Google’s Local Hiccup
Lora Baker
Local Search Specialist
Managing local listings for clients is the type of job that leaves you feeling like a superstar one day and a complete moron the next. I have experienced the highs and lows of local listing optimization for clients over the last 3 years – including inexplicable sudden drops in the rankings, duplicate listings appearing from thin air (taking months to get rid of), missing hours, wrong phone numbers (coming from who knows where), missing reviews, missing descriptions, missing additional details, etc. Of course, because Google Places is not monetized, there is not and never has been the kind of support that business owners are accustomed to from other vendors. When a small problem comes up (gee –I have no reviews today when yesterday I had 87), I can post in Google’s help forum so that I can get numerous responses from other users having the same issue, which always makes me feel a bit better. I have always felt like I just needed to ride it out and my listing would revert to its rightful (in my mind) place in the Google Universe and all would be well for my clients.
Google has rolled out, and continues to roll out changes to their Places pages. I understand why and where all the changes are taking place and continue to adapt my strategy to ensure client success. Within the last 2 weeks, I have noticed that a very small percentage of my clients have no impressions as of July 19. Even when typing in “business name city st,” these listings are not displaying. Each of these listings is approved and meets Google’s ever changing guidelines. At least two listings that are experiencing this dramatic drop in ranking have been running the product formerly known as Google Boost – currently known as AdWords Express. Both of these users have been using AdWords Express for a couple of months, so neither received the $100 free advertising credit that Google was offering to new users. Because one of the biggest selling points of AdWords Express is that you get support for local listing issues, I calmly called up 1-866-2GOOGLE to find out why I am getting no impressions and to see how this support would work.
The conversation went something like this.
Me: Hello. I am running AdWords Express and as of July 19, my local listing seems to have gone into
Google Places purgatory for no reason. Will you please take a look at my account and help me understand what is going on?
Google: Sure. Can I confirm the login email for this account?
Me: Sure (I share it).
Google: Great. Let’s see here –did you make any changes to the account on that date?
Me: No, I haven’t made any changes to the account for awhile. I am, however, running the paid ads that you are selling.
Google: Oh, I see. Yes, there was a hiccup on our end that day. Don’t worry, it is nothing you did. You should see your local listing come back online within 6-10 weeks.
Me: Oh ok -6-10 weeks huh?
Google: Yes, basically your ad was reset in our system. It is now going to be just like a new listing, so you need to go through the cycle.
Me (trying to keep calm and collected): I see. Ok. Can you please confirm for me that I didn’t do anything to cause this hiccup?
Google: Yes, I can confirm that your listing is experiencing a hiccup and will be back online in 6-10 weeks.
Me: OK. Should I create a new account and reclaim the listing?
Google: Oh no. Then you will just be reset again.
Me: Ok. Thank you for your help.
Google: Please stay on the phone and answer the survey questions. Goodbye.
Me (hearing the survey questions start): Hang up the phone.
Hiccup Examples:
Location in Alexandria, VA (who is running AdWords Express)
Location in Melville, NY (who is running AdWords Express)
Location in Troy, MI (who is not running AdWords Express)
(Note that the actions continue to “occur” even though I am getting no impressions. I have found that for the most part, actions in Google Places are a notoriously unreliable statistic. In this example above (a virtual officing solutions company) every action that is “occurring” is a request for driving directions. When I report to clients on impressions and actions, I have been discounting driving direction requests now for nearly 2 years –I don’t believe that they are true actions being performed on the listing.)
Location in Arroyo Grande, CA (who is not running AdWords Express)
I had a similar conversation last month with a different representative while running the product previously known as Google Boost for another client. I was told that because I changed a business phone number from an 800 number (a big Google no-no) to a local number, that my listing had been “reset” and would require going through the cycle before displaying on Google Places again. Unfortunately, this same listing is going through a 2nd cycle (hiccup?) after being live for 8 days.
Location in Melville, NY (who had a “hiccup from June 8 – July 8 and is now having a 2nd one)
This “hiccup” issue is more vexing to me personally than all the other inconveniences that I have experienced. I made no changes on July 19. I was told by the helpful Google employee to make no further changes to the account until it “cycles through the hiccup.” It is not (from my side anyway) limited to only clients running AdWords Express, and it appears to be affecting less than 5% of my total listings. I do believe that while other local listing sites are important to pay attention to, Google Places is the absolute place that local businesses need to be listed. I also believe that Google is making good changes to their product and making it better for everyone. However, it is very frustrating to think that there will be random hiccups that will affect whether or not listings continue to display –maybe even for months at a time. Until Google can get the “hiccups” worked out of their system, it is time to stop rolling out improvements to Google Places and start fixing the bugs.
