Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Google Places: Pending Status Showing Up Erroneously?
I have received several recent inquiries about the Pending message showing up on more Google Places accounts of late. According to this post by John Audette of 406 Strategies, a local internet marketing firm in Bend, Or. it is a fairly widespread bug. From his post:
“Pending – Being Reviewed. This listing needs to be reviewed further before appearing on Google. Please allow several weeks”.
We have checked with Google and they tell us it’s a temporary glitch. Their phones are ringing off the hook and they promise to have it fixed soon.
Normally the message means that your listing has gone in for additional scrutiny by Google but it appears to currently be a false positive on many listings.
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Comments
37 Comments
I assumed it was because several of my listings have the same address, but no suite numbers. I should not have to make up a suite number for a restaurant within the hotel, just to make Places happy.
Now, isn’t that a coincidence, Mike? I have a feeling this isn’t what is going on with that other thing we were discussing, but it’s good to know a widespread issue is occurring with this. As ever, you are right on the ball. Thanks!
@Lauren
I think as long as they have different phone numbers and are in different industries you should be ok
@Miriam
Wasn’t sure but wanted to check
There is huge changes in ranking since last night . strange things are happening I have seen so many listings appearing in SERP for couple of hours then disappear . ( in organic SEO its call Google dance) .
@mike Any updates about review bug . are they going to fix it soon ??
Same thing here Mike for the M-F work. We have about 25 listings, 3 went into pending status for awhile, now they’re back, a couple others are now pending. Throughout all, the pending status listings have stayed live.
Pending status will make us nervous
Are there any real people at Google Places to answer users’ problems? For the last 3-4 months Google Places has been steadfastly creating duplicates instead of verifying the one listing I want to claim. I’ve reported this on Google Places forums before, and again today, but to no avail.
This is the listing in question:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/place?cid=14399351574622133205
In November last year Google scraped these business details off Trivago thereby creating a duplicate and invalidating our existing account and listing – but that’s another story!
Since then I have tried to claim this rogue listing on 4 separate occasions. I have followed the procedures to the letter and received the PIN by postcard, but each time I enter the PIN instead of making the listing “owner verified” Google creates a new, duplicate listing and the one I am trying to claim remains unverified.
When I click to claim the listing, the details appear like this:
http://www.normandie-chambres.co.uk/misc/google_places.png
I have to correct the address by filling in town and postcode (because the scraped listing has put everything in the “street” field) and I have to assign it to a category (hotel) before the claim will be processed.
So this is how it looks when I submit it:
http://www.normandie-chambres.co.uk/misc/google_places_2.png
But each time I receive and enter the PIN, Google Places creates a new, duplicate listing instead of giving me control of the Trivago-created listing.
If Places is to be taken seriously, surely there should be some sort of proper helpline instead of just leaving everything to user forums?
Phil
I think this glitch is now gone… at least from my listings.
Great Post Mike ~ Perhaps this explains the vigorous ranking inconsistencies this week. Practically every time I search I get different results – and even different formats. It’s so much fun isn’t it!?
Yes, several people in the Places forum reported that Google Tags or Boost reps told them it was a bug and that Google was getting a ton of complaints.
Now this AM those same people are reporting the problem has cleared up and some of them are agencies with tons of account. So it appears it’s not just you Plamen, and the issue has been resolved. Yea!
Has anyone else noticed that reporting seems to have stopped for all accounts on 2/18?
Bingo! This is a bug. Reporting has stopped in several accounts on 2/18. When I click for a report for the “last 7 days” – it says “there is no data for your request”, followed by highlighted opportunities to pay Google for Tags & Boost Ads. Is anyone inspired by Tags these days? Are they working for anyone?
Google has phones?
I’ve seen this twice with a client of mine – about a month ago, and then last week. It also wiped out the stats in the desktop.
This is the first time that I’ve seen it acknowledged as a bug, which is good news indeed. I was confident that there was nothing wrong with our listings, so glad to hear it’s not us, so to speak!
Thanks for sharing this.
@Shawn
I have experienced the same problem with the reporting being stopped on 2/18. Others have too, as I have seen many posts on the Google Places help forum.
yeah I have bulk uploads pending right now that seem stuck for eternity :/
Fortunately I never had the pending status, but I only have a few local listings put up.
It could be a good way to prevent spammers but it could make the life of a genuine seo also a lot more difficult…
After the pending status disappeared, the views that Google Places is reporting dropped to 0, but none of my location pages lost rank at all.
