Main takeaways:
- Proactive Defense Against Profile Issues: Understand common Google Business Profile problems such as negative reviews, verification issues, and profile deletions, and learn how to address them proactively.
- Effective Response Strategies: Discover practical steps to manage and resolve issues with your Google Business Profile, ensuring your law firm’s online presence remains strong and client calls keep coming.
- Importance of Documentation and Persistence: Emphasize the need for thorough documentation and persistent follow-up when dealing with Google support to resolve profile issues effectively.
Google Business Profile, formerly known as Google My Business is Google’s version of an online directory.
It’s a powerful marketing tool because it allows you to be part of google’s local algorithm and appear in location-based searches.
GBP is what allows you to show up in the map pack making it easier for nearby potential clients to find you.
It is very simple to deploy and get meaningful results.
The downside is that you are completely beholden to Google. They are 100% in control of the tap.
And if you get affected by one of the 4 issues we’re going to discuss, it could be catastrophic.
Timestamps:
Introduction to Google Business Profile Issues
Timestamp: 00:00:05 – 00:00:55
Handling Negative Reviews
Timestamp: 00:00:55 – 00:10:03
Restoring Removed Positive Reviews
Timestamp: 00:10:03 – 00:18:14
Verification Loop Challenges
Timestamp: 00:18:14 – 00:32:19
Preventing and Recovering Profile Deletions
Timestamp: 00:32:19 – 00:40:59
Transcription:
00:00:05:29 – 00:00:36:00
Patrick Carver
What if you woke up tomorrow and you had no Google business profile, no reviews, and all of your calls came to a screeching halt? We’re managing over 90 Google business profiles for our law firm clients, and we’ve seen a sharp increase in some troubling issues. Things like being unable to remove bad reviews, Google and valid reviews, verification problems, and even outright entire dismissals of full profiles.
00:00:36:02 – 00:00:55:20
Patrick Carver
If you’ve been affected by this or you just want to get out there and play a little proactive defense before the Google Reaper comes for you, then stay tuned. Welcome to the Optimize Law Firm podcast. My name is Patrick Carver. I’m the CEO of Constellation Marketing and this is the podcast where we talk about how you can run a more profitable and enjoyable law firm.
00:00:55:23 – 00:01:22:24
Patrick Carver
In today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about different Google business profile nightmares. We’ve been seeing a lot more of them, but we’ve been able to deal with them pretty well in most cases where we’ve been able to get these reinstated reviews, reinstated error reviews, removed different things like that. So I want to give this a really practical take on how to fix a lot of these common issues as you’re probably dealing with this too.
00:01:22:24 – 00:01:45:13
Patrick Carver
And if you are, it’s extremely frustrating. Scary even because it represents a big portion of new business that can come in. If you don’t have it, it can really put a wrench in your plans for revenue growth and profitability. So we’re talking today about Google business profiles. You may have known about this as Google my business, but a couple years ago they changed this.
00:01:45:19 – 00:02:14:11
Patrick Carver
And it’s basically Google’s version of an online directory. There’s no real directory per say, but it’s effectively where Google is going to store your business’s information. And this is a really powerful marketing tool for law firms because it is going to be central to how Google fits you into their local algorithm. So if you are looking at search results and search results for an attorney in your area, you’re going to see if you ever think you see ads, you see the map pack.
00:02:14:15 – 00:02:38:14
Patrick Carver
And that’s really what we’re talking about today in terms of Google business profile and how it fits into the search landscape. And that’s that positioning is really, really powerful because it’s going to place you above all of the other organic results. And what we know from years and years of work with law firms in the search engine space is that people are looking for solutions quickly.
00:02:38:14 – 00:03:02:10
Patrick Carver
And so they’re often going to go with one of those first selections. So it’s really essential that you appear in as many of these local searches as possible. And Google business Profile was a key part of that. It’s very simple to deploy a Google business profile and get pretty good results with it without any sort of fancy optimization or even requiring a marketing agency like ourselves to get into it.
00:03:02:12 – 00:03:32:19
Patrick Carver
The downside of Google business profile and Google products in general is that you really beholden to Google as to how it lives and whether or not exists right there in 100% control of the tap of whether or not you are eligible to be placed into these search engines. And we’ve been affected or some of our clients have been affected by a couple of different issues that we’ve seen where it can really have a catastrophic impact on your business.
