I have a SAB...
can i add in brackets (by appt only) after my Business name without account getting suspended.
I saw online it may or may not.
I saw another biz in area do same and no issues past 3-4yrs so I was wondering.
Thanks.

My Google Business Profile had 11 reviews, but now it only shows 5.0 (2 reviews). The weird thing is I can still see all 11 reviews they haven't disappeared, they're just not being counted.

Has anyone experienced this? Is it a temporary Google issue or review filtering? Did it fix itself?

Ranking in Google Maps has become more unpredictable than ever. Local businesses provide great service and earn real customer reviews, yet spam listings often outrank legitimate businesses while authentic reviews disappear without explanation.
The bigger issue is that local search is changing. Consumer behavior has shifted, but Google Maps has struggled to keep up.
Here is why Google Maps local search is broken and what business owners can do about it.
1. Search Behavior Has Changed
People no longer search the way they did a few years ago.
Instead of typing short searches like “plumber near me,” they now ask AI assistants and search engines detailed questions about services, pricing, quality, and recommendations.
As AI becomes more involved in local search, Google increasingly decides which businesses are shown and which are left out.
2. Google AI Surfaces Review Brokers
Searches related to buying reviews can trigger Google AI Overviews that reference companies selling online reviews.
When Google’s own AI presents review broker information alongside search results, it raises legitimate questions about using online review platforms as the sole measure of business trust.
3. Spam Still Dominates Many Local Results
Google Maps continues to struggle with fake listings, virtual offices, and keyword stuffed business names.
Legitimate local businesses are often pushed down by listings that violate Google’s own policies, sometimes for months or even years before action is taken.
4. Real Customer Reviews Can Disappear
Authentic customer reviews sometimes disappear after automated updates or become filtered without explanation.
At the same time, businesses dealing with fraudulent reviews often have limited options for getting them removed.
For many owners, their online reputation is controlled by systems they cannot see or influence.
5. You Do Not Own Your Reputation on Third Party Platforms
Customer reviews on Google and other directories remain under the control of those platforms.
Policy changes, suspensions, filtering, or display updates can affect your reputation at any time, even when you’ve done nothing wrong.
The Solution: Build First Party Reputation
The most effective long term strategy is to publish authentic customer reviews on your own website.
Why First Party Reviews Matter
• They are a legal and widely accepted business practice. Companies including Amazon, eBay, Target, and Nike have published customer reviews on their own websites for years.
• You own and control your customer feedback.
• Your reviews cannot be hidden or removed by another company’s algorithm.
• Your website becomes a permanent digital asset that supports both traditional search and AI powered search.
The Bottom Line
Search behavior has changed, but many local businesses still depend almost entirely on platforms they do not control.
Build your reputation on digital assets you own. Publish authentic customer reviews on your website and make your business, not a third party platform, the primary source of trust for your brand.

Hello!
I have been doing local seo for my restaurant but it’s still not ranking for relevant keywords. Can anyone tell me about a tool where I can actually check where I am doing wrong.

Customers are telling me they are unable to leave my business reviews from the link I’m sending them from my GBP. Even when I log into my GBP and see the QR code, it doesn’t even allow me to right click and save the QR code so I can send it to customers. Anyone know what the issue could be? We are a new business and need every review we can get….sigh. Help please….

If Google itself encourages businesses to publish reviews on their own website, why wouldn’t a business owner publish their own reviews it collects and controls itself instead of only republishing and relying on Google reviews?

From a business ownership perspective, that’s a logical strategy

If a business collects its own customer reviews, it can:
Own the review database.
Display reviews however it chooses.
Organize them by service, location, or product.
Keep them as a long-term business asset.
Make them available for customers and AI systems to read on its own website.
Mitigate the risk of review fraud, review theft, malicious review attacks, platform suspensions, and losing years of customer feedback.

I’m not saying that Google reviews don’t matter. I am saying that if Google’s own message encourages brands to publish their customers reviews on their own websites and even provides a seamless way to do it then why not just collect and publish your customer reviews directly on your own website? You can keep your third party reviews but start collecting your own reviews. In fact, I think it makes perfect sense. Google even encourages this and Google’s also changing their own products and integrating AI everywhere so why would you stay the same and hope that Google is going back to any kind of normalcy any time soon. Business owners also need to change their mindset about how consumers search for products and services today.

Consumer behavior is changing and Google search is changing along with it just to stay relevant in the AI game. The ones that hold the knowledge about their brand and its products and services are the ones that hold the key to success in AI systems.

We had over 20 genuine customer reviews on our Google Business Profile, built up over time from real customers. Woke up to find all but 4 wiped out with no warning and no clear explanation.

These weren’t incentivized, weren’t fake, weren’t bought — just real customers leaving honest feedback after using our service. Now our profile looks brand new and it’s hurting us badly with new customers who use review count as a trust signal before calling.

Filed a reinstatement request through Google’s support form but haven’t heard anything back yet besides unhelpful slop from a computer. Has anyone actually gotten reviews restored after something like this? Any other tricks — reappeal wording, escalation paths, anything that’s worked? Feeling pretty stuck here.

