What is triggering Google account suspensions?
-
Over the past 24 hours many of our clients have had their Google accounts suspended. The explanation has been:
"After reviewing your profile, we determined that it has been used to impersonate another individual or mislead other users. This violates the Google+ User Content and Conduct Policy."
We are NOT impersonating our clients, we have their permission. We are not misleading anyone, simply setting up profiles for our clients on Google+.
This has not affected all of our clients, but a significant number of them. We cannot find a common variable between the clients that have been suspended, and those who have not.
- Some have had other Google+ profiles in the past, in another account, some have not.
- Some have been previously verified via SMS, others by phone.
- Some have posts in their profile, others have only the profile info filled out.
Again, we are not trying to game Google, we are simply setting up authorship for them, with their permission.
I have not seen much in the SEO community about this today, and this is NOT related to fake reviews. We do not partake in that kind of activity.
We have written a post on the topic, and no matter how this shakes out, I think our take is solid. Authorship is changing the game, content is changing the game, trust is changing the game… and Google is getting serious about it.
We have also seen this happen to our clients, to our competitors' clients, and to other marketing firms' clients, outside of our vertical.
Does anyone know more about the topic, especially in regards to the suspensions over the past 24 hours?
-
Another point. It doesn't have to be the business owner who does the verification and uses his own IP address. It can be the receptionist or anyone else. All I need is for the business owner to tell the employee to expect my call and follow my instructions. On one occasion, the employee even called me from home because she had no web access at work.
-
I am completely with Daniel here - IP's can trigger this. I know you say you don't think this is IP related, but there are many other instances of this happening. Why Google might favour some over others is anyones guess, but this is where I would place my bets.
-
Thanks for your feedback Daniel. We've tried this before, but with our volume + limited access to the actual business owners, its very difficult. Again, I don't believe this is a IP issue. The same thing happened to competing company's clients in our vertical that are smaller than ours (including some individual consultants that wouldn't trip an IP filter), within the same 48 hour period.
-
FWIW, I try to have my clients set up their own Google+ accounts, then share the login and password with me.
This is generally done during one of my update calls or web meetings, with me talking them through the process
-
Boy the thought has crossed my mind that the number for verification might get tagged. Going to have to start creating Skype accounts or something?
-
Thanks for your response. I know they can track IPs, but this appears to be something different. It hit our clients, and our competitors clients, on the same day.
I am thinking they targeted our vertical for some reason.
Also, many but not all accounts were affected.
Smells like there's more to this story than just "IP volume tracking", since we deal with that and similar volume issues often (like using the same ph# repeatedly for verification).
-
Hi, Even though you are setting up accounts for your clients, creating too many from the same IP would trigger the suspension. This is nothing new. I remember hearing about this last year. Mash
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Manual action penalty by Google
Hello, We have a big well-known brand - www.titanbet.com. This brand is well established and the site has been live for almost 4 years now ranking very well on some very strong KWs. we received a message from Google on Aug 29<sup>th</sup> saying “Google has detected a pattern of artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site” and that “Google has applied a manual spam action to titanbet.com/” The past 2 weeks since the penalty was received we saw some of our major KWs drop in rankings. BUT all brand related KWs were still ranked 1<sup>st</sup> Over the last weekend the penalty has worsen and we no longer rank on any of the brands KWs (we find the site in 5<sup>th</sup> page at best). Moreover, when searching for a sentence from the any of the page on the site in Google, we see other sites ahead of us in the SERPs. Based on the message we originally received from Google we have started cleaning some of the bad links to the site. We found a lot of links from bad sites, some of them are not indexed and probably penalized as well, some are from affiliate websites and some are from some automatic indexation websites based in China and Russia
Industry News | | Tit
we have started reaching out to some of these sites to try and have them remove our links. We are also worried about the duplication of our site. We have found many other sites (mostly affiliate websites) have copied and in some cases completely duplicated our content. Google for some reason has chosen to penalize us for this. Although we do not have control over these other sites. We have run copyscape to try and figure out which pages are the most problematic and we will try to re-write the content on these pages. But what if the other sites copy us again? Any suggestions on the above would be appreciated as we try to understand why Google has penalized us. thank you Titan Bet Team0 -
Google Trusted Stores
Hello, So we sell millions of dollars a month in merchandise - most of that comes from eBay transactions. We do have a script that posts to eBay and we do download our transactions from eBay and process the orders from our admin. Now I feel we will do a lot better in the SERPs if we have the trusted stores quality signal. However; it comes down to this. The conversion pixel. Since the don't pay through the site - do you think we can get away of sending a email to a second conversion page for eBay transactions? Have any of you noticed a boost in SERPs once you were approved with the Trusted Stores? Any advise?
