We currently do not support the location: Fuck.
Google Places | 12 Jul 2012
Dear Google: Fuck you.
I know you don’t owe me a damn thing; I preach this all the time. HOWEVER, when you claim to offer support, good support, I expect to see at least a fraction of that.
Sure, you answer my inquiries w/in 48 hours and your responses are kind natured – despite my abuse of various curse words. In fact, sometimes you are so kind to give me a timeline, and invite my reply if my issue is not rectified after “4-6 weeks.”
That’s all good except:
- I know a canned response when I get one – the “thanks, Thomas” isn’t tricking me.
- Do not give me a damn timeline if you 1) have no idea when it will be fixed 2) have no intention of ever fixing it.
- “4-6 weeks”? Are you fucking kidding me? There are millions of listings, I get that. So hire more staff!? Where are those ad dollars I pay you every month going? “4-6 weeks” in internet time is a bloody eternity. For those of us who manage client local listings, at 6 weeks it is too late. Client go bye bye.
People, it is time to take matters into your own hands – waiting around is no longer an option.
So, where stood your glorious, profitable listing, now shows “We currently do not support the location.” Fuck me right? Here is how I now go about solving this issue.
- Contact Google via their support. Here is a write up I did on a short cut: link
- Do a null submit & Share an update on your place page. Here is a post to that affect: link
- If your listing does not come back in 7 days, you can pretty much throw in the towel. Proceed to Step 4.
- Delete listing & re-senc post card. Yah, it sucks. First, take a screenshot of your listing edit screen. You’ll want to make sure you optimize it the same way, and you may forget what you did. Or, just open a new tab and leave it open while you delete it in another.
- Go into your dashboard, you may need to click the Google Places logo in the top left. Find your listing, and locate the hyperlinked “delete” text. Click it. NOW you will want to delete the listing from MAPS first. Then save. Click delete again, and now delete from your places account. Yup, that’s a deep burn – not fun.
- Now go create a new listing and send post card. You know the drill.
You might alternatively leave your listing alone and just create another listing. Once activated and live, delete the old listing. It is possible your old listing MAY come back while you wait for the post card…in my experience though, your chances aren’t good.
In short, do not sit on your ass and hope Google is going to wave its wand and revive your listing. It ain’t going to happen.
Keep in mind though, you may go back to square one. Like a domain, your listing has history. The older it is, often the more credible it is. With credibility, comes rankings. By creating a new listing you start fresh. Sort of. This time however you already have tons of citations, reviews etc. all indexed by Google. So this time Google just needs to connect the dots, which in my experience takes less time than if you had nothing.
You may remember us local SEOs telling you a long time ago that before sending the post card for your new listing, create a bunch of citations. This way, when you activate your listing and Google goes looking for your goodies, it can more easily, and quickly determine credibility. Otherwise, if Goog finds nothing, it may decide that you are a brand new business and not worthy of top spots for some time to come.
So, it could be worse : )
Here are some situations where I have just decided to pull the trigger and start over:
- - Google merged two of my listings. I deleted the non-live one and re-sent the post card after Google failed to separate them after 2.5 months.
- - My listing just plain disappeared. Null submits, and contacting Google did nothing. Delete. Postcard.
- - I activated a listing, went live, fell into pending, did a null submit, revived it on my back end (healthy in the dashboard), but never showed up again in the SERPs. Google called it a technical error on their end. I bugged them every month for 3 months, nothing. Delete. Postcard.
- - Listing was hijacked by competitor. They swapped out my phone and business name. Kept my address. Alerted Google. Google played dumb, claiming this did not happen. I could trace it in the edit history. They said they’d fix it. 2 months past. Delete. Postcard.
The moral of the story is, stop waiting around for someone else to do something. Google does not give two shits about your petty listing issue. Today you need to take matters into your own hands.
Related posts:
- The Google Places Null Submit Trick (or sort of a trick)
- Delete or Transfer Ownership of a Google Places Page
- Goodbye, Farewell Google Places Phone Verification…
- How to Move a Google+ Local Listing
- Google Places Pending Status Surprise
Great Article Adam! I couldn’t have said it better.
Is there anything that we can do to make Google start to care and service their products. These are (almost critical services that people rely on, how can they get away with this?
What if the listing is a hospital or another essential service?
I hadn’t even really considered that. Absolutely.
I really don’t think much can be done – they’ll do what they want to do.
Thanks for stopping by Michael!
Good read, we all feel the same pain -.-
great to see you writing again – they will never get their shit together unfortunately but I know that felt good to write
patrick
Haha! Yah, I re-read it the next day and thought to myself “did I really post that?”
Hope all is well Patrick!
Great article. I hope Google reads this! =)
Fantastic. 6 monts with Google Support and nothing happened. Delete, postcard, and now it’s finally up again!
Thank you so much Adam.
So stoked to hear it worked for you.
One thing we really haven’t covered to date is being banned. When the above doesn’t work, 50% of the time it is because your address, phone, or URL has been banned. Don’t expect Google to let you know it has been either!
The other 50% of the time you are likely setting off their filter. For example, if you have locksmith in your biz name, you will never get that damn thing live.
Thanks for stopping by to let us know Andreas : )
Adam
It was very nice to hear that there is more people like me that hate Google as i am,
anyway what is my options?, that shit happened to me every mount.
What should i do, change my business name?, what about all my citations ?!
The funny part that i see fake companies locksmith names showing up on Google every day … what the fuck….
Locksmith listings are tricky – in fact I could do an entire blog post just on how to deal with locksmith listings.
Google has a lot of filters in place to cut down on the amount of spam in that niche, and it is very easy for a legitimate company to get caught out because of that.
Usually, starting over is the best way to go.