@JU
As long as you can see your listing when you click “view this listing in Maps”, you should be ok. The stats right now are screwy and are not reflective of much. If you can’t see your listing or if in 3 or 4 weeks there are no stats, I would worry
Anyone have any idea why I have Google Placings listings that have been PIN verified since January but still are not showing up in search even when I search business name???
These listing are not “pending review” rather PIN verified and still not in search.
We should all back off and just take it easy. As reported, all (three) of the Google Places Support office are ringing off the hook and Bob and Daisy can only answer so many calls a day 😉
..just trying to lighten the mood a bit – no offense Mike 🙂
@Andy
No kidding… I wouldn’t want to be working in “support” at Google!
Yeah, this is quite the debacle. It’s times like these that I am glad to have a relationship with my clients that lets them trust me enough to know I’m not lying to them when I tell them Google is screwy and it’s not because I’m bad at what I do.
I agree with this – Pending status will make us nervous!
last week over 50 of our accounts went pending. Luckily, everything was back to normal after a couple days. I’m still waiting for them to fix the reporting issues!
@Adam
Thanks for the update. Yes, the reporting issue is an annoyance.
New wave of pending businesses. Again all listings that are activated this year are with status pending. Great.
Google Places forum makes very sorry reading!
We just saw this come back into our google places accounts today. Anyone else see this?
Michael
List of MAJOR Google Places Problems and Bugs – More Broken than Usual…
WHERE ARE THE GOOGLE PLACES ENGINEERS??? Google is putting so much emphasis on local, hotpot etc. Where are the resources to make the CORE service, the FOUNDATION of it all – Google Places work? My feeling is that there are SO many problems right…
Michael, I just blogged about the MYRIAD of Google Places bugs that are going on right now. One of them is this “pending review” bug. Reports of the bug coming back started flowing into the forum again this AM. So you aren’t alone.
I noticed in Mike’s other thread about the system error bug, someone just posted a reply saying Google actually gave them an ETA for THAT problem to be fixed. 1-3 today. But I’ve not heard any updates on the ‘pending review’ bug from Google yet. I’ll go back to some threads I’ve been following to see if there are any updates and report back if I find anything.
As I was blogging about all the problems and lack of support this AM the forum was timing out and giving me ‘service not available’ errors. So evidently the forum can’t even keep up with all the complaints.
Still need to vent some more, so will quote something I wrote earlier today.
“WHERE ARE THE GOOGLE PLACES ENGINEERS??? Google is putting so much emphasis on local, mobile, hotpot etc. Where are the resources to make the CORE service, the FOUNDATION of it all – Google Places work? My feeling is that there are SO many problems right now that Google engineers are CRIPPLED! How long can they let these serious technical issues build up and multiply???”
/end rant…
@Linda
As you can see I approved the pingback to your article to help folks have other resources.
It is a mess and all without any word from Google… a simple “the service will be experiencing some difficulties from X to Y” would have sufficed.
[…] Places Dashboard has been a lot like that of late. The good news? Well the System Error and Pending Problems seemed to have been cleared […]
Hi
Not sure if this is the right place to ask this but you all seem to know a lot about Google places. What I want to know is what is happening with merged places!! My two businesses were merged by Google. I sent in reports..Jan ..heard nothing. I deleted the new business places listing that caused the merging problems…but …………its still there in the place of my original business listing. Made a duplicate for existing business Places at same time hoping it would show up and I could then delete the merged Places ad. Well duplicate appears in dashboard sharing the same stats as the merged ad.
I have gotten nowhere – can’t delete the new business Places to solve the merging problem, can’t edit the merged listing, can’t get a new listing to show independtly so I can delete the merged listing. THIS IS ALL CRAZY .
Shall I send in more reports to Google? If I do will I be put a t the end of the list.
Should I just sit and wait and hope Google will eventually act on one of the reports I sent in?
Any assistance would be appreciated as I am losing business.
I can’t believe you cannot talk to Google or even have a Google employee acknowledge you sent in a report. Google are very good at communicating with my paid ads so I know they can do it if they want to!
[…] was experiencing the problem. This solution may actually recover some of the listings that were edited during the Pending problem as […]
Hey Mike,
Is this a bug that has been fixed? If this error is seen these days, should we assume something is up? The listing still shows up in maps.
Thanks!
I have verified my Google places account by entering pin number and immediately it went on pending. any feedback on this matter would be helpful.
many thanks
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