Google My Business Blocked?

In this review, we will look at what Google My Business is, how to create an account, and how to properly manage it. In addition, we will talk about what to do if Google has blocked your account, how to restore it, and how to block it.

How Google My Business Works

In order to understand how Google My Business works and why your account may be blocked, you need to understand what Google My Business is.

Google My Business (GMB) is a service that allows you to manage the display of information about your company in Google search, Google maps, and other services absolutely free.

Google My Business Help

My Business provides an opportunity to communicate with clients and get feedback on your work. You can post information about your products or services, prices, promotions, or special offers. It additionally allows you to add office photos and company news.

Google My business is focused specifically on regional searches. This means that if a prospective client in Kansas wants shoes, your store will be shown above the search results or to the right.

By clicking on the link, the client will be able to view your assortment. They can see the opening hours, the location on the map, go to the website, and call the store. They will additionally unity to read reviews and ask you a question. The user is offered a list of companies that provide similar services.

If you add photos of your product, the customer will be able to familiarize themselves with the models in advance. They will be more likely to visit the store.

This service is suitable only for those companies that have offline representations.

In fact, My Business is a Google business directory that contains data about your company.

What is Google’s business data? This is a list of information about the business, for example:

• Company name
• Description of services
• Field of activity
• Address of the company and its branches
• Contact phone numbers
• Schedule
• Site of the company
• Catalog
• Photos of the office, facade, customer photos of goods, etc.

The My Business functionality also allows you to track analytics. For example, visits to your card from search, view on the map, user traffic based on search queries. You will be able to track conversions and user actions on the site. This information is available in the Statistics section of your profile.

You can also create corporate mail with your domain name through your GMB account. This is suitable for companies that do not have a website or already have a website created through My Business based on a profile card.

How to Set Up Google My Business

If the Google Ads service is linked to your Google account, it will automatically appear in the panel and you can launch advertising campaigns from My Business.

Therefore, it is better to create My Business in the same account where Adwords was created.

In your Google Account, go to the My Business tab.

Click Manage now.

Add your company name.

Indicate the field of activity. Start typing the first letters and follow the prompts to select an option.

Next, select the option to add the business to the map. This will make it easy for customers to find you.

Enter the address. When registering, you can only enter one address. Correctly enter the location of the head office or main store. You can add branches to an already made account.

If companies are already registered at the specified address, Google will offer to choose yours from the list. If your company is not listed, then select “None of these.”

If the company is already registered but does not belong to your account, then you need to confirm the card. To do this, select your company from the list and request confirmation in your My Business account. You can also exit the setup and simply change the company information on the card.

If you are adding a new company, then select your location on the map.

Indicate if you serve customers outside of this location.

At the next stage, you will need to fill in the contact phone number and indicate the site. If there is no website, you can choose the option “I don’t need it” or “create automatically from the data.”

Click “Finish”. There is one more step last. Enter the contact details of the recipient of the confirmation letter from Google and click “Send”. In order for the company to appear on the maps and users can find a profile in Google my business, you will need to wait for a letter through the US Postal Service from Google, where a confirmation code will be indicated. The account will be fully active once the code is entered.

If you haven’t rented an office yet, you can choose to confirm later. In the future, you can confirm your address through My Business at any time on the Home tab. You can also go to the Address Management or Address Verification tab.

After creating your account, add:

• A company description
• Phone numbers
• Opening hours
• Services provided
• The catalog
• Any promotions or special offers

Pay attention to the attributes. They provide the ability to add information about services, service options, health, and safety. The list of attributes is limited and depends on the category of business that was indicated during registration.

To enter your attributes, click on the edit icon and add the appropriate options.

Add reaction buttons to posts such as order, buy, learn more, register, call. This will allow customers to purchase goods or services conveniently. You will not be able to add buttons to offers, but there is an opportunity to add a promotional code for a discount or terms of a user agreement.

There are 4 types of records in My Business:

1. Event: Displays of the schedule of events are available until the end of the event and then will disappear.
2. News posts: The post is limited to 1500 printed characters and is intended to inform the client about events in the company, news, etc.
3. Product: This is a mini-product page that appears in the search. You must attach a photo and indicate the price. Try to guess or “Ask the manager” principle does not work.
4. Special offers: We considered the above. The description of the shares is also limited to 1,500 characters.

