Community Discussion: Did Your Google Listing Suddenly Disappear?

[MiriamEllis]

There is nothing quite so alarming as seeing your business suddenly vanish from the Google local packs/local finder. We got first wind of this when Moz community member CalicoKitty2000 posted that their fishing charter business in Florida had abruptly stopped showing after enjoying historical high local rankings for a very long time. Their company is Sea Leveler Sport Fishing Charters. Their organic rankings were still a-okay, and as I was digging around trying to rule out common problems like guideline violations, malware, penalties, I was lucky enough to come across a totally separate discussion of the same startling phenomenon at Linda Buquet's Local Search Forum.

To observe this phenomenon for yourself, look up 'fishing charters cape canaveral'. In the local pack, click the 'more places' link to get to the local finder. Observe what is in the local finder view, including the fact that only one business is located at 505 Glen Cheek Dr. Then, zoom in on the map, and you will see CalicoKitty2000's company, Sea Leveler Sport Fishing Charters, magically reappear in the results. You will ALSO notice that something like 8 other businesses, in addition to Sea Leveler, located at 505 Glen Cheek Dr., are also suddenly present in the local finder at that zoomed-in view.

What appears to be happening here is that Google has made a change in which they will only show a single business at a given address within the same category. This is a major, major change that poses a very obvious problem for businesses like legal firms and medical practitioners who share the same building and category. Coworking spaces hosting a variety of same-specialty tech startups also come to mind.

Joy Hawkins (one of the smartest Local SEOs I know), posits this in addition to the shared building/shared category factors influencing this change:

"I believe Google is A/B testing at the moment which explains the crazy fluctuation we're still seeing daily on trackers like Algoroo"

Joy says she's planning to write an article about this soon, so be on the lookout for that if this has affected your business.

In the meantime, I have two thoughts:

1. This filter is so unfriendly to so many businesses, I would not be surprised to see it go away. However, it never hurts to create buzz/raise awareness. If you've been affected, you might want to post your example in Google's forum with a plea to Google to treat you more fairly. I would argue that it is NOT creating a good user experience for people seeking a doctor, a chiropractor or a fishing charter in a specific neighborhood to be shown only partial, single results. I know I'd rather know that there are 7-8 choices of fishing charters conveniently located in a building on a marina. After all, if one charter is all booked up for the day, I'd like to know that other companies are there to serve me, wouldn't you? I'd say this apparent filter makes results less relevant than more relevant. I find it particularly weird that our example business, Sea Leveler, is being filtered out given how far ahead of most competitors they are in terms of review count. Wouldn't you want to see the most-reviewed business first?

2. Hopefully, this filter is just a test, but for the sake of damage control in the meantime, this might be a good time to invest in some Adwords to replace your missing rankings (hey, Google, I hope this isn't your diabolical idea behind the change, a-hem!).

If you've been affected, please, study your SERPs and share with our community any clues you are seeing. We can all help one another survive Google's curve balls better when we share. I would love to hear of anything you are observing about this, and am particularly interested to know if you are seeing a rotation of businesses ranking at different times of day. For example, if Businesses A, B and C are all at 123 Main Street, is only business A ranking all the time at the non-zoomed level, or at some point in a given day, are B or C being given preferential treatment?

Please, share your findings!

[MiriamEllis]

Oh, man! Not this:

Google Business and that the reviews "may" return once the bug is worked out.

It has been 4 years since Google's last major review fiasco. Hope this doesn't turn into round 2. Thanks for mentioning, David, and sorry Google Business Manager is giving you a headache.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Calico!

So appreciate you returning with a progress update on this. I see what you see. Kind of a pain to have to pay for visibility you previously enjoyed for free, but at least there is something you can do

[MiriamEllis]

I love the spirit of experimentation, but it's important to remember that any failure to represent your address exactly as it appears in the real world is a violation of Google's guidelines.

[David-Kley]

Google has been messing up a lot lately.

First, the new Google Business manager is HORRIBLE. (sorry, had to get that out of the way first). Google Plus and Local used to be so easy to manage and use, but now you have to go through more page to do the same things. Just my personal opinion.

We have also been noticing reviews disappearing from local listings, and when we call them and ask what's up, they (Google) say it is a technical issue with Google Business and that the reviews "may" return once the bug is worked out. We have a lawyer-client that has worked extremely hard to get over 90(!) legitimate 5-star reviews, only to see them cut that back down to 60. Then, after we called and complained, 3 days later they were back.

[AL123al]

Regarding the last Google major update, has anyone seen anything specific to certain local industries? I'm thinking about locksmiths and this type of industry. It would be good to know if anyone has noticed fluctuations with certain clients and not others?

[petrakraft]

So far it is still working. The customer is back in the local back. No other spotted disadvantages anywhere - so far. Adding a suite number didn't work out - like Joy Hawkins did confirm several times. Perhaps you would like to make some experiments with e.g. adding a letter to your street number? As I have seen the filter is working withing 5 - 15 minutes - so you can fix any change pretty quick.