00:03:32:19 – 00:04:05:03
Patrick Carver
And like I mentioned, we’ve been able to fix these and work on solutions, creative solutions that help get your GDP restored or get reviews restored. But if you don’t deal with it properly, you are going to be effectively pulling yourself out of all of those local search results. So today we are going to talk about four pretty common scenarios that we’re seeing and how you can actually go about fixing those and make sure that you have a safe and secure Google business profile.
00:04:05:05 – 00:04:28:24
Patrick Carver
There’s not there’s nothing quite like the sting of a negative review, especially when it’s not even really one of your clients. This is an issue we have seen numerous times from our clients, and we’re going to talk about these negative reviews first and some scenarios and basically how you can deal with them when it is truly a fraudulent review.
00:04:28:24 – 00:04:56:09
Patrick Carver
So the first thing I will say about this is that just because someone was a client of yours and they didn’t like the result and leave a negative review, that inherently does not make it illegitimate. Right. We get questions sometimes about people who have, you know, or legitimate clients and they just left a bad review. And there’s a kind of, I guess, misunderstanding that we can go and click a button and get that removed.
00:04:56:09 – 00:05:19:21
Patrick Carver
And that’s just not really the case. However, when you do have other situations where a number of other scenarios don’t go through in just a second that don’t meet Google’s guidelines as far as what an accurate or an approved review can be, then you have legitimate grounds to go in and try and get that removed.
00:05:19:21 – 00:05:42:18
Patrick Carver
And so we see a number of these where different scenarios. But one, it could be a competitor, it can be someone just spamming, it could be a weird advertising play, lots of different things to go in here. And the net result is that you get a negative view on your website. You never have this person as a client and you know it hurts you.
00:05:42:18 – 00:06:04:08
Patrick Carver
I mean, there’s no way around, especially when you’re trying to build a reputation and and you know, and stack those, those five star reviews. Getting one with no context or anything like that is particularly painful. So let’s talk about some of the types of negative reviews that can actually be removed and how you would go about doing that.
00:06:04:10 – 00:06:34:09
Patrick Carver
We’ll link to the full list of these. Google has specific guidelines on this, but here are a few of the category types that would go into that list of, you know, these are not approved reviews or eligible reviews and are eligible to be removed. So impersonation, hate speech, obscenity, misrepresentation, misrepresentation, harassment, illegal content, advertising and off topic content.
00:06:34:12 – 00:07:00:15
Patrick Carver
We often see people review, leave reviews, and negative reviews. Who were they clients. They might be friends or family who are kind of leaving a review on their behalf or, you know, I think in some scenarios there are potentially competitors out there who are engaged in some sort of negative review campaign where you hire someone on the Internet who’s going to leave nasty reviews.
00:07:00:15 – 00:07:34:18
Patrick Carver
And, you know, and we’ve seen this multiple times where people are leaving reviews from countries across the world that were clearly not a client and had a local criminal case or whatever, local family case, whatever, whatever that might be. And there’s really no rhyme or reason to it as to why they left that review. But nonetheless, Google is not personally looking through all of these and asking, well, does this you know, does this actually constitute a legitimate review for Bob’s legal.
00:07:34:20 – 00:07:59:20
Patrick Carver
It just doesn’t work like that. Their systems are heavily automated. And so basically it’s kind of on you to flag that stuff and and pursue these actions that were we’re talking about here. The good news here is that one negative review like this really won’t spoil the batch here. Google’s system, when it comes to local, their local algorithm has about three factors.
00:07:59:20 – 00:08:22:26
Patrick Carver
And one of those things that they’re always looking at when evaluating people like responsiveness. And so they want to make sure that people who are on their search engine are having a good experience. So when they reach out to a business or a website, Google’s wanting that website to reflect well on them right? And so they’re elevating you in search results.
00:08:22:26 – 00:08:50:19
Patrick Carver
And so they want the end user to have a good experience. And that really keeps them coming back, right? Keeps a happy customer. They’ll keep coming back to Google for search. And so with reviews, it’s actually more important, in my opinion, that you respond to negative reviews quickly or file those appeals quickly and respond to positive reviews quickly as well so that you’re showing Google that you are in fact a responsive business.
