Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Google’s Worst Customer Service Response EVER
Several week ago a large number of mostly service area listings started receiving the dreaded “We currently do not support the location” message. At the time Google noted that “your listing may have been dropped due to a technical issue that we cannot yet resolve. We hope to have a resolution soon for this issue, at which point we will be in touch with next steps to help you return your business to Google Maps“.
Last week Michael Borgelt sent me a copy of this email that Google had started sending to those inappropriately affected by the “We do not support” message on their listing (bold mine) :
Hello,
Thanks for your patience in waiting for an update on your Google Maps listing. If you’re still receiving the “We currently do not support the location” error message, then your listing was affected by a technical issue and there are a couple of things you can do to help restore it to Google Maps.
First, review our quality guidelines. If your location doesn’t meet these guidelines, it may have been removed from Maps. Especially check out this article about service-area businesses, and hiding your address in case your business is at a residential location:http://support.google.com/places/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=177103
If you’re confident that your business fits within our guidelines, then search for your business at mapmaker.google.com and see if it has been marked as removed. If you’re able to find it, attempt to undo the removal and reinstate your listing on Maps. It may take a couple of days for your reinstatement to be processed.
If you’re unable to reinstate your page this way, then please remove your listing from your Google Places dashboard by clicking “Delete” then “Remove my listing from my Google Places account,” then recreate the listing. You will need to undergo PIN verification again if that was your original verification process, but doing so may cause your listing to surface cleanly on Maps once you input your new PIN.
Thanks for your patience and understanding with this process, and we hope to continue to improve your experience in Google Local and on Google Maps.
Best,
The Google Local Team
This response qualifies as not just the worst customer service response ever from Google, but perhaps the worst customer service response ever. It is as if the printed Yellow Pages didn’t print your listing due to their error and then told you that you needed to go down to their office and enter it yourself on their arcane typesetting machine. Hello?
Some notes:
Every time I think that “We currently do not support the location” is a bug, I discover that it is instead an intentional message. If you receive it at the beginning of the listing cycle it means: We have not had time to process your listing. If you receive it after your listing has been active for a while it means: Dude, either we or one of our MapMaker volunteers has pulled your listing down for violation of some rule stated or not.
In this particular case, it seems that Google realized that they pulled a few too many down and they are expecting those suffering the fate in error to fix the problem themselves.
Now that is chutzpah.
What you should do:
It appears from everything that I can gather from these emails and this post is that this pull down affected listings that Google suspected of not being in compliance with the requirement to hide your address. Some listings, as you can see from this forum post may have also been tagged due to MM rules.
Regardless, if your listing deserves to be in the index, then you have no choice but to follow the advice given above. It essentially means that one way or another your listing will be vetted yet once again, either by a MM moderator or the Places verification system. Your choice.
© Copyright 2024 - MIKE BLUMENTHAL, ALL RIGHT RESERVED.
Comments
59 Comments
Sadly this is all too typical of Google’s dealings with its
productsI mean, customers.The entire system seems to be set up for an environment where Google does things automatically, and everything they do is right, because they define it to be so. If Google removes your listing, or otherwise destroys your business (automatically, and without review), that is your problem. You can read the “help” documentation to figure out what you did wrong. If you can’t figure it out, you can try to find a well-hidden form to submit an objection, and perhaps someone may see it, but don’t count on it. You have no meaningful recourse.
Customer service is something Google wants to see other businesses provide, but seems to be something they consider optional for themselves. This would not be tolerated from any other business – even other very large businesses.
@Scott
I have felt that Google was making strides in the area of customer service although this seems to reflect either a back sliding or a structural problem for sure.
@andrew
In retrospect I think what they meant by “technical issue” was that they were having technical issues in returning legit listings to the index. Probably technically accurate but not really forthcoming.
@Mark
Totally agree that deleting doesn’t work on dupes. Google has yet to have a great system for dealing with these.
Hi Mike,
At first I was fooled by the term ‘technical issue’ into thinking it was referring to one of Googles many ‘features’ or bugs.
