Guide
The business has gone from the map and it is costing you calls today. Here is what caused it, what to do in the first hour, and how the appeal actually works. Free, and nothing is held back to make you ring us.
is the usual wait after a well-made appeal. Repeat appeals make it slower.
Do not edit anything yet. Work out which rule the listing broke, and in most cases it is the business name containing words that are not part of the registered name. Fix that one thing, gather proof that the business is real and at that address, and appeal once.
In the order they turn out to be the real cause, which is not the order Google’s own help pages list them in.
By a distance the most common cause, and the one businesses least expect because an agency usually did it. "Smith Plumbing Emergency 24hr Drain Repair" is not the registered name of anything. Google’s rule is the name on the shopfront, the van and the paperwork, and nothing else.
A virtual office, a mailbox, a co-working desk, a registered-agent address, or a home with no signage while the listing shows an address. All of these are grounds, and Google checks them with street imagery and with the post.
Changing the name, the address and the category in one session on an established listing looks like a hijack, because that is what a hijack looks like. Legitimate rebrands get caught by this constantly.
Particularly in the regulated categories. A general contractor filed as a locksmith, or a marketing agency filed as a lawyer, triggers a review whether or not it was deliberate.
A burst of five-star reviews from accounts with no other activity, or reviews arriving faster than the business could plausibly serve customers. This suspends the profile, not just the reviews.
Often created years apart by different people, sometimes by a previous agency. Google treats several live listings at one address as an attempt to occupy more of the map.
Suspensions happen in waves when Google tightens a category, and businesses that have not been touched in years get caught. This is genuinely common and it does not mean somebody made a mistake.
Soft means the listing is still there but unverified and no longer appearing; hard means it has gone from the map entirely. Sign in and look: if you can still see and edit it, it is soft. The two need different handling and the notification email rarely says which you have.
The instinct is to start fixing things. Editing during an active suspension muddies what the reviewer sees and can turn a soft suspension into a hard one. Work out the cause first.
The listing as it stands, the review count, the categories, the hours, the photographs. If this goes badly you will want to prove what the listing looked like, and once it is gone you cannot get it back.
Go down the list above and be truthful about the name field and the address in particular. An appeal that argues the wrong point fails, and you generally get one good attempt before a human stops reading carefully.
Correct the name to the real one, the address to a real place of business, the category to the accurate one. Then appeal, with the evidence attached: a utility bill, a photograph of the signage, the business registration, an insurance certificate.
Say what the business is, what changed, what you have corrected, and attach the proof. Do not argue that the suspension was unfair even if it was. The reviewer is deciding whether the business is real and correctly described, not whether Google treated you well.
Usually three to seven working days. Filing repeat appeals is read as spam and slows it down. If it is refused, the refusal usually names a reason, and that reason is the one to address next.
The website still ranks, the directories still exist, and the phone still works. Say on the site that you are open, make the number the first thing on the page, and let the other listings carry the weight until the profile comes back.
A reinstated profile usually comes back with its reviews and its history, and then sits in the same state that got it suspended unless somebody changes how it is run. Keep the name the real one. Make one change at a time rather than several. Do not let anybody put service words back in the name because it moved the ranking for a fortnight.
If you want the profile done properly rather than just restored, that is a different thing and it has its own page.
Most often because of the business name. A name with services or a city added to it, rather than the name on the signage and the paperwork, is the single most common cause and it is usually something an agency did years ago. After that: an address that is not a real place of business, several edits made at once, a mismatched category, reviews that look bought, or a duplicate listing. Suspensions also happen in waves when Google tightens a category, and some are nothing you did.
Usually three to seven working days after the appeal, sometimes longer when a category is being reviewed in bulk. Filing repeat appeals makes it slower rather than faster.
Not if the profile is reinstated: the reviews come back with it. If the profile is permanently removed and a new one is created, they do not transfer, which is why it is worth getting the first appeal right rather than starting again.
Almost never a good idea. Creating a replacement while a suspension is active is treated as evading it and can end with both removed and the account flagged. Appeal the existing one.
No, and anybody who does is selling something. Google decides, appeals do fail, and whether yours succeeds depends mostly on whether the business genuinely qualifies at the address and under the name on the listing. What can be done is making sure the appeal argues the right point with the right evidence, first time.
No. Reinstatement is a different job from optimisation, with a different likelihood of working, and it should be quoted as its own thing rather than folded into ordinary local SEO.
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