Have You Used Twitter For Google My Business Support?
-
Hey Everybody!
If you've been doing Local for some years, chances are, you remember those dark days in the past when there was zero Google local support. You could post something in their forum, but that was pretty much your only hope. It was an absolutely amazing day when they finally rolled out phone support, and I'm still very grateful that this exists, but just this week, I learned about another way to contact support.
Joy Hawkins has surfaced a Twitter account you can tweet when in need of assistance and she says its not only really fast, but that the help is US-based (which would be great for US users).
I'd never heard of this before and wondered if any of you have tried it, and what response times and overall satisfaction you experienced with it. If you've not tried it yet and are experiencing a local client conundrum, maybe give it a try and let our community here know how it went?
-
Hey There!
I really appreciate you coming back to update this thread with your experience. So, that's really good to note that someone noticed your company Twitter. Good to know! And sure, you don't want to abuse the account, but it sounds like you've now got a new resource that could be handy in a variety of situations. Neat development!
-
A follow-up, https://twitter.com/GoogleSmallBiz saw this conversation and reached out to our company twitter account (my original request came from my personal account, I think our company twitter has a bit more weight) and they were very quick at resolving the issue. I don't want to abuse the account, but I'm tempted to put all of my odd/weird request through them since, as mentioned, anything out of the normal seems to confuse the call center. And that is the only time I need to reach out to them.
One thing to note, they requested I DM them.
-
Hmm, that's too bad that you haven't rec'd a response in 24 hours. And your experience with phone support sounds typical - some staff are very good, but others don't seem to have equal training. Frustrating.
On Google dedicated reps, I have wondered if they might go that way if they fully implement Home Service Ads in Local, but, I'm not holding my breath. It would be awesome if they did!
-
Morning Miriam,
24 hours since I tweeted, no response yet. I'm still leaning towards getting the calls back. Although I dealt with the call center twice yesterday and the first person was awesome (pin not showing to a client in Dominican Republic so pretty standard request), the second person never did get what I was asking and kept repeating the same answer over and over.
I'm going to continue to monitor and will report back when if I hear more.
Any idea if GMB will take a representative model for legitimate agencies that offer local services? I would love to have one contact to call when I bring a client on board and deal with firming up their GMB visibility. I have brought it up with a few people at the call center, one guy hinted at it, but wouldn't say anything official.
-
(This is Miriam, but I'm in Mozzer Alliance right now)
Oh, super! Looking forward to hearing how it goes. Good luck!
-
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for the heads up about this account. I was unaware of this and am in the process of trying it out myself. We had the previous name of the hotel resurface as one and are trying to get it marked closed again. The only issue I can see is explaining a complicated issue a tweet (although it might help trim out the "fat" of the request)
I have had varying success requesting a call back for support, although with any complicated issue, there is a lot more back and forth then I would like.
I will report back when I heard more.
-
Good Morning, Peter!
Thanks so much for sharing your experience, and that's a great example from the Webmaster Help Forum. I agree with you that the voluntary support in Google's forum is kind of an extraordinary thing. On the one hand, it has proved an excellent training ground for Local SEOs who have become TCs and have gained extra knowledge of common problems with the local products. On the other hand, it sort of abets Google in not having to staff Local as they probably should.
It will be nice if someone give the Twitter option a try and shares with us how it went!
-
I didn't use GMB in Twitter but i have some issue with AdWords. And GAW Twitter account was very useful for me answering me exactly what i need. And even they answer me for other questions in DM.
Overall their support forum strange since in 99% of cases you receive help from non-employees and some of answers are not very useful at all. Of course there are spectacular examples where someone receive help from employees:
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/webmasters/R0MGhtF3IDs/6UghGfcXCAAJ
but they're rare. Very rare.Their phone support is IVR (interactive voice response), their mail support was scaled with AI (i can't find article but i read in past someone complaining about that with case of Nexus ordering and epic mail correspondence with them). So we shouldn't scary that Joy trying their Twitter for helping.
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
-
Can I use the same interior photos for multiple stores in Google My Business?
Hi, The company I work for has many store locations across the country. Getting good/quality interior pictures has become very difficult for us. We recently good a Virtual Tour from Google for one of the locations, and they took some really pictures. According to Google, the "Photos should represent the actual business" and "Represent the real-world business location". My question is: since our stores are VERY similar in the interior, can we use the same pictures for them while we get more pictures? Would Google penalize this? Thanks!