Only on seeing other volunteers get users sorted did it become clear it meant a ‘Business Guidelines’ or hidden anti-spam guideline issue.
The main problem is Googles poor user interfaces. They seem to be using a genuine ‘not supported’ message used whilst Maps indexes are being built or occasional Server outages/update for a ‘Suspended’ situation.
Now the first question you ask for ‘out of the blue’ instances is:
Are you a Service Area business working from home?
If so have you hidden your address?
If not then the second question is to ask them to reveal their Places content, excluding email of course. So they can be advised on content violating the gudelines which can be corrected and a manual review triggered.
Today I have had to step into a post where someone had not been aware of the first question or asked advice before going onto the last step of Deleting and re-Adding his Places entry. Of course once PIN verified he is still receiving the same ‘not supported’ message.
He seems to be suffering from scraped duplicates and Map Maker issues as well causing confusion, possibly caused by a name change last year not done properly. Google should at least warn users making a NAP change that at the least they have to change their other web data and for address changes Close their search listing and Delete the old Places entry as well.
Cheers. Andrew.
In response to Andrew: Deleting a places entry does not guarantee that the listing will be removed from the Maps database. In fact, the most reliable way to get a listing removed is to have a power user or mapmaker extraordinaire mark it to be removed within their account. Even at that, however, there is no guarantee that it will be permanently removed because Google refreshes data sources that they have licensed which may or may not contain the current information regarding the business.
I’ve seen many instances where a listing owner suspended their listing after claiming only to have it reappear online a few weeks later. At this point there is no 100% sure fire way to have your outdated business listing removed.
Google is creating its own duplicate issues by not allowing verified business owners have more control of their listings. After all, Google knows better than you do where you do business and what your business name is and what phone number you want listed for contact information.
As one who has been trying to help a TON of users with this issue I am aghast at how it was handled. Have been trying so hard this whole time to hold my tongue, but now that it’s out in the open I am glad.
Poor customer service, yes. More importantly IMO underhanded.
“your listing MAY have been dropped due to a technical issue…” Leading people to believe it was a bug when it was really just a massive take down is not responsible OR honest. A lot of listings were taken down that already hid their address a couple weeks before. Some decent businesses that may have been innocent I think were taken down too.
Here are just a couple of the posts, each with many users affected. https://productforums.google.com/d/topic/business/2eX8jjIJVwg/discussion and https://productforums.google.com/d/topic/business/u7UymcN_e1c/discussion and there are LOTS more!
This whole home office thing was done horribly wrong from the beginning! If you are going to invest in having the team from India call people to check for compliance, why not just tell them – “hey new rule, you need to hide your address” instead of whacking the listing without warning?
Granted some of those businesses were spammy, but you can’t do a massive algo driven sweep like this without throwing some babies out with the bathwater.
Just sad!
@Linda
The ways and methods that Google communicated about this issue was less than forthright and as you point out, disingenuous.
To those businesses that were erroneously removed from the index, Google owes them a better explanation, an apology and some help.
It’s always been this way.
Google have never really understood words like “responsible” or “accountable”. It doesn’t seem to matter to them that a little mistake can cost others a small (or large!) fortune.
It’s not just Maps/Places/+Locale either (though that always seems to be buggy and stressful for businesses),
the same applies for WebSearch and Organic listings as well.
I’ve watched G mishandle sites in the past (and presently) – and there is nothing you can do.
Google can stuff your business six ways from Sunday,
and the only thing you can do is jump through hoops and hope they do their job properly.
@Lyndon
Google doesn’t see accountable in the same terms as you and me. To them, its about getting 100 million listings more or less correct. Then they think that they did their job. That was to some extent true with “relevant” web results. Much, much less so with physical businesses that exist in the real world?/
@Andy
I think for the most part enforcement is consistent: if you don’t service customers at your location then you need to so indicate via hide your address. The gotcha is that is you chose NOT to hide it for some reason and Google calls and asks and you say that you don’t service clients, then you get taken down. It might also be the case that businesses with “thin footprints” might have gotten hit as well.