The more the account is filled, the more chances that the client will visit you and not a competitor.

Website Development Through My Business

Go to the section of the site and click “Create”. Based on your information, the main part of the site will be generated, which will most likely have to be edited.

First, enter the correct website address.

Next, you can edit the color palette and text style.

You can also add additional photos, but you cannot add text blocks. When the site is finished, you need to publish it and start advertising by sharing links to the site.

In addition, you can change the language of the site. This will translate the button text and CTAs into the selected language.

Remember, in order for your account to appear in the search, you will need to wait for the letter and confirm the address. Sometimes you have to request a letter several times because it doesn’t come the first time. On average, a letter from Google arrives within 10-30 days. If nothing came within this period, re-add your company to the cards.

If you don’t want to wait that long, you can use the official Google service My Business Provider.

This is a program designed specifically for enterprises, organizations that work with large amounts of information. Such companies become Google partners and help other businesses add their information to Google Maps and Google My Business. The program is free.

Moreover, the companies themselves can work offline and even provide banking services, or be car dealers.

You can become a member of the My Business Provider program through your account manager. Therefore, the participating companies themselves must use Google Ads for at least 1 month. To register, you will need to fill out a form and get an API. Now you can help your partners. My Business Provider members confirm their Google addresses in the traditional way. Then they send data about the client companies and receive codes from Google, sending them to their clients. Moreover, they must be connected offline and online with the audited company. That is, it will not work just to sell access to GMB to unscrupulous companies, it can only be provided to your client.

The program participant does not get access to the data of the company for which they are generating the token. They fill in a special table in the CSV extension and send it to Google. They receive a URL containing a unique verification code for the company. This URL is sent to the client with detailed instructions, and Google sends the attachment to the client.

Google My Business Help

The letter looks like this:

Google My Business Help

If your company has several branches, you will need to create separate cards for each. It is better to create a group where you place the addresses of the branches.

Enter the name of the group and in the address management select your address group.

Then, click “Add address”.

After, follow the instructions. The procedure for adding a branch is the same as a company in Google. A separate page will be created for each branch. There you can write reviews, add information about opening hours, and post information about sales and photos. You can add up to 10 branches to one group. If there are more, create more groups of addresses.

If you do not have the time and opportunity to manage your account yourself, you can invite administrators or an external agency company. The agency will maintain the account through its own. A special panel has been added to Google My Business for agencies that maintain multiple accounts at the same time.

You can add a user in the “Users” section. Select “Add User”, enter their e-mail, and specify the role: owner, administrator, page manager.

To effectively promote your account in My Business, you need to regularly engage, add, and update information, post new photos, and respond to reviews. This directly affects the frequency of Google card impressions.

Also, the frequency of impressions depends on the location. The closer it is to the customer’s location, the more impressions. A high ranking is also an additional ranking factor.

Don’t forget about 3D tours and of course the quality of the content. Behavioral factors are also important when promoting an account.

For more convenient account management, you can download the mobile application. It makes it possible to:

• Communicate with customers by responding to reviews
• Edit company profile
• Add photos and promotions
• Analyze statistics
• Activate notifications about customer interactions with the company in real-time
• Give access to other users

Google My Business Has Blocked My Account, What Should I Do?

You received an email that your My Business account has been blocked. Before taking action, you need to figure out why Google has blocked your account.

There are soft and hard reasons for blocking.

Soft: the account is not entirely blocked, it has limited functionality and users do not see information about the company. However, you can manage the account and make changes to it. This usually happens if the address is not confirmed.

It often happens that a company has a lease agreement for a room, a request is sent but the letter does not come.

This happens if:

1. There are a lot of tenants in the room. It is difficult to verify the address when renting a workplace in a coworking space.
2. Your address does not match the address in the registration documents or in the tax form.

Hard is the real problem here. Your account is completely blocked and you need to understand the reasons.

When the account that belongs to the owner of the company is blocked, all information about the company and its addresses become inaccessible to users.