00:08:50:19 – 00:09:19:04
Patrick Carver
And we have heard that the overall score of your reviews is really not that important, that it’s not a big ranking factor as to where you land on the maps and stuff like that. It’s more about the frequency of the reviews you’re getting to show again that you are an active business, you’re actively getting customers. This is far preferable to doing a big batch of reviews at once and then waiting a year to get them done.
00:09:19:04 – 00:09:39:18
Patrick Carver
And so my suggestion always is like if you get a negative review, if it’s legitimate or if it’s illegitimate, we’ll talk about the legitimate site for just a second. But if it is legitimate, go and get three positive reviews right immediately after it. And you can be creative about this, too. You can talk to people you’ve worked with vendors.
00:09:39:18 – 00:10:03:03
Patrick Carver
There’s different ways of doing this that meet the guidelines. You know that basically people can reflect on their experience with your business. So don’t get frustrated by it. Just understand that this is kind of par for the course and that you are going to get some of these negatives over time, but it’s really not going to have a a devastating impact on your own performance on the local SEO side.
00:10:03:06 – 00:10:34:00
Patrick Carver
So the first thing you want to do if you in fact get a negative review, is begin that appeals process. So again, these are for legitimate negative reviews that you have a firm stake in to appeal. And the first thing I would do is go and look at Google’s guidelines for what actually constitutes a poor negative review. Write something that doesn’t actually constitute a legitimate review and an approved one.
00:10:34:03 – 00:10:55:16
Patrick Carver
And that is that full list I mentioned just just a minute ago. And you want to familiarize yourself with these things because then when you actually do your argument and you write and if you go into your Google business profile next to the review, you’ll see in the upper right hand corner a little exclamation point, and that’s where you’re going to want to do the appeal.
00:10:55:18 – 00:11:24:27
Patrick Carver
But before you do that, read through these guidelines and make sure you understand what arguments are made to you. It’s very similar to going to court where you need precedent, right? You need to establish, hey, you said this is how you judge these reviews. This is a clear violation of this policy that is stated by you. You are not going to have success if you just go in and say, Hey, I feel like this person’s crazy and you know, they don’t fit.
00:11:25:02 – 00:11:58:06
Patrick Carver
I don’t think this review is fair right now. Not going to work because if it is a legitimate review, somebody, even if they are crazy and malicious or whatever, Google doesn’t really know that and they’re not in the business of trying to determine whether or not somebody is crazy or harassing or, you know, something like that. You need to go in with a technical argument which you are extremely capable of doing as a lawyer and and go ahead and make that and make sure, as you do that you’re aligned with exactly the language that they’re talking about.
00:11:58:13 – 00:12:32:25
Patrick Carver
That’s going to be a much better way to get these removed, because obviously you are going to be going by the handbook, Right. So keep that in mind. You have a much better shot at getting these illegitimate reviews removed and moving on to number two, which is so what’s worse than getting a negative review? Well, it might be getting a five star positive review and then getting it removed from Google with no valid reason.
00:12:32:28 – 00:12:58:14
Patrick Carver
If you’ve been working really hard and diligently to add to that tally of reviews and then you wake up one day and your counts down, it’s extremely frustrating. And I’ve personally been on the receiving end of this, but the good news is that there are steps you can take where you can fight back and you can get these reviews added back to your Google business profile.
00:12:58:14 – 00:13:39:26
Patrick Carver
The first thing I would advise here is just remember that it’s not personal from Google, right? They are. I think, in a lot of ways, trying to automate as much as possible with this type of system. So they want to, you know, utilize as little human resources as they possibly can. So getting your review removed or other issues that you might have with your GPP are going to be because they have automated systems that go in and, you know, and sometimes are overbearing or over-swinging on what they’re actually trying to accomplish.
00:13:39:26 – 00:13:57:01
Patrick Carver
And so you kind of have to be on your guard with this. And so that’s why we want to talk about this one, which is what we’ve seen with a number of our clients, where they’ve had legitimate reviews and they wake up and they’re just completely gone. But we’re going to talk about how to actually get those back.
00:13:57:03 – 00:14:19:24
Patrick Carver
So inside Google Business Profile, there is a support area that you can actually ping Google’s team and put in a claim that, hey, we’ve had a review removed and, you know, we think it’s a legitimate review and we want you to put it back. And so the interesting part that we’ve found is we’ve tried this a number of different ways.