The problem is that the callers from India don’t seem to provide any slack, don’t have a nuanced idea of reality and that when you combine that with SMBs that don’t have a straight story, hell breaks out.
@Dino
yellow eyed?
@Earl
In that case of bad service, only 1 business was affected. Here hundreds, thousands or possibly more were impacted. And it was dealt with by sending emails that were either 1)disingenuous or 2)put the responsibility back on the business. My example wins.
“Are you a Service Area business working from home?” —> if so, do you hide your address… or not. What exactly does Google want? What are the results of hiding the address; ranking etc.? It appears if you show your address, and it’s deemed to be in a residential location, then you run the risk of having the listing yanked. This is starting to make my head hurt.
@Andy
If you do not service customers at home, Google wants you to hide your address. That much IS clear. The problem comes when the calls come in from India… if you don’t answer consistently you are in trouble, if they think something different than you meant you are in trouble, if they speak with someone else and if their story isn’t consistent you are in trouble.. The real issues is to have one, real story and be consistent.
Good point on the hospitals. So much for the myth: Ah if we only ran government (or health care or schools) like a business everything would be so much better… No… just less accountable.
“Uncle, uncle!” OK, Google, the Scott Farkus of local. You win. You’ve effectively made local so frustrating that you’ve forced me into Adwords. You yellow-eyed extortionist. You’ve become so mean that I’ll just give you all my lunch money to keep you from beating me up anymore.
Mike: My personal experience with Worst Customer Service Ever from Google occurred years ago. A business had a problem with wrong address info showing in a Plus Box that was appearing in the Google Places Info on the first page of google.com. Customers kept going to the wrong address.
It was always Google’s fault. Every customer that called and said they were lost said they found the address on google. Every one.
We contacted Google via the Places Forum. A rep very definitely and specifically said….
“I’ll get back to you”
Nine months passed. Babies were conceived and born in that period. Nobody from Google Places ever got back to the business.
We kept contacting Google. Response was a big black hole.
Some clever folks finally figured out what was wrong in the Plus Box. Some of it was alluded to and it appeared that an element of the deep dark secret google algo was going to go public.
Google, about to be embarrassed, fixed the algo element. Its been years. Google still hasn’t gotten back to the business with the problem.
So take your pick. Which example of lousy customer response is worse? I’m sure there are tons of other examples. 😀
Wait wut? I was under the impression that if clients didn’t come to your place of business you were supposed to hide your address. Roofers for example have commercial space but rarely have clients come visit them if at all so, hide address or don’t hide address!
This is so damn furstrating I’m about to just throw in the G** D*** towel with Google!
It’s all a ploy to drive people to just say screw it, use Adwords. MARK MY WORDS!
@Russ
You are right. I think that in this case, for whatever reason, Google just got too aggressive in pulling down what it thought might be spam and nailed legitimate listings.
Google is like a big mindless robot tromping around in a big field full of users. Hopefully you’re not one of the ones that gets stepped on.
I had that message showing for a couple of days and resisted the (overwhelming) urge to do anything. Sure enough, my listing reappeared and everything is fine…. sort of.
@Keith
Discretion is almost always the better part of valor in dealing with Google. It is very hard to wait out the never ending time for things to happen. Great work this time!
Hi Mike,
Thanks for staying with this particular issue which is just one of many and clearly illustrates that Google is not up to the job – any job. By virtue of being in the right place at the right time and perhaps because any so-called competitors did not have vision Google has become a powerful monopoly and appears to be an immovable object standing in the way of progress. I’m not too confident that Congress can or will sort this out.
The local listings are a tiny piece of the Google pie but if they claim to deliver relevant, qualified results they are not doing so. A search for SEO in Olean, NY did not produce the result I expected. Less relevant and unqualified results abound across all categories and IMO the public sees right through it. It’s really a shame that this gorilla is sitting at the entrance to the playground preventing anyone with a shiny new toy from showing us how it could improve our lives.
