders….but the result is the same.

Mike

@MikeD

It is very frustrating to be in limbo.

The only person with whom I have communicated that I know was banned for abusing Maps was out of the LBC for 240 days…

If nothing else, there is room for Google to communicate clearly and in English as to what happened and why.

Google apparently is “talking now about what’s the right way to handle this“.

I don’t think that Google holds spurious records garnered from 3rd parties against you but I could be wrong.

I think the bulk upload is more closely watched than indiviudally entered and verified listings. Did you attempt to verify your bulk upload? Are the names real or keyword stuffed?

I would love to know the timeframe and details of the outcome, thanks for the offer.

I am curious about your comment: “We had major problems of Competitors changing our website to theirs until we threatened legal action against them”. I would love to learn more about that so feel free to contact me offline if you would like

mike@blumenthals.com

These are user created maps made in the MyMaps area of Google Maps. Do you have a sample search showing how it is being used against you?

Google by the way just announced greater integration of this sort of “user content” into the Maps results.

Mike,

We’ve run into a brick wall with Google. I’ve followed some of your posts and response on the Maps forums and your blog here. I agree with your conclusions on Google’s inane policy of banning.

I believe we’ve been banned by this exact “System Error” since February (more than 6 months). I’ve posted in the Maps help forum and I’ve filed 6 reinclusion requests – pretty much one a month. I’ve never heard anything back from anyone at Google. Our other Google services still work (including our non-profit-status YouTube channel), but we are banned / blocked from the LBC.

We are a regional health system, with 4000+ employees, two hospitals, a third medical campus, and many clinics, departments, facilities, physician practices, services, joint-ventures, medical offices, etc. Our facilities have a wide variety of names, but all are part of our health system.

Most of our facilities are in one of two towns – Town A and Town B. But, we often also have multiple locations for a specific service. For example, our seniors services has a building in Town A near Hospital A, and a second location in Town B in Hospital B. Our Rehabilitation Services has four locations, two stand-alone in Town A, one stand-alone in Town B, and one in Hospital B in Town B. Because there are multiple services in one building (or campus), many have the same address. But, senior services, birthing services, and volunteers and the charity foundation are all very different entities that are in the same building (or 3-building campus) and the same mailing address.

Before we started claiming listings, there were already over 100 listings for all of our services and facilities in Goggle Maps. However, several were incorrect – wrong phone number, wrong location, old location, no street address (just the town), missing locations, etc. – and there were several duplicates.

We don’t use any SEO company or anyone else – it’s just me, a one-man show for our web services. I started claiming all of those listings, which was its own monumental feat. I couldn’t verify most of them by phone, because I couldn’t get to all of those locations and talk to the employee who might answer it first. We did postcards for most of them, but that took a concerted effort to try to get the mailrooms and all of the locations to forward those to me, as they had no idea what the post cards were.

I was trying to clean up and simplify our listings, including removing any duplicates.

That worked for a while, and then one day we were banned (I assume) with the “System Error.” Now, all of those listings are gone and many items have been removed from Maps and I still have a stack of post cards that I’m ready to enter to verify the listings.

I’ve read the Business Listing Guidelines several times, and we were not blatantly violating any of those, and none of them intentionally. But, it’s possible Google thought we were based on their interpretation of our listings, even if their interpretation is wrong (such as multiple locations, as I mentioned above).

Any ideas? We’re stuck, and meanwhile there are wrong numbers and addresses out there that patients and the public are calling or visiting, and I can’t do anything to fix it.

@Jeff Wiley,

Your story parallels mine. We service 3 cities, received the pin numbers for all three, posted the codes and thought we were fine. That’s until we received the dreaded “System Error” message. I’ve tried everything too, but to no avail.

For me, I was oblivious to the LBC guidelines against multiple cities. Water under the bridge now. I’ve confessed my sins, let Google’s spam team know I was in error, but not by deception, and nothing!

For me, it’s actually had a positive effect. I’ve become an extreme hyper local blogger and dominate the serps for hundreds of long tail local keyphrases nowadays.

Next time I file the reinclusion request, I’ll note this blog entry, as well as the thread(s) going on in the forum at Webmasters Central.

Oh well! 🙂

If you can validate at that address, I think it would be fine