What Are The Biggest Reasons Google Suspends Local Listings

There are numerous threads spread across the Google My Business forum that tells of business owners or SEOs that have become panicked over finding out that the stumbled across a big red “Suspended” banner at the top of the page when they’re logging in.  There is quite the extensive list of things you should do listed on the Google My Business guidelines.  But there are some things on that list that are much more serious than others.

But the unfortunate thing is that Google, more than likely, won’t tell you why you got suspended.  It seems that the reason behind this is that Google doesn’t want to help the rule-breakers to get better at doing what they’re doing and avoid the consequences.  But at the same time, it can suck if you’re innocent and you didn’t intentionally break the rules.

There are two types of suspensions that we have to be aware of, and they are:

1. Soft suspension
   1. This type of suspension occurs when you log in to Google My Business and you see the “suspended” label, and you don’t have the ability to manage your listing.  But even then, your listing is still going to show up on Google and Google Maps/Map Maker.  Ultimately, the listing has become unverified.  Google has removed the ability to manage  your listing, but the listing’s ranking is rarely touched.  A soft suspension can be fixed by creating a new Google account, and simply re-verifying the listing.  After that, you should probably stop breaking the rules.
2. Hard suspension
   1. As you can probably tell by the name alone, this type of suspension is worse than a soft suspension.  A hard suspension means that your entire listing has been removed from Google, including all of your reviews and photos.  By pulling up the record in Google Map Maker, it’ll say “removed.”  The only way to fix the problem is to have Google to reinstate it.  But more than likely, Google probably won’t do it because when Google has decided that the business listing isn’t eligible to appear on Google Maps.

So what are some of reasons that Google has suspended your local listings?  Joy Hawkins has got nine of the top reasons why your account got suspended, and the list can be found on her post on Search Engine Land.  Check it out by following the link below!

Search Engine Land: Top 9 reasons Google suspends local listings