Taking lessons from history;
1.a single electricity standard (AC) was necessary but essentialy kept innovation at bay for about 50 years – think co-generation
2. if not for the big 3 auto makers we would all still be cranking our Fords with that gadget on the front
It doesn’t seem life-threatening that Google has a stranglehold on much of the internet but how will we ever know?
@Chris
I am not clear which side of the free market/goverment regs/antitrust issues you are arguing here.
Mike you say things SO well.
“To those businesses that were erroneously removed from the index, Google owes them a better explanation, an apology and some help.”
That’s it right there!
I’m throwing my hands up at this point. I’ve been trying to help these guys but I’m frustrated and I’m about done trying!
Delete your listing and start over YOU ARE SCREWED, is not advice I’m comfortable giving!
Think if Google was a hospital, and we were all patients – LOL – scary 😉
If you can lay hands on a Googler – most seem willing to try and help.
The hard part is finding a Googler (most site owners ahvent’ got a clue where to go for info, let alone to find Google Help).
Then you are often faced with the simple fact that they cannot do anything.
All they can do is file an internal report and try to get some info on what the issue is, and what sort of possible timeframe … and that’s it.
Okay Mike, your example wins on pure volume. Who knows how many were affected.
Now getting back to the one by one examples: This guy has hit the ultimate frustration level: He wants to speak w/ a googler and get his problems resolved.
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/business/technical-issue/eAzgFtAtAM0
@Earl did you just concede… way to easy. You feeling ok?
In my training for Local pros and agencies I’ve been teaching them, if you have service area clients you MUST GIVE THEM PHONE COACHING!
Be sure they and their wife or anyone that answers knows the gotchas.
For example sometimes they call and ask is this a storefront. If I’m a plumbers wife or even the plumber I’m going to say no – or try to explain. CLICK. DELETE. They don’t give time for long winded SMB explanations or sometimes don’t even understand what’s said.
OR they don’t identify themselves when they call. If I’m the plumbers wife working from HOME with 3 kids and some guy with a heavy accent calls and just says where are you located – I’m likely to ask who’s calling and why do you want to know? CLICK. DELETE.
Here’s another good one. 2 guys in the forum over the weekend said they get hammered by telemarketers, many of which claim to be Google. Their telemarketer strategy is to say. “You have the wrong # is is a home # there is no business here.” TALK ABOUT PUTTING FOOT IN MOUTH. CLICK. DELETE.
ANOTHER MAJOR GOTCHA. 2 weeks AFTER I hid my address I got a call from India. I said yes it’s a home business, No I don’t see customers here BUT I ALREADY HID MY ADDRESS. He said Ohhhh, so you DON’T really see customers there? I said correct BUT I ALREADY HID MY ADDRESS. He didn’t understand and just kept saying Ohhhh, so you DON’T really see customers there?
I finally screamed I ALREADY HID MY ADDRESS – Do NOT delete me! Then I had to name drop Joel and Vanessa.
So I teach my guys to coach their clients to have a very short direct answer ready and be ready for the call – EVEN IF they’ve already hidden address because the moderation team that calls DOES NOT have up-to-date records, so even if you are already in compliance you can still get whacked!
BUT the problem with this last major sweep was there weren’t even verifications calls, just a massive take down. Guilty until proven innocent. So much power – so sad it’s misused!
@Linda
I think you nailed the many vagaries induced by the policy. Now you need to ask yourself, can any SMB really follow these guidelines?