Tags: AdWords Express, Google Boost, Google Place Pages, google places, local listings, local search, local search optimization, Place pages
I have noticed this too. But we get absolutely no reporting. It just goes blank. I think this is Google’s way of saying we have shut down your account. But they dont say anything about it. Its kind of like a game to them. We wont show your listing, we wont show any results and we wont tell you whats going. Very frustrating.
Wow – when you say you get no reporting, are they completely shutting out access to your Google Places analytics? That is very frustrating. I have seen this happen before too – I have seen it come back (after the standard “6-10 weeks”). Have you checked if there are any duplicate listings out there?
Hi Lora,
Thank you for your excellent blog post. We are a new business that help small local business with their local business listings, including Google Places. Two of our clients descriptions went missing after adding photos – another client description went missing and came back as the old description we inherited (not optimized). It has been weeks of posting on the forum with no results. I hope that Google starts addressing all the bugs, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
Lora, thanks so much for this.
You both made my day and killed my day.
I read or at least scan the forum daily to try to track new bugs, changes and fixes.
Reset? Start over in the cycle? Takes 6 – 10 weeks??? WHAT???
This is the 1st I’ve ever heard of any of this but I bet it accounts for a lot of the problem reports in the forum. So on one hand its good to know so if it happens to us we’ll know it’s nothing we did.
DANG THOUGH – It makes me not want to even do this any more! I’m almost afraid to touch a listing for any of my new clients in case it appears their listing went from bad to worse once they hired me. So damned many bugs!
How can they call that a hiccup? These poor businesses sometimes live or die by Google and for a hiccup to cause listings to disappear for that long is almost criminal. I’m LIVID!
@Susan -The missing descriptions may be gone for good (gulp). I have also spent a lot of time crafting the perfect description, which makes it even harder. I have been adding Place Posts to each listing (which you can do from the analytics page), and those stay up for 30 days and show up where the description used to be. That way, I can show the clients that I am actively monitoring/updating the listing. What I would really like is if Google is going to make a major change like removing all descriptions, they would put out a blog or something and let us know what we can do instead to make our listings strong. Thanks for your comment!
@Linda -I have got to tell you, when I was on the phone with the Googler and she said (very casually I might add) that we would be down 6-10 weeks, I almost lost it. I had to be careful though, because they treat small business owners (which I was pretending to be) much different than agencies, so I didn’t want her to guess that I was with an agency. They really don’t like us at all!
Google says so little and gives such ridiculous reasons (a hiccup? really??). How come they can’t just push the existing listing back out when I am right there on the phone? What kind of support is that? I was LIVID too when I got off the phone. I saved my yelling and throwing things around my cubicle for when I hung up the phone.
When Google wants to be the main place for businesses to advertise and be listed in the local directory, how can listings fall off for that long and they are don’t act like it is a problem or a big deal? They know that the end users will use them anyway. If businesses aren’t found locally, they are more likely to spend money on AdWords. UGH.
@Susan & Lora – the missing descriptions is a bug. I’ve been reporting it since 7/6 and have been assured it’s not a planned deletion from the update, but a bug they are working on.
@Lora, may want to re-think rep part.
I don’t have a single client on Boost, Adwords or Express. Never have had. Yet I have had 2 very helpful GP reps. BOTH have told me there is an increased commitment to support AND my 1st rep told me he was being encouraged to work more with and offer more support to people like us. They call me just to say “can I help you with anything?” not even trying to sell me a paid service. They “try” to help me whenever I need it on regular bug and dupe probs, even though I’m not a paid client and my clients aren’t either. (I say try because they sometimes don’t know what they are talking about or try but fail to fix probs – but at least they try) The 1st rep I had who is no longer there, would even give me the inside scoop and told me some algo tricks and gave me a glimpse at changes that may be coming. He was great!
There are a lot of Boost/Express reps that say that can’t offer support and I’m sure some don’t like agencies. So it’s a matter of trying different ones til you find the right one. I offered tips on my blog about how to get a personal GP rep. Email me if you want those tips.
Linda
@Linda -wow -that is great. I have gotten support at times from our AdWords reps, but they don’t know much about Places. They have at least forwarded specific issues to the Places team and at times have been able to resolve issues. To be fair, I have called at times when I am already frustrated and am not the easiest client to try to help!
