Google has suspended your local listing and you’re no longer showing up in the Maps section. Now what do you do?
The action to take is to analyze the possible causes.
Here are 5 reasons your site may have been suspended:
- You’ve added keywords to business’ official business name
- Your physical business address is actually a virtual office or mailbox
- Your website and Google Plus page aren’t associated with a physical address
- You’ve used a forwarding URL in the website field
- Multiple Google Plus listings for the same address
Let’s take these on one at a time.
One, if you’ve added keywords to your official business name, Google will likely consider this spam. Oftentimes, though, Google won’t let you change your official business name once you’ve created it. You’ll want to contact Google if this is the case.
Two, many years ago it was Okay to use a virtual office or mailbox as a physical address. Nowadays, however this is considered spam and/or manipulation of the search engines. If you run a home business you’ll need to decide if you would like to use this as your business address. If not you may want to lease of buy an office space for your company.
Three, if your website and Google Plus page aren’t associated with a physical address, then this could lead to a penalty for your local listing. If you run a national/ international ecommerce business then you may not need to worry about this. If you run a home business, however, then you may want to decide to list your home address. In certain circumstances you may be able to use the Hide My Address feature in Google Plus.
Four, you’ve used a forwarding URL in the website field. You may have done this for tracking purposes or for some other reason. The best action to take is to list the URL of the homepage or your website.
Five, you’ve created multiple Google Plus listings for the same address. Google really wants one business to have one website and one Google Plus listing associated with the business. You will likely need to take down one or more of these Google Plus pages and keep the one the makes the most sense.
The five reasons for a Google Plus suspension are what I have actually encountered during my 12 years as an SEO professional. But, there may also be a few more reasons for your website’s suspension.
Please see the reference section below for a few more reasons listed at Search Engine Land. I haven’t personally experienced these but you may have.
Reference
http://searchengineland.com/top-9-reasons-google-suspends-local-listings-247394