00:14:19:24 – 00:14:41:06
Patrick Carver
And the best advice I can give you is to be persistent, because we have found that depending on the person you get who is actually reviewing your ticket, the results can vary dramatically. And so in some situations, we’ve been told that, hey, you know, we’re not going to, we’re not going to add this back.
00:14:41:08 – 00:15:10:08
Patrick Carver
We sent it back in a little bit later, rephrased it, or kind of put a spin on the arc on the argument or not even really use the same argument as well. We get a different person. And what we’ve noticed is that the quality of these folks is going to vary dramatically. Right. And so remember, there is no one person who is the arbiter of whether or not a review should stay or it should be removed.
00:15:10:10 – 00:15:34:26
Patrick Carver
It’s a big distributed team. Right. And there’s automation going on and there’s a lot of different people reviewing and doing these things. And so each person kind of has a different understanding of those standards and rules. And what you’re ultimately trying to do is to politely but persistently go after the people who are, you know, in control of this and have the capability to go in and do it.
00:15:35:03 – 00:15:54:02
Patrick Carver
And sooner or later you’re going to get somebody who can actually make this move for you and do it in a way where you’re going to get your review back. But you have to probably go after it a couple of times. Now for our clients, we will do this for you. It’s part of our local SEO program that we have with a number of our plans.
00:15:54:02 – 00:16:24:28
Patrick Carver
We will actually go and find, you know, Google for you and do all of this on your behalf. And we have some extra resources that the average consumer does not, where we have a better pipeline of access to Google themselves compared to other people. It’s not always a surefire win, but it’s absolutely helped us in a number of situations, especially getting context about how Google systems works that we know how to better handle those claims and tickets as we go into them.
00:16:25:00 – 00:16:58:06
Patrick Carver
If you want to go the extra milestone with this one or are particularly paranoid, you can actually just go and do screenshots of all your new reviews. Again, you don’t have to do this necessarily, but if you’re paranoid and you know you’re maybe been a victim of this before, not a bad idea. Right. And so every quarter or something like that, go in, take a screenshot of a new review and just kind of sock it away into a folder so that if it comes down to it, you have some evidence for this.
00:16:58:06 – 00:17:20:29
Patrick Carver
And another really easy way to do this is that you can actually go through your emails. Google, you usually got to get an email from Google business Profile that talks about how you received your review and it will show the text of that review. That’s another great place to just do a screenshot of it or save it in a particular folder just to make sure that you capture all that.
00:17:20:29 – 00:17:44:17
Patrick Carver
So when you’re doing your appeal, have that information ready, have those screenshots ready. The more documentation that you can provide upfront to that initial support ticket, the faster this is going to get resolved. Otherwise, you may go through a couple of iterations of talking with people who don’t quite understand your problem or issue and may give you bad advice.
00:17:44:24 – 00:18:14:09
Patrick Carver
So don’t get frustrated. Just remember, documentation is a big part of this and then you’re going to be able to go and take your argument to the Google people through the support channels and likely get this back if you have some level of documentation with it. So generally speaking, we can solve these issues. And with enough persistence you can too.
00:18:14:09 – 00:18:36:26
Patrick Carver
But either way, I would recommend just getting as much documentation in advance of filing your appeal as possible. So you want to dot your T’s, cross your eyes on all of this so that you have a really rock solid case that you can take to Google and keep going after them until you get the answer that you’re actually looking for.
00:18:36:28 – 00:19:11:16
Patrick Carver
Number three, are you? Number three is the Google verification loop. So if you have experienced this, you most likely feel like Bill Murray on Groundhog Day, where Google has asked you to verify your address with a video verification and we’ve heard this, I’ve experienced this. I’ve done this for clients myself, that they have a bunch of issues with this process where you’re being asked multiple times to do a video demonstration in your office to a video verification.
00:19:11:16 – 00:19:35:26
Patrick Carver
It just simply does not work. So we’re going to dive into why this occurs and some of the ways that you can fix it or get in better shape with it. So this verification death loop starts typically when there’s been an address change. When someone is moving from one location to another, they’re closing down an office, they’re moving somewhere, etc. and you get the gist.
