There has been a long standing “feature” in the Local Business Center where certain listings would be ‘Flagged waiting for content check’. There have been numerous inquiries into the support forums but often with no word from Google as to what the problem was or how to solve it. For example, one post started in August, had no comment from Google after 38 comments with some as recent as December.

Ken O’Connor of MapMyBusiness.com seems to have found a work around for the persistent bug and (dare I say) lack of customer support response to a recent post again reporting the problem:

Hi, regarding ‘Flagged waiting for content check’.

Sorry for the long reply, which first explains the problem, and then the process you must use to solve it.

I have successfully used this process for many clients. It has also worked for a number of members of this group.

THE PROBLEM:
1. Your listing will only be marked as ‘Flagged waiting for content check’ if it contains a word or term that Google does not like.
2. Google personnel do not appear to ever perform content checks – so YOU must correct the problem.
3. The offending word can appear anywhere in the listing. I have found and corrected instances within categories, the description box, business names etc.
4. I have found no pattern to the words or terms that cause problems so prepare to be ‘surprised’.
5. When you have removed the offending word or term, and RESUBMITTED, our listing will change to ‘Awaiting next update’. Unfortunately it can remain in this state indefinitely. However, when your listing
changes to ‘awaiting next update’, it means that you have removed the
offending word(s) or term(s).

THE SOLUTION:
Use the process below to correct your problem:
1. Take a copy of your current details (e.g. copy a screen shot into a word document).
2. Remove information ONE PIECE at a time, and RESUBMIT your listing to determine if you have located the offending item. e.g. Remove your description, then RESUBMIT to see if the status changes to ‘Awaiting next update’
3. When you have identified the offending word, or words, you may start to REENTER the information you removed. Be aware that there might be more than one offending word or term in your listing. When you have reentered all of your information, you can be confident that there are no prohibited terms in your listing.
5. You must now create a completely new version of your listing. Be careful – use the exact same terms that PASSED the content check.

When you validate your new listing, it should go active immediately I hope this works for you, Rgds Ken

I suspect that the workaround does in fact often succeed although I have not had a need to test it myself. I would love feedback from others that have success with it.

However, while the workaround does succeed, the cause might be different than Ken posits. We are unlikely to know without a chime in from Google or some more testing. It might be based on some database limit in addition to a limit on certain words.

In the past, there has been an error state incurred in the posting of an LBC record when field length or the total words in several fields exceeded some arbitrary database field or design limit. I suspect, but am not positive, that this might be the case here. That might explain the apparent randomness of Ken’s solution.