Industry News | | joseph.chambers0 -
Help seems like google is punishing our site and I don't understand why
I would love some helpMy anme is Suzanne Diamond our web site is WWW.thefutonshop.com we have been on line for years, 10 brick and mortar stores, had a strong ecommerce web site but in the past 4 months we have been dropping like a leaf. Organic search has been dropping since November 2012 but now total traffic seems to be slowing We are working on our SEO but I feel it has to be something more direct that we are being punished by google Perhaps it s obvious but not to me Can anyone help me please or give me a direction. suzanne@thefutonshop.com thanks in advance for any direction
Industry News | | FUTONSHOP0 -
Does Google still have a standard search result? How can I get it?
I have heard a lot from the experts that there are no "Standard" Google search results anymore. They said that most of the SERP's of Google that show up are customized/tailored for each individuals even if they are not logged-in using their Google Custom Search. My questions are, Is there still a way to retrieve the standard Google search result? How? Are these scripts will be helpful when searching on Google? *webhp?
Industry News | | RafaelRanada
*complete=0
*pws=0 watch?v=B8ofWFx525s B8ofWFx525s watch?v=B8ofWFx525s0 -
Google Changes Up The Search Results Page
Hi Guys, As you Google has made changes on search results page. I have two points two discuss here : 1. Are we going to see more ads on left sidebar in future ? 2. I think it will also affect the CTR of top three ads in SERP ? Waiting for you guys opinion on it ? Reference: http://www.webpronews.com/google-changes-up-the-search-results-page-2012-11
Industry News | | SanketPatel1 -
Is Google Making Life Harder For Aggregators?
Theres been a bunch of updates recently which have hurt aggregators: Reducing the number of search results to 7 for branded search queries The DMCA update which penalises those with trademark related takedown requests against them. At least 2 'domain diversity' updates, the most recent last week, which seeks to reduce the ability of sites to dominate SERPS e.g. a site which may have 2 search results on page 1 now may have 1. Plus Its commonly believed that Google favours big brands over smaller brands e.g. Marriott over examplehotelaggregator.com. Is this a deliberate ploy against aggregators in favour of brands i.e. does Google believe a brand site is a better search result than an aggregator? A brand site returned above an aggregator for a branded term may be seen by Google as a better fit, a better search result that should be higher. But is that true? Consumers like to see unbiased reviews and lowest prices and that isnt always available at the brand site. Thoughts please.
Industry News | | AndyMacLean0 -
Google driving me Nuts - How do you combine 2 accounts?
I know this must be driving a lot of other people mad as I see loads of people who now have 2 registered accounts at google plus due to their seemingly terrible ability to merge or connect accounts. We have a work email address set up through google, then I have a personal Gmail address. In Google Plus now I have 2 profiles - even though I have not signed up to google plus with my work email, I cannot add this email to my Google + account set up on personal email as it just tells me to log into that account taking me to a page to set up a profile for that account. Has anyone managed to solve this problem - it is happening to everyone in the company, driving us all nuts and our IT guys have no idea how to solve it. Were trying to use G+ for the purposes of SEO & Marketing, but if they make it this cumbersome for people to use, then they are going to die a quick death - after a few weeks of use and noticing the huge number of dead accounts, only live accounts being SEO/Internet Marketing related, and huge number of duplicate accounts, I think their user figures are hugely suspect! Rant over - anyone know how to merge accounts?
Industry News | | James770 -
Has there been any feedback from Google regarding their mass mail blunder?
I received a mail yesterday from a Joseph Middleswart from Google welcoming me to the beta trial for real time analytics. But my enjoyment at finally being able to see what's happening with real time data on my site was tempered by the 100+ spam mails I received immediatly after from some of the 200 odd people he'd included in the bulk mailing. Coming less than a week after Google tells us it's withholding keyword data from GA in order to protect the privacy of logged in users, I'm absolutely dumfounded at their incompetence. How can they show such a flagrant disregard for my privacy in introducing a new service while dressing up a restriction on another service as a security / privacy matter? Did anyone else fall victim to this incompetence?
Industry News | | 2Stroke0