I’m one of those volunteers (or rather used to be), and the situation is a complete mess on both sides. (That’s also my post!) Regarding the rules violations: Google has essentially given free reign for volunteer mappers to clean up Google’s maps, so they’ve attracted the kind of mild OCD types that follow the rules, sometimes religiously, and they’re not at all hesitant about removing businesses that violate Places or MM (Map Maker) quality guidelines. Although they have to go through a nominal review process, they’ve taken down a lot of POIs, some clearly spammy, some that have run afoul of the rules out of ignorance. The problem is is that the rules are applied inconsistently from one database (Places, Map Maker) to the next, and the enforcement is, how shall we say, uneven, with Places being the most lax. Policy changes are not exactly announced in advance, so sometimes mappers on Map Maker are often left to try to figure out things after the fact, or from inference of Google’s comments and actions. It’s difficult to get a straight answer out of Google regarding what is and is not an allowed feature, like Escort Services, and if the past is any indication, Google hasn’t bothered to enforce this provision at all until recently. I also think because there’s no unified approach to what is and isn’t acceptable on Maps/Places/Map Maker, the policy can diverge. Are UPS Stores acceptable? Not on MM, but this isn’t really spelled out in the guidelines. Virtual offices? One lone post from Vanessa in the Places forums is the extent of their policy guidance. On days like that, I feel like I’m reading the tea leaves.
As for duplicates, that process is now on standby. Duplicates are no longer propagating to the Place page from MM, from what I can determine, so I’m just doing straight up deletions in MM (with the permission of the Place page owner) to resolve dupes. The training of Google Reviewers is to resist this interpretation, since they mark dupes as dupes, but if it’s no longer working…? That isn’t the only problem with database inconsistency. Still haven’t fixed the suite no. situation. Categories are a mess on MM, and don’t match what you see on Places. Etc.
As for deletion, Google never deletes anything, not even spam data, not even bad data, which often resurfaces with every Maps update and causes it’s own set of unique problems. A bunch of spam that was deleted from four years ago (it shows right in history) popped up in the indexes–tow, escort, locksmith spam. Where did it come from? Why did it reappear?
As for customer service. It’s bad. It’s worse than bad. Google not only doesn’t provide customer support of the paid telephone variety, they’ve almost completely abandoned the forums to volunteers, and then have the temerity to ban any solicitation by these same volunteers for the customer support Google doesn’t provide. So now customer support by SEO specialists is supposed to be free? I can understand not wanting the forums to serve as a haven for grey hat and black hat SEO specialists trolling for business, and promising something they can’t return in return for a fee, but many owners just want to talk to someone (on the phone) and resolve their problems quickly, ideally Google. Many don’t have the expertise necessary to navigate Google’s convoluted help system, so they either throw up their hands in frustration or hire a helper to do it for them.
On a sidenote, once something is deleted in MM, it’s really difficult to find. I’m not sure why Google recommended people go to MM, which is it’s own kind of black box. It requires some expertise to navigate it. So, throwing babies in to the pool and hoping they don’t drown is going to do what?
As for Google deciding what content they want on the Place page….they’re doing a terrible job of it. Just let the owners decide. It’s okay if it’s not 100% relevant. We just want quick and easy, and we want clear guidelines on what is and isn’t acceptable. Heading over to Facebook or Yelp, there’s really a sense of calm and order. The pages mostly stay up. The data is all there (including payment options and even email addresses, which irks me, since Google collects the data but never displays it). No algo is deciding for my eyeballs what I should or shouldn’t look at it. Relief.
Can’t Google just add paid telephone support as part of their Adwords package, and hide it in the cost? Seeing this mess on the forums undermines the confidence or trust in Google’s Local model, and I assume they’re still desperate to promote Google+?
@Dan
Thanks for your comments and great description of the more arcane inner workings of MM.
I agree wholeheartedly that each of these products is crazy in its own right and then when stitch them together at the hip the craziness grows exponentially… schizophrenic siamese twins for sure.
@Mike… Sorry about the obscure reference. I was using the bully analogy from Christmas Story? Remember Scott Farkus? “He had yellow eyes. So help me he had yellow eyes!”
Interesting how not so long ago Google’s image was that of leveling the playing field, allowing SMBs to compete with the big guys. Perhaps there is still some of that left, but it appears (naturally, I suppose) that eventually companies like Google will gravitate more and more toward the bottom line. Maybe there is not enough profit for them to assist SMBs within the platform. So instead of the champion of the small business they’ve become the bully on the playground – Scott Farkus with the yellow eyes.
