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Ok, thanks for the clarification!

Here's the error message: "Our Keyword Difficulty Tool is having issues displaying AdWords API data. We are working with the AdWords API folks to get a fix soon!"

Are you using Google UK stats or elsewhere? It might only be for Google UK.

I'm trying to do some keyword research on Google UK but it hasn't been working for a couple of days now. I have a client waiting on a proposal that features this research heavily and might lose them if I can't use it soon!

Is there any estimated time for the return of the service? Is the keyword tool down for everybody?

I'm trying to use Open Site Explorer, but whenever I try to I get the error message "Ouch! It Looks Like Something Went South". Interestingly, I don't have this problem when entering a very popular site like google.com, yahoo.com, bbc.co.uk.

Is there a problem with the tool at the moment, or something wrong on my end?

Just to pick up your point about keywords in the title. Yes, all the new business listings have keyword rich titles - e.g. Dagenham Waste Removal, so you could be right about that being the source of the problem.

Thanks for the reply.

I hear what you're saying about not creating even more confusion but this situation requires some form of human intervention to unravel and getting someone at Google to respond is nigh on impossible.

Just to be clear, all the new listings I have set up are on separate accounts. They have all been verified by postcard and up until recently were appearing normally in Google Places.

The other suggestion that has been made is that I should set up service locations on the main listing rather than separate listings for each location but as the main listing is suspended I can't do that. It does appear to be a catch 22 situation.

Thanks for your reply Robert.

Google doesn't appear to offer the option of phone verification in the UK so I have been forced down the postcard verification route.

Each of the listings has a different business name based on the locality (e.g. Dagenham Waste Removal, Romford Waste Removal) physical address, phone number and website URL.

The reason why I set up separate listings for each service location was that the consensus on the Google forum was not to put all your eggs in one basket.

I have a client with a waste removal business who had multiple listings on his Google Places account for different service locations.

Over the last four months I have been creating separate listings for each separate service location, each under a different Google account and with a unique business name, address, phone number and website URL. They have all been verified by postcard and listed separately in local directories so that they have citations. As I have been creating the new listings I have also been deleted the old ones to make sure they are not flagged as duplicates.

2 months ago all the listings in the client's Google Places account were placed under review. I made some changes and submitted it for re-review but no go with Google.

Now all the new listings I set up have also suddenly been placed under review.

About a week ago I noticed that information in two separate Google Places listings was being mixed up - for example, the website URL for one listing was being shown in another listing. There is no connection between these two listings other than that they were both set up from the same IP address so this seems very strange. I reported this to Google and asked them to sort it out, then all of a sudden I found that ALL of the new listings had been placed under review. So now my client has no active listings at all.

He can't afford to wait another 2 months for Google to review all the listings again so I am wondering whether the best course of action would just be to delete everything and start over.

Any advice would be most welcome!