If an account managed by an administrator is blocked, then they lose access to the account and the ability to manage it, but the information remains in the public domain.

When deleting a profile, the owner and administrator completely lose access to the account. The only thing you have to do in such a situation is to send a request to restore your profile.

Reasons for Blocking Your Google My Business Account

The main reason for blocking an account is a violation of any of the Google rules. In the message about the blocking, you will see the reason and the task is to eliminate it. Let’s see why the account can be blocked.

• Your Google My Business may be blocked due to the fact that the business cannot be displayed on Google maps. This happens if you are not the owner of the premises that you indicate as an address, or you do not have a lease agreement.

GMB help

• You have added additional data to your company description. According to Google rules, it is forbidden to indicate tags, codes, and addresses of divisions, opening hours, phone numbers, website addresses, information about goods and services, promotions, links in the “Company Description” section. For them, there are corresponding sections where it is worth entering information.
• You have created multiple accounts for the same company address.
• Your Google account has been blocked for spam. This happens if you are sending bulk emails. For these purposes, mailing services is better suited. It can also be caused by receiving, deleting, or downloading a large number of POP or IMAP emails. In addition, the use of services for sharing files can lead to blocking if they connect to your account.
• You have frequently changed addresses, categories, names, websites, phone numbers, and other information on your company card.
• The company name, address, or phone number in My Business does not match the information in the Directories.
• You indicated their home address as the address. Google will never endorse a home business because it believes it carries high risks for the customer.
• The business does not have a physical address. My business objective is to help clients find the services or goods they need within walking distance, to display the route on the map. If there is no office where clients can come, you have 2 options. You can rent an office or use another channel to promote your business.
• You have tried to do artificial search engine optimization with keywords.
• Your account was mistakenly filtered. This also happens. Google’s algorithm recognizes the product as a medicine, fake, or mistakenly classifies the business as prohibited. But, before filing an appeal, check your account carefully. Perhaps T9 has made adjustments to your texts.
• Activity is not supported by Google+. Gun shops, drug dealers, including medical cannabis, terrorist organizations, etc., cannot be added to My Business.
• You have made posts that call for violence, contain scenes of violence, obscene information, terrorist content, aggression, insult users, show rude attitude towards children.
• You posted the content that contains personal data of people, financial information, photographs of identity documents. Or they asked users for any data except for their name, e-mail, phone number.
• You posted false information or defraud customers.

How to Unblock Your Google My Business Account

• Before proceeding to unblock your account, check if you have corrected the reasons for blocking.
• Then, send an unlock request.

Click on the link “request for their reinstalment” and follow the instructions.

After confirming all the points of the questionnaire, fill out the form to submit a request to restore your account.

Be sure to include your phone number, and make sure to describe the situation in detail.

After that, you may need to provide Google documents that:

1. Confirm ownership of the premises or lease
2. Prove that you are not sharing premises with other tenants
3. Registration documents in the tax and company registration
4. The dashboard URL of your GMB account to verify your business profile
5. Proof of physical address, for example, a photo of a showcase with a sign and address, office number, if any

How to Close Your My Business Account

You decided to close your business but the company’s GMB account remains. To prevent customers from calling in vain and wasting time traveling to a store or office, you must delete your account. How can you close your Google My Business account, and how long does it take to delete business data on Google?

It’s easy to do:

• Log into your My Business account, go to the “Manage Addresses” section.
• Then delete any branches or branch groups. To do this, select delete from the menu.

• Then confirm the action by clicking “Ok” and marking the appropriate checkboxes. Then select “Delete account”. It’s done, your My Business account has been deleted.

If you want to delete one or several branches but not the account itself, then also go to the “Address Management” section. Then put a tick in front of the address you want to delete, go to “Actions” and select the option “Delete address” or “Closed forever”.

The branch will be removed.

Google My Business is a great tool for selling and driving traffic to your website. In order for it to work as efficiently as possible, it is important to do it regularly. Make sure to add new posts, pictures, post promotions, and events. It is also necessary to fill in all the necessary information in the profile so that customers can more conveniently use the services or purchase goods. When maintaining an account, it is important to follow Google’s rules. THis way, you will not encounter account blocking.