Why was my Google Business Profile suspended?
Short answer
Usually because Google believes something on the profile breaks its guidelines, most often the business name, the address, or whether the business qualifies for a profile at that location. Google rarely says which rule. Sometimes a legitimate business is suspended after an edit or a report and has to show that it's real.
Google most likely suspended your Google Business Profile because it believes something on it breaks its guidelines for representing a business, usually the name, the address or whether the business qualifies for a profile there. I can’t tell you the exact reason from outside, and neither can anyone else, because the notice normally points to the guidelines in general terms and doesn’t name the field at fault. The way to narrow it down is to check the profile against the usual causes, one at a time.
The usual causes, as questions to ask yourself
| Area | Question to ask |
|---|---|
| Business name | Does the name on the profile match your signage, license and website exactly, with no services or city names added? |
| Address | Is it a place you really operate from, and not a virtual office, a mailbox or a shared desk nobody staffs? |
| Address display | If customers never visit, is the address hidden? |
| Duplicates | Is there a second profile for the same business, perhaps one made by a former employee or agency? |
| Account | Does the Google account managing the profile also manage other listings that have had problems? |
| Reviews | Were any reviews bought, rewarded or written by staff? That breaks Google’s review policies. |
Answer these honestly before doing anything else. If one of them describes your profile, that is the likeliest reason, and it has to be corrected before an appeal has a fair chance.
What tends to set a suspension off
Suspensions commonly follow an event. Google doesn’t publish what prompts a review, but in practice the things that come before one include:
- An edit to a core field such as the name, address, category or phone number.
- Several edits made close together.
- A new owner or manager added to the profile.
- A report from a member of the public or a competitor. Anyone can report a listing or suggest an edit to it.
The event isn’t the same as the cause. An address change doesn’t break a rule. It can lead Google to look at the profile, and what it finds then decides the outcome. That’s why “I only changed my hours” and a suspension can both be true.
When you have broken no rule
Much of this checking is automated, and it’s commonly observed that trades with a history of fake listings receive closer scrutiny, so real companies are sometimes caught along with the fake ones. A legitimate business can be suspended without having done anything wrong.
In that case nothing on the profile needs correcting. I can’t promise how Google will decide or how long it will take, and the appeal becomes a matter of showing that the business exists, under that name, at that location.
Check that it’s a suspension at all
A suspension normally comes with a notice inside the profile or an email from Google. If you have neither, the listing may have gone missing for another reason, so look at the other possibilities first: a profile that was never verified, or one that needs verifying again after an edit. A drop in ranking can also make it look as if the listing is gone. Each of these is a reason your business may not be showing up on Google Maps.
What to do next, and what to avoid
Work out the likely rule, fix it, gather proof that the business is real, then appeal through Google’s process for getting a suspended Google Business Profile reinstated.
Creating a new profile to replace the suspended one makes things worse, because it produces a duplicate. So does editing the profile repeatedly while hoping something clears it. If you want it handled for you, that is my suspension recovery work.