One-star attacks
If your competitor is leaving you fake one-star reviews, you can get help. Go to the Google Business Profile Community. One of the partners will be able to escalate to Google for you.
The threat of being attacked is more real that you’d probably imagine. A single one-star review could cause your business to fall from the local three pack down to #50 or worse.
If Google finds that you’ve had malicious spam, they’ll lock your profile. Spam lockdown is designed to protect you from getting more fake bad reviews, but it will, unfortunately, leave your profile locked for anywhere from three to six months.
Depending on how much your business relies on GBP, this could potentially mean you’ll lose a ton of revenue for no good reason.
So be aware of anything like this.
Is someone attacking your GBP?
If you notice that your profile keeps being shut down, or that reviews keep disappearing, or you keep seeing malicious edits (changing key information), you may have a competitor who’s trying to attack you.
The good news is that you can fight back.
First, find a small business lawyer. Have them help you open a lawsuit against John or Jane Doe - because you don’t know who’s attacking you.
File a subpoena against Google. The email address is legal@google.com.
What you are trying to do is you're trying to subpoena the identity of somebody who has left suggested edits or fake reviews, on certain dates, on your business profile.
When doing this, be very specific about it. Show screenshots, and other proof.
Google is going to have 30 days to reply to you. In those 30 days, they look at the identity of whoever the offender is.
They send out communication to them saying: “You are being named in this lawsuit. Did you do this? We have this evidence.”
Most people don't answer because they're afraid of being sued by Google.
At this point Google goes ahead and releases whatever IP or personal identifiable information they have to the person who has done the subpoena.
That's the process. If Google has their name, you also get that, and you can go take legal action against them.
This is not legal advice. It’s just a potential way of finding who’s trying to hurt your business.
Make sure to speak with your lawyer before you engage in anything.
Your GBP account has been suspended.
Let’s talk about what can get your account suspended.
You may have intentionally done something wrong or that goes against the guidelines.
This could be very simple, like naming your business something that is not actually the name of your business.
You might add keywords that are not supposed to be there because an SEO expert says you should do it, without knowing any better.
If you get suspended, and then add your keywords back later on, and this happens a few times, you will get suspended, and there’s a chance that every account you manage will get suspended, too.
So if you’re an agency, you could get all of your clients’ accounts suspended, even if those accounts were following the guidelines to a T.
Location spam
If you work from home, hide your address. If you work from a co-working space, hide your address. If your business address is a PO Box, hide it.
Google wants visible addresses to belong to actual store or office fronts, with real signage. If that doesn’t apply to you, just skip it.
Make sure your business hours are realistic. If you run an agency, and you have “Open 24 Hours” listed, Google may send someone at 3am to verify that.
If you run a pay-per-click agency, use a different email address for your GBP account, for the reason mentioned at the other point... you could get your clients’ accounts suspended as well.
Google Sweep
Google will sometimes do targeted spam sweeps of specific places and specific industries, say Real Estate in San Diego.
They’ll run a Mendel test, which is built to expect X number of false positives. If they get more than that, they’ll start shutting people down.
If you’re following the guidelines, you probably won’t be hurt by it.
If you are suspended, make sure you’re prepared to appeal. Right now, only 4% of businesses are actually prepared and ready to be reinstated.
If you’re not in compliance, and it takes weeks to figure out why not, your ranking is going to tank.