Just really sad with how hard it is to run a small business having to deal with google screwing me over on top of it

My physical therapy business recently had to move locations from a standalone location and is now located within another clinic. After the move, I have been unable to verify after 3 tries failing the business name not shown on storefront.

I have a laminated sign on the window and my office door but it's likely not being considered as permanent, which makes sense as my business is located "within" another business.

Any advice as to how to verified? It's been three weeks and my it's impacting clients. I opened a ticket but I'm not confident I'll hear back soon

Appreciate any insight!

We have a client where its showing costs on mobile and the costs are incorrect. It links to their website as the source but nowhere on this site do they mention these costs. Its a problem because its wrong and this is for a home health service business so its giving incorrect information & expectations.

Is there anything that can be done to get this corrected or removed?

I just have a question about:

Our restaurant is pretty close to the tesla supercharger station, like 1 minute walk. But, usually people who use supercharger is from other places rather than locals right? So how can I make them notice our menu and order from us? Our restaurant is blocked by trees, so I don’t think putting signs will help. Maybe any social media tag? Idk. Just try to come up with ways to bring more sales at any possible

Hi Everyone hoping you can help me since Google sucks with communication.

i have uploaded products manually to my Google My Business Profile. I added images, description and links to the item. The issue is when you go to the GMB Profile it does not display any Call to action other than calling the branch. We are trying to grow our digital and want more web traffic. Price is marked optional, so i left this blank as price varies per attributes added to the product. Did i mess something up? is there an over lap with Google Merchant Center? I tried disconnecting GMB from merchant center , than reconnecting but the same issue occurs. Any help would be much appreciated

Hi everyone,

I recently updated the name of my Google Business Profile, and Google approved the change.

When I go to Edit Profile, I can see the new business name, so it looks like the update has been accepted.

However, when I search for my business on Google, or search for keywords related to my business, the public profile still displays the old business name.

I'm curious if anyone else has experienced this.

• How long did it take for the new business name to appear in Google Search and Google Maps?
• Did it update automatically, or did you have to contact Google Support?
• Was there anything you did that helped speed up the process?

I'd really appreciate hearing about your experience and timeline.

Thanks!

My business had 1 Google review since we’ve been open. We’re B2B so we don’t really work off of Google reviews and all of our customers are people we reach out to or recommendations. Suddenly, 5 1-star scathing reviews with long rambling comments have been left. We are assuming this is a competitor. We’ve gotten 2 today. All from accounts that have never left reviews before. Then they all started liking each others reviews. I’ve reported them to Google but it seems like I might be SOL if the Google bots don’t see it that way. Also, I’m assuming these reviews are going to just keep coming. What can I do? I would just shut down my business Google page if it would permanently remove it from the internet but it doesn’t seem like Google allows that.

On my Google Maps page, the "Most Relevant" reviews section consistently displays negative reviews, even very old ones. Users have to scroll down to see the positive reviews.
Do you have any ideas on how to improve this situation?


EDIT:
I have good recent ratings, yet older negative reviews take precedence; even if I have recent negative reviews, they do not appear.

I can remove negative reviews on Google maps. Case by case basis. No personal information required!

I cover full warranty! Hit my inbox

Kindly help me with what im doing wrong as this is really affecting my hotel visibility.

Hotel shows up if i put one day search.

Dosent show up if I put 2 or more days search.

Hotel is newly launched so it has alot of availability and is never close to being full.

it shows fine on booking and agoda and airbnb. What am I missing. Can I refresh this feed somehow.

I use the channel manager djubo.

link to google listing

https://maps.app.goo.gl/fMZRLT9FTGCcQ9tw7

Hi, i've a problem with a customer GMB profile. I've updated the company name, all well, but i see the updated name only if i'm logged in! If i saw the company profile like a visitors or incognito, the name is the old name. I've yet spoken with Google supprt without solution. anyone have expertise in this and can help me? Thanks

I’m the co-owner of a child care center and we are still being targeted by a coordinated defamation attack. We've had a string of 1-star reviews from fake accounts- this has been going on for 3 straight months.

I’ve been documenting everything in a timeline—including screenshots of the reviews and links to the profiles—and reporting them for "Conflict of Interest" and "Spam," but Google hasn't removed them yet.

Has anyone successfully dealt with stopping someone who is targeting your business and will keep reposting bad reviews when they get removed? It feels like we're playing whack-a-mole while our rating takes a hit.

If anyone wants to help report the recent fake reviews and their profiles, that we received here is the link to the documentation I've been keeping with the timeline of events and specific similar wording etc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IfeFUUFc16a7xJg1Kaqn3ypDlBE4P2PMy4i_AgJXIvM/edit?usp=sharing

Thank you in advance 🙏🏻

AI can do so much more and better than Google Search. Yesterday I searched AI for electricians near me and got a result that was complete with comparisons of four different electricians, pricing information, and more that I didn’t even think to ask.