Local Listings | | StantonOptical0 -
How to get Google to choose office location pages and not the homepage. Tips and Suggestions?
Hello Mozzers The issue I have is a client with a number of office locations (six) across the south of England and they want each to rank well for each location + the qualifier solicitors. IE Brighton Solicitors. Work has been undertaken on the office location pages to include the services offered from each location, full postcodes and phone numbers. These location pages are linked to from the footer of the website so have good internal links. The site has a DA of 49 and the office location pages have a PA of 33. Google in its wisdom keeps ranking the home pages for the searches. The result is that the site ranks well in one location (London) but poorly in all the majority of others (2nd,3rd and 4th page). Were it does pick up/choose the location page the rankings are better than the homepage. The other locations are less competitive than London according to the Keyword difficulty tool. Any tips on to suggest to Google that it should rank the office location pages and not the homepage for each location? Thanks in advance 🙂
Local Listings | | highwayfive1 -
Not all business locations showing for a brand search
I've got a client with multiple business locations however when I type the company name into Google it's only displaying 2/3 of the branches in the local pack for that SERP. The client's picked up on this and would like the third location to appear in the local pack when people search for their company name. I have a suspicion that it's because the third location (the one that isn't displaying) has an address that's exactly the same as several other businesses that are located in offices directly above or to the side of them. My (very flakey) theory is that Google is perhaps uncertain about the exact location of this business given that there are several others with the same address but different business names, so the NAP consistency is being diluted and Google is simply leaving them out of the local pack due to the uncertainty over which business is in fact located at 2 West Street. So my question is, has anyone else had any issues of not all business locations showing in the local pack for a brand name query and if so how did you solve it?
Local Listings | | PeteW0 -
Google Maps: Submitted Feedback Changed Results
I came across something interesting today. So there is a business in one of my clients areas that had submitted and was being listed on google maps for some spammy locations. I went in and submitted feedback informing google of bad listings. Within 30 minutes or so my results for the same key phrase was different. I decided to see why. I went to other browsers on my computer and searched that key phrase and the results went back to how I originally saw them before the feedback submission. I then erased my browsers cache and after this the results now showed the original results. Does anybody know what cookies and such get placed in a browser that affect listing results? Sincerely, Garret
Local Listings | | eWebify0 -
Google Places category language issue
Hi there! I've recently added a new listing in our Google Places for Business account. When adding the basic info initially, the category suggestions where in English, so I just picked one. We are based in The Netherlands however, so I'd like to use the Dutch categories. When I edit our existing listing, the category suggestions are Dutch. When I edit our new listing, suggestions keep showing in English. Does anyone know how I can change this? I tried to switch language settings in my Google account, but it seems like the categories are just stuck on a certain language once the listing is set up? Thanks for your help!
Local Listings | | RBO0 -
Website blocked by Robots.text while in Google Places Pending.
Hello everyone, If I have pending google places listing, and I added my websites robot.text to block search engines. Will I still get accepted in Google Place? The reason is. We want to block the Google Places listings from search, and only show up on the google places listings. As we have to have a similar website with more explicit content we want to rank on the search results. www.mywebsitetor.com (google places) (PG)
Local Listings | | EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT
www.mywebsitetoronto.com (organic ranking) (A) Hope this make sense, thanks for your help.0 -
Change in Google local ranking
So we have a WA construction client that we're working on doing some local SEO stuff. This month all the keywords that we're tracking but one is on the first page. It's easy to say "yay, we're so damn good at what we do", but it seems like there must have been a shift in the way google is ranking local results. Anyone else experiencing this??
Local Listings | | SoleGraphics0 -
'People Also Searched for' appears on some but not all local businesses, why? (Google Local Knowledge Panel)
I have a client who does not want the 'People Also Searched for' section on the Google Local Knowledge Panel to appear. I informed her that this is a standard part of the search presentation and that we cannot change. She then pointed out that the 'People also searched for' does not appear on her competitors' Google Local Knowledge Panels. (See the attachment for comparison) This raises a couple of questions: Why are the local businesses different? Can I change the content of her panel? I would appreciate any feedback. google-local.jpg
Local Listings | | sirgeorge0