[...] On Friday I discovered a blog post by Lora Baker, a Local Search Specialist over at Parallel Path, that really disturbed me but gave me important insights into a wide variety of problems that are continuously reported on the Google Places forum recently. Lora started noticing problems on some accounts mid July and discovered some clients had no impressions as of July 19 and even when typing in “business name city st,” these listings are not displaying. At least two listings that were experiencing this dramatic drop in ranking were running Boost/AdWords Express. So since the only possible way to even TRY to get Google Places support is through an Adwords Express rep, she called for help. Following is part of the convo. Please head over to read the full post and comments, I’m only grabbing the most important snippets. Google’s Local Hiccup [...]
This article was so helpful. I had the EXACT same thing happen and literally happen on July 19 as well. It only happened to about 2% of the clients that I manage and the account they were in had at once used Boost (Adwords Express) as well. So frustrating!
I can’t tell you how many sleepless nights I had over the same issue of a ridiculous drop in visibility for some of my clients’ Google Places listings.
OMG, it made me so uncomfortable because I felt responsible even thought I couldn’t control it.
For one of my clients, I noticed they their business didn’t even EXIST when I searched for them in Google Mapmaker. They just vanished. I think Google Mapmaker is another good source for trying to get the problem corrected. But perhaps this too is just correlation instead of causation. I can’t say for sure.
@Imprezzio – The hardest thing for me is to try to explain to clients why this is happening. I would PAY for good Places support from Google -Google….are you listening??
@Pashmina – haven’t used Google Mapmaker before, but I just checked it out. It looks like a great resource -I did find one of my clients who disappeared on it. I am almost afraid to do anything though, because I don’t want to reset any cycle. Ugh!
I’m having a similar frustrating problem for client whose Google Places listing inexplicably reverted back to an old address, and then was marked as closed completely (since they hadn’t been at that address for over a year). This was on a verified business listing. Boy, is that ever a sickening feeling, to see that! Especially when I already know the sad truth about Google Places backend. (Time for a blog post about the volunteer editor system behind the scenes of Google places and Google mapmaker … to put it gently: it’s far from professional). Between that chaos and confusion, and what I do believe to be a glitch or “hiccup” that no one at Google seems to give a hoot about fixing… I wouldn’t pay a dime for Google advertising.
Just a thought: is there a correlation, with the small percentage of your customers this is happening to and whether or not they have
1. A Facebook Fanpage
2. Multiple Locations?
It seems to me that a few weeks ago, Facebook started giving Fanpage Admins the ability to add some sort of localization, similar or tied into their Google Places page. I attempted to activate it for one client, but had to back out of the process, because there was no clear way to show more than one location for the Fanpage.
It could be a coincidence, but this was around the time the Google Places hiccup now appears to have taken place for this clients Google Places local listing.
Do you think they are related?
@ Michelle -I’d love to hear more about the volunteer editor system behind the scenes at Google Places (how can I get that job???) and in answer to your 2nd question, yes to #2. The main trouble I had with the hiccup was with franchise listings -individual owners with their listings in individual accounts though. I am not sure about the Facebook Fanpages -a few of the locations have them but they are not tying them to their Place Pages as far as I know. The good thing is that the hiccups were resolved on September 9 -every listing that had been down since July 19 came back up on September 9. Phew!
Thanks for the reply! I have a new theory, which if correct, could be bad news for your restored listings. (sorry. maybe i’m wrong!). My current theory is this:
Google is trying to get caught up with backed up edits, or they just have a glitch, and it seems to me the system is suddenly putting through really old edits from a year ago. The old edits are overwriting the current, correct information. So, even though my client had moved, updated his listing with his new address way back in Jan.. suddenly in July, his address reverted back to the old address, and piddly typo edits were also showing up as pending, and approved. THEN, an edit on Aug 5th showing the business at that address closed. I now remember, before I came on board and got the listing verified, someone HAD submitted just such an edit last year, which I had to correct in January.
Suddenly, these edits are being repeated, including the actions of the people who reviewed and approved them last year! I don’t believe it’s person taking these actions, I think it is automated. It seems to me that Google has just decided to let it take it’s course, and not worry about the destruction it is causing in it’s path. It will all be over with in 10 weeks. Unless you’ve tried to fix them, you might see all those actions repeat again in 10 weeks!