@Dino
No the apologies are all mine. I missed the reference so I thought I better check.
Your point about Google and SMB good will is an interesting one. I think that they recognized this growing deficit a year ago or more ago and in their Queen Mary sort of way starting turning the ship to deal with it… I actually thought they were making some progress despite their slow schedule and even slower rollouts. But it did seem that they were making progress.
But the merging/pruning of their many products is creating new cracks or perhaps extant cracks are becoming significantly more visible. While I do think they are aiming for SMB ad dollars, they are still somewhat clueless how to get there.
And as Lind points out, they will not get their with duplicity or disingenuity… both traits that SMBS hate.
@Mike
I see where you are coming from – but G doesn’t just deal with “relevant” sites,
they are also trying to tackle “quality” – and have been getting it wrong in some cases … with no way to correct it.
You may need to wait Months for G to correct their end of things.
Not really any different than this issue with the listings and being flagged.
You get no real reason for what has happened, and you have to jump through various hoops in the hope of getting it corrected.
It’s all well and good G sitting there saying they are trying, that they are doing a good job, that it’s onyl a few etc.,
but they are screwing other hundreds/thousands of legitimate businesses (be it their sites and/or their places listings),
and there is no real recourse.
The least they should do is put their hand up to the fault, and offer an apology.
@Lyndon
Point taken and granted! It is different but the same “I am big, you are little” kind of thinking.
Google is becoming a SCAM
@ned
I wouldn’t go that far. Difficult to work with yes, frustraing yes, and in this case even less than forthright… but scam? They have not yet dropped to that level in my book.
Mike: Haven’t experienced this problem first hand. had to go through the list of comments, and specifically the comments from people that have acted in a volunteer help role. Had to see the comments in one of the relevant threads.
Very screwed up. Let me rephrase based on my reading of the situation:
1. Complicated process full of technical mumbo jumbo.
2. We screwed up
3. You fix it (use an obscure methodology that will be difficult, foreign to you, and one not well explained.)
This isn’t just a lack of customer service. Its the communications from a firm that simply decided long ago to never give customer service in the first place.
Last year they upgraded a form of communication–not customer service. They upgraded a systemic “fix” process. Still not customer service.
Ultimately a complete avoidance of accountability.
Sometimes it works–sometimes it doesn’t.
Its a travesty–and unfortunately to date no bigger tougher entity has responded to this process that simply jacks SMB’s around with total impunity.
Google’s monopoly and the crappy unstable Places environment has created a brutal environment. Google has some life and death control of small businesses. It has more power than anyone else…any entity, any government, any legal enforcement process.
Nobody watches…nobody gives a sh*t.
Hopefully this shameful episode hits the press.
Hi Mike,
I have only dipped my toe into the Map Maker ‘swamp’ as Dan calls it and the experience was not pleasant.
Trying to make Edits there to align the data with a PIN verified Places entry was like pulling teeth.
At some point google have to place more weight on Post Card verified Places entries. I have suggested a program of rolling Post Card verification for older Phone verified entries, seconded by the forum Map Maker experts.
It is a shame that the ‘Owner Verified’ flag does not indicate PC-Post Card, Mb or Ph-(Mobile) Phone, or MG- Manual Google as it would give users a better feel for the pages authority. Also if that showed a lot of Users would volunteer to move their flag to Ph.
Cheers. Andrew.
The last line should say:
Also if that showed a lot of Users would volunteer to move their flag to PC.
So bloody crazy! I had one client get hit by this. We’ll basically have to start over and my guess is we probably lost 60 + google reviews. 3 years in the making. I think it got hit b/c address not hidden.
I did however in the past have an account that was in purgatory (14 locations) and we reserected it and reviews did come back after 2 and half months.
I am praying once we re-verify this listing that maybe all those reviews will come back (in time). Not holding my breath.
Hi,
I know this review is very old but did you eventually get your 60+ reviews back? Our listing was wrongly taken down but reinstated and our Google Reviews have not yet returned (it has been 15 days).