[CalicoKitty2000]

This is an interesting experiment.  I am also hesitant to do this because NAP has been the best practice for so long.  It would be impossible to change all of the citations as well.  I am really interested to see how this plays out, however.

[CalicoKitty2000]

I wanted to give an update of what I am seeing for our Google My Business page.  I am seeing that there are 2-3 fishing charters listed at each marina now, which is good.  I am only seeing my business in about 25% of them.  The good thing is that my adwords account is working and I am showing up for most of my tracked terms in adwords.

[MiriamEllis]

Eric, yes, Joy's post is super! Thank you so much for thinking to link out to it. Very relevant to this discussion.

[mgordon]

Thanks for sharing the video! Helped a lot.

[Tabassum]

Yeah! Eric, exactly I will.

Thanks for the suggestion

[Eric_Rohrback]

Thanks for sharing this Miriam! I'm still seeing a lot of movement, and a lot of speculation on the local search forum. Joy just published a really nice article explaining what she's been seeing. I recommend everyone looking into this thread check it out - http://searchengineland.com/everything-need-know-googles-possum-algorithm-update-258900 

@Tabassum M - you should probably start up a new thread for a high level of Google My Business Listings (since that is a good topic), just so we don't derail this discussion.

[Tabassum]

your post was very useful but Could you please share the detail process of google lisitng,

[MiriamEllis]

Hi There!

Thanks so much for sharing the details of your experiment. I agree that recommending that clients change their address is not advisable, but your experiment definitely shores up the explanation that Google is filtering based on shared addresses. Some Local SEOs are theorizing that Google's aim is to improve result diversity, and thus, quality of their results. I could see that being true in some cases, but in CalicoKitty's case in this thread, I think Google is actually delivering less helpful, rather than more helpful results.

So appreciate your contributions to this thread!

[petrakraft]

Just read the whole "story". One of our clients had the same problem: has been in the local pack and was out for several search terms. Same with zoom-in zoom-out (appearing after movement). Obviously the filter because of a 2nd business with the same adress. We tested to change the address (which was a minor change - instead of "27a" we tried "27")  which did work out immediately. After 10 min the business was back in the 3-pack.

I don't recommend that changing of the address at all - but in conclusion with the customer we decided to stick to that slighly changed street number - at least until we get more information about that local update.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Calico,

Clicking on the 'more' link at the bottom of the 3 pack to go to the local finder, are you still only seeing 1 business come up in the list at your address? When I checked yesterday, I was seeing 4 different companies, including yours, coming up at that address. Curious what you are seeing in the local finder today.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Wbmsmet, great video link. The sound is a little wonky, but I recommend anyone experiencing this filter take a free hour and watch it. Very informative!

[wbmsmet]

This might help some of you:

A video review of Google’s Possum Algo Update with Joy Hawkins and Mockingbird Marketing

• posted by @ndyjsimpson

watch?v=VvnR0VkCHJA

[CalicoKitty2000]

Miriam,

I think the "filter" is still there, its just that we have bubbled back up to the 3 pack on a few of our search terms.  When I look at each of my key search terms, however, there is still only 1 fishing charter from each address displaying.  I am really happy, however, to see us getting back to the top!  Thanks for checking in on me!

[MiriamEllis]

I am seeing signs that the filter may be letting up. CalicoKitty - I'm seeing your listing reappearing for 'fishing charters cape canaveral' again in both the 3 pack and Local Finder. Can you confirm?

[MiriamEllis]

Hi CalicoKitty,

Yes, you are bringing an excellent practical perspective on exactly why this change of Google's is not serving the user's needs. And that's particularly telling that you come up as a top rated business but are not being featured as a top ranking business unless you filter/zoom the results.

I agree, Adwords is a band-aid while we see how this shakes out, and I do think it's worth it to contact Google directly to make the case that they are not delivering relevance. Really appreciate you sharing your experience with this.

[CalicoKitty2000]

I also wanted to add that before this change, we ranked in the top 3 for 16/24 of my top tracked search terms.  Now we rank for 1/24 of them.  I can get us to come up on most of them after I click on "top rated" on a mobile site.

[CalicoKitty2000]

Thank you Miriam, I am pins and needle to see how this shakes out. I would like to expand on why this does NOT improve the user experience. In our case, there is a cruise terminal right next to our Marina. Anyone searching for a fishing charter would think they have 1 choice. And like you said, if they are booked, then who? Then they would have to take a taxi to the next fishing charter instead of seeing there are 8 to chose from within walking distance.

I also want to point out that we come back in the results of you choose "top rated". So why not show us to begin with?

My husband wonders if there is any connection to Adwords (I told him I don't think so, that would be unethical). We had stopped using Adwords because our position was good. We just turned Adwords back on because of this change. It feels like organic search results are almost irrelevant on mobile now. You have to go past 3-4 ads, the 3 pack and then you get to organic results. So, now to be found, it seems like you either have to have ads or be in the 3 pack.