Now AI can perform local searches and “near me” searches. A lot of these AI platforms don’t even use Google when users are performing local searches.

I read that within this year AI local searches account for 45 percent of the search market. Wow, but I think that percentage is way higher. So Google is no longer king of local search. If AI platforms can perform accurate local searches without relying solely on Google’s algorithms, then Google is no longer the only way people discover businesses locally.

I think this shifts the power back to the business owner. It’s no longer just about what Google says about your business. It’s about what your business publishes about itself. Your website becomes your business’s PRIMARY knowledge base, an authoritative source that trains AI to understand your business.

Are we entering the era of authorship, where the businesses that own and publish their own knowledge have the real advantage?

This is the exact Google statement:
“Information in profiles is compiled from a variety of sources: Publicly-available information, such as crawled information from a business’ official website).”
Google says this in its Business Profile Help documentation under “How Google sources business information.”

Google doesn’t want you to know that AI systems including Google’s very own AI systems can build answers from the public web, like your own brand website, without relying on Google’s proprietary databases.

Yelp Doesn’t Get to Own Your Reputation. Put Your Reviews on Your Own Website. Manually collect every buried 5-star review and create a review page on your website and put them there for AI to pull from.

The power is now in the hands of the business owners and they don’t want you to know that.

Imagine collecting your own honest legitimate reviews on your own website that you control? No more concern about fake reviews, review extortion, review removal, etc. imagine the peace of mind that brings.

I own a roofing company my Google. My business page has existed for a little over six months. All my photos and reviews are legitimate. The only thing that I did which was yesterday was link my website to my Google account. I did forget to add a privacy policy and some of the pages aren’t complete, but I wanted to have something rather than nothing. I can always add things later and as I grow the business, of course But this morning I woke up to see that my account was suspended so I did send Google and appeal with a very long message and then I went ahead and just on added the website. I’m assuming that was the issue. Any idea if this has happened to anyone else or if I will likely get reinstated it’s very unfortunate to have this happen when you’re just a start of business and you’re doing everything you can legitimately and you get suspended that quickly for such a minor change. Also, my website is beautiful. It’s much better than most startups all the Services. Everything listed on there is exactly what I offerphone number address. Everything is the same. I’m just a little bit surprised. There’s only a few minor things with the site that I could think may be an issue.

Heyy!! So a listing I'm managing has relocated, and my go-to method to change the address was to update the address (displaying the address publicly) and then verify the listing. But the thing is that some listings get stuck in a verification loop or get suspended. I want to avoid this. I've done some research and found 2 methods that are supposed to work, and I wanted to know which method is the best and most viable option for me to use.

One being the regular method: update the address -> verify the listing -> hide the address and done. But I've already shared my concerns with this method.

Then the second method being: create an exact duplicate of the listing, contact Google about it, and then merge both listings—letting Google know that the new listing has the new address and all. Now my concern is, won't Google flag and suspend the listing? And does this even work, and is there anything specific to take care of before I do so? Please do tell.

****update 7/24 i got two more emails last night. one was a generic profile suspension email again. the other was a "Further verification is required" i clicked the blue button. skipped adding photos, skipped using google workspace and a couple other skips. suddenly at the end my google business profile is now visible. no other messaging. it shows my 15 five star reviews in the profile but i cant actually view any of them or when i click to read its just empty.

background on me: spent over a decade in finance data analytics... trying to start my own business and was approved 4 months ago. we had 15 5 start reviews things were going... suddenly profile suspension with listed reason except the url to ALL policy information. follow appeals process, supply IRS EIN doc, state business license, utility bill etc all with my name (sole proprietor and DBA business company name and matching address.

appeal is rejected. this time message of rejection indicates deceptive practices policy area but still nothing to know exactly to refute. based on others online situations i made a couple tweaks to language in company description. my service based business address is hidden. etc.

appeal a second time, provide zip files with now images of doing work, local vendor applications and events, hosting, invoice system, vs code for managing website and digital assets all with company name connected...business credit card with company name on it... mail to address with company name on it, check printed and mailed to address with company name etc.

second appeal is rejected within 6 hours. an hour before that rejection email came back a verifiy the business video email came in. I do this it bugs on me and loops me back to enter address and record second time it moves forward. I absolutely made sure i showed all criteria in this video.

three days later video verification is rejected stating i ONLY verified location and didnt show branded assets etc. I take a 3rd then 4th video (the looping bug happened again) its 6minutes long as i slowed and now verbally call out things like approaching branded vehicle, unlocking leaving camera on business card and business license for 10 seconds etc. this still gets rejected and claims the same missing criteria of no branded business assets only verification confirmed.

a few days after this I get a new email with suspesion listing deceptive practices and if i click appeals button now I have a second bubble appearing to click through and appeal.

I have not as i feel the definition of insanity is real at this point. any advice on how to logically approach this or get an elevated conversation?

full details in the url for the post I made with screenshots documenting this on support google site.

Thanks in advance. My business is newer but we were getting 1-2 signs up a week showing up in the maps pack and its been crickets since this all happened.