Reading this has made me feel slightly positive seeing that your reviews on your other accounts did return after a lengthy amount of time.
While their motivation may be altruistic, intelligent people volunteer to perform work and try to provide customer service for Google, a highly profitable Goliath. What’s wrong with that picture?
Google Places DUPLICATES – Have Doctor, Dentist or Lawyer DUPES? You NEED to Read This…
If you deal with Dentists, Doctors and Lawyers – hang on, because there are more changes brewing that Agencies and SEOs need to get a grip on. Get a load of what Google support is saying about duplicate Doctor, Dentist and Attorney listings now. …
These “do not support location” messages make it look to SMBs like the listing is broken (as in tech prob). Same with the purgatory listings where the link to view on maps disappears. These back-handed, not clearly labelled penalty states – disguised as tech probs – just create more confusion, drain on support resources and bad will.
WHY NOT JUST CALL A SPADE A SPADE?
Violations = Big Red Suspended tag, like in the past.
When you break the law and have a parking violation police give you a ticket, so you can clearly see you broke the rules.
They don’t puncture your tire and hope you somehow figure out that you should not have parked there!
[…] a service business with his address appropriately hidden on Google Places, suffered the ”We Do Currently Do Not Support This Location” problem that inappropriately removed businesses for the second time in a month (yes Google […]
All – I’m curious if anyone out there has actually been successful at getting a listing that was removed from Places, but still showing up on Maps, back on Places per Google’s note
“If you’re confident that your business fits within our guidelines, then search for your business at mapmaker.google.com and see if it has been marked as removed. If you’re able to find it, attempt to undo the removal and reinstate your listing on Maps. It may take a couple of days for your reinstatement to be processed.”
How do you undo a removal from Places? What are the exact steps i should take here? My listing is still showing up in Maps just not Places.
Thanks for your help in advance!
Jeff
[…] unable to verify it in a fully automated way, they have someone call that business. The calls can result in suspensions and removals from the index (“We do not support this […]
I’ve been down for two months on a listing that meets guidelines and has been functional for two years. The only thing I did was change my phone number to a call service that I had to start using (also left my old number as an alternate). It did go active for two weeks with the new number, then I suffered the “We do not currently support this location”
I’ve contacted them like twenty times. I paid 600$’s a month for boost ads (or whatever they’re calling it). I deleted my listing, risking 50 reviews, per their instructions and re-verified. I am still in the same boat, and they have stopped responding to my emails. I checked mapmaker, no longer can find it there as well. Tried adding it, generic removal response that tells me to add it via places (which is a circle at this point).
I have literally tried everything, and I don’t know what else to do. This was my sole source of advertising and I’m scrambling to find a replacement since I have no idea if my listing will ever return. I can’t even fathom how much money/clients I’ve lost right now in the last two months. As stated, already pay 600$’s for boost ads (which is useless without the listing). I’d pay twice that just to talk to someone that doesn’t give me a canned email response that apparently doesn’t work anyway.
Great information here. Any updates on UPS stores being banned or manually claiming a google listing using google plus?
You referred me here from the post “Google+ Business Pages: To Merge Or Not to Merge, That is the Question” and 2 months late… what I felt seems to be very true. Thanks for being on so on the ball and keeping us right Mike. Just don’t have the resources or client base to actually measure or see patterns in this stuff. It’s very good of you to share your insights with us small operators.
Ray
@ray
My blog is a joint project between myself and the many readers who contribute to it either with content, observations or comments. As you can see in this post, I have a lot of help from people like you keeping track of these changes.
Individually none of us could stay on top of this but together we can and learn something to boot.
Google provides the worst customer service of any business I have ever dealt with and I will soon be abandoning them altogether. They make it extremely unpleasant to use their service and use their so called concern for our safety as a frequent excuse for their horrendous service.
I agree with Jeffrey, Google provide the worst customer service.In fact it tries to create confusion for most of the crowd out there.