I could be jumping to conclusions. As far as the volunteer editor system .. I don’t know if it’s some glitch that allowed me in some secret backdoor or what? Because I would have thought this was widely know …but I never hear anyone mention or complain about it …
Thought I would post that one, since it was getting a little long .. and this could be considered a separate topic. Also, you might want to edit or delete this post, if you think it’s wise to do so…
When I submitted a Google Places Listing a few months ago, there was a link that suggested something like “Want to get your changes updated quicker? Help review other edits.” or something to that effect. It reminded me of something I used to do for DMOZ search engine back in the 90s and early 2000s. Where you could volunteer to edit a certain section that you had some expertise in.
I was a little shocked to realize that Google used volunteer editors to manage business listings! There is so much potential for conflict of interest, you know? It must have started out, that they were only editing the maps, but then local listings got tossed in there.
I had read many people griping about waiting time for “the powers that be” to approve changes, so I thought “What the heck. It couldn’t hurt.” I chose a few geographical areas that I know well, so I could make informed decisions about stuff. I hoped it would help my client’s listing get updated quicker, by earning some sort of ‘brownie points’ for reviewing and approving other legit edits.
It wasn’t long before I grew very disappointed in the system and fed up with trying to help out. It seems like editors are so suspicious of everything and everyone trying to “game the system” that nothing ever gets approved If a business owner is a little obsessive and tweaks his listing a little too often, they get flagged as being potentially suspicious. Every action is suspicious, and the whole thing is just a crazy mess of confusing red tape. I think new editors who really want to help “move things along” quickly get disillusioned and give up.
That said, I do have 2 tips that have worked for me, in getting these wierd glitches resolved while sitting around waiting for Google to do something.
1. Go into your listing, and change anything at all. Add a space between two words and click save. That made our listing reappear! But I have no doubt, it will get overwritten again.
What? No one is going to ask what #2 is? It’s a doozy but I’m not sure I’m ready to reveal it. I will send it to Lora in an email and she can check my theory. (I believe I figured out what causes reviews to disappear, and how to bring them back).
@Michelle -frustrating to hear about the editor system and how it takes so much just to get any changes approved. Is this going through the “Edit this place” link and then reporting a problem on verified listings or do you mean clicking “Edit this place” on non-verified listings and updating that way? I have tried to look up more information on the volunteer edit system, and I couldn’t find anything. I have definitely seen old information come back -especially in descriptions (with misspellings, which is even more frustrating).
I am looking forward to your email, and will definitely check out your theory!
Hello again, Lora! I searched around, trying to find more information about this, and there really is very little. After finding this article by Matt McGee last night, it sounds as though it is something new. Possibly it is being offered to people entering a new verified listing, who already have a little bit of a history on Google, and have logged in some local reviews. I would have fallen into that category, at the time I was registering the business listing. Here’s the link to his take on it:
http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/google-adds-place-editor-to-maps-home-page/4792/
But when I took the bait, it didn’t not appear to be something new at all. It looked to me that many, many people had been reviewing and approving edits for years. It could be that they originally were just helping “map the world” … and it organically morphed into documenting buildings and businesses? The next thing they knew, they were working for Google Local Listings for free! Perhaps that is why the old timers have an inclination to mistrust any newcomer. They probably think they are there for selfish reasons, to skew listings in their own business’ favor or something. I don’t think anyone would dare do that, as every action is documented, reviewed, rated to the hilt. But they did draw me in by appealing to my selfish own desire to get my own changes approved quicker!
Matt McGee had another recent post about Google losing track of a Hilton Hotel in Hawaii. Apparently the Hilton’s Places page disappeared too!
http://www.smallbusinesssem.com/bizarre-bug-in-google-places/4701/
I couldn’t find an email address on the site yesterday, but I assume if I email lora @ this domain .. it would make it’s way to you?
Great article Lora and huge thanks for sharing. We have seen some weird and wonderful things happen to Places listings over here in the U.K. The latest is a client having two listings merged by Google when we asked for one to be removed (password issues meant we couldn’t access the one we wanted deleted) and another where reviews built up over six months just disppeared. Totally agree Google should iron out the bugs before rolling out new functionality. It bugs me that they just don’t seem to care that people’s livelihoods depend on them and their devil may care attitude! Keep preaching please!
Blimey – that’s quite a revelation – that the GP editors are voluntary. Has anybody had any mileage with a places listing where the address has been entered incorrectly and needs to be changed? I was advised to delete the listing completely and replace it with a brand new one with the correct detail changed. Any comments gratefully received before I take action.
@Derek, thanks for the comment! It’s about time I get another blog article up! @Ray, I would NOT delete the listing completely and replace it. If you already have the listing claimed, you should be able to change the address and then go through the phone verification process as long as the phone number has not changed. If you have a new phone number and a new address, completely deleting it may be the only way to go.