[…] have no choice but to wait for their engineering solution. Businesses that followed Google’s original advice to recreate their listing have not had any […]
My web disappear from the search I tried to find out what happened but as many people mention it, there is no answer. Many years growing the testimony’s an they are all lost. I would like to know what happened, to be able to repaire something if it is wrong but no . I can’t believe it!!!
My business is more than three years with Google Places and Google AdWords Accounts. It was perfectly doing OK, but for the last one year it’s no longer showing on Google Places for business and Google Maps. I have contacted Google several times through email regarding my particular business; all I have been hearing from them bunch of nonsense, lies and blaming on technical issues. They still haven’t fixed it instead I’m paying every month tons of money to Google on their AdWords Account. Google should be shame of them. It’s a disgrace and I hate it.
Poor services of Google, My Adwords account gets suspended for violationg their advertising policy while my account was not active to post advertisements, So how could i have violated their policies?? this like will show you the proof. http://i1279.photobucket.com/albums/y535/SpazOut07/Discrimanatioin-1.png
Thank you for this article. About a month ago (October 2012) this happened to me. My listing just disappeared after being active for several years. It all started when a happy customer of mine posted a good review on Google+. But it wasn’t showing up. She told me she posted it, and tried again several times. Over the next few weeks I emailed google several times to find out why this was happening. Finally, I got this response:
“Hi Tristan Heberlein,
Thanks again for sharing your local expertise with other Google users! We have reviewed Solstice Landscape Design because of your report.
If there is still anything wrong in our information about Solstice Landscape Design on Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=12463457709744472492), please consider updating it directly via the “edit” link, or reporting another problem.”
So then I follow the link to go see if it was posted, and low and behold, I get a blank page that says “Google+ currently does not support this location.” It’s been that way for the last month or more. Despite repeated emails, and even phone calls to their corporate offices to try to speak with someone about this and get it restored, there has been no response whatsoever. No reply. No real person has ever gotten back to me. It’s all very upsetting, and it appears to be impacting my Angie’s List listing as well, in which I’m paying for advertising – my business doesn’t show up in some of the areas people are searching for me in on Angie’s List.
I did violate the “home office” rule, I’m now learning. Had no idea that rule existed – about not showing your address. Never was I called or emailed about that, and never did I read that it was a rule.
Google sucks.
Tristan
If you received this message you MUST request help via the Google for Business Help Fix a Problem troubleshooter, get in touch with a real person and then wait 6 weeks for the resolution.
[…] vastly superior to the fiasco of businesses being permanently deep sixed into the hell of “currently we do not support” for the […]
Google’s lack of customer support is the most frustrating and disgusting thing I have ever dealt with. They make it almost impossible to contact them, They make you go round and round in circles on their websites when you try to find the links that pretend you can reach them.
Youtube is even worse since Google took it over. I have been mistreated, abused and discriminated against by the Google /youtube moderation team. My account was banne don youtube because of my religion.
Some bigot onyoutube was posting death threats on my channel because he hated my religion so I reported him to youtube without replying to the abuser and soon as a youtube moderator processed my report they gave me a ban instead of the person posting the death threats at me.
When i tried to contact google about the unfair conduct by the prejudice, corrupt, incompetant moderator who had unfairly banned me without even touching the death threats posted at me by the perpatrator, Google did not reply back.
they have given the youtube moderators full power to be judge jury and executioner with no questions asked. When a Youtube moderator decides to play favoritism and behave bias by banning a person because they dont like their religion, there is NOTHING anyone can do to oppose, complain or expose the corruption! And what I’ve told you here is just tip of the iceberg! I have been mistreated by corrupt, prejudice youtube staff on so many ocassions.
google is the pathetic with respect to handling any sort of support issue. It is for this reason that Bing Places will gradually replace google, that and the fact that they work with other social media — where google does not.
stick to search engines, and android operating system…you have no idea what it is like to have a business being victimized by your pathetic staff and ridiculous wait times.
I think all of us should switch to services like yahoo, and bing. they are far more responsive, and reasonable to deal with.
So much for your credo “don’t be evil”, you have been since day 1
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