00:19:35:29 – 00:20:20:19
Patrick Carver
That’s really what kicks this off. And it’s now easier to basically get into the Pentagon than to do one of these Google address verifications. Some folks have no problem. It goes straight through without a hitch. But we were personally dealing with and I’ll be completely honest, we’ve got a couple that we’re still dealing with that have been going on for a couple of months now where they are not allowing the traditional methods or there are problems with with it in terms of doing a video verification, which is normally the kind of their go to way to verify you’re with a you have a legitimate place new address in with your business in addition to
00:20:20:19 – 00:20:45:18
Patrick Carver
documentation and for some reason they just do not accept it and it is extremely frustrating and challenging for a business, especially when you’re bringing in people who actually need to come in your office and your Google business profile is showing a completely different address. It’s frustrating. It doesn’t look professional. Google’s really creating a big problem with this for a lot of people out there.
00:20:45:18 – 00:21:10:18
Patrick Carver
I think especially in the law firm space. So before I get into the tips on how to fix this, I’m going to give you a brief trip down memory lane. So about four or five years ago, a lot of entrepreneurial individuals realized that if they had a Google business profile in a specific location, they could then be eligible to get some of that sweet local algorithm traffic.
00:21:10:20 – 00:21:35:09
Patrick Carver
And that if you set up a Google business profile, even if you did not have a physical office in that location, you basically could cheat and say, hey, I’m I’m in this office or I’m in this. We work and go get fake reviews and build up your business so that, you know, you could essentially get that traffic captured and then do what you want with it.
00:21:35:09 – 00:22:08:25
Patrick Carver
And so a lot of people were using this as a way to build diligence systems, essentially. And so they would create one of these in a big metropolitan area, and it would be called something like personal injury lawyers, where it’s very keyword specific. It would take advantage of Google’s algorithm and they would be shown up at the top above other actual legitimate businesses and Google figured this out and really started to come down on this.
00:22:08:25 – 00:22:48:04
Patrick Carver
And it’s really since the beginning of COVID, we’ve been in this awful situation with Google business profiles where they are overly scrutinizing legitimate regular businesses with valid documentation, because I think it’s an overcorrection for them trying to clean up this whole spam issue. So the motivations, I think, are pretty good that, you know, you don’t want people setting up these fake Google business profiles because ultimately, I think what Google’s idea is with this is that they want to serve local people, people who are in their neighborhood, Right.
00:22:48:04 – 00:23:09:04
Patrick Carver
People who are in their community, who actually have a legitimate business. And not to a call center that’s going to distribute you to or sell your lead to someone else. This was really big in like the home renovation space, any sort of service home service was was big as well in this. And then they farm it out to a local company.
00:23:09:04 – 00:23:36:19
Patrick Carver
So now we are kind of in this air space of overcorrection. And the thing I’ll reiterate here is that Google systems, the way they’re dealing with any of these issues, is going to be heavy on automation. So heavy, you know, using software, using their scripting to determine basically when they feel like an issue has come up.
00:23:36:21 – 00:24:07:02
Patrick Carver
Very rarely is this being done by an individual or a person. And so really the people only come into play after, you know, you are bringing this issue for them. And so I mention this all because it’s just it’s not a perfect system. And so you are going to have to be persistent with this and advocate for yourself or have somebody like us advocate for you who can do a better job of it because we have better experience with it.
00:24:07:02 – 00:24:32:24
Patrick Carver
We have better strategies to go about getting the results that you need. So this overcorrection has led to a crackdown on, you know, just regular people, regular business owners who are just trying to change addresses. So it’s really challenging. I’ll be honest. It’s extremely frustrating where we fix this in a number of situations. But we’re also dealing with others where it’s still not fixed.
00:24:32:24 – 00:24:52:25
Patrick Carver
And this is months and months. But, you know, we feel like we have a really good approach for this for the vast majority of people. And I think this is really an error on the Google side rather than an error with us. So let’s get to some of the actionable steps that you can actually do to either prevent this or if you do get into one of these situations, how you can find a good resolution.
00:24:52:27 – 00:25:20:04
Patrick Carver
So the first thing and just a reminder, this is all typically about when you are moving addresses, right? So that is the most common time when a verification is going to occur. Is that or you start setting up a new one to begin with, you don’t have an address at all. So the first thing I will recommend is that you get an actual physical office location with a street address.
00:25:20:06 – 00:25:42:09
Patrick Carver
No pillboxes, no WI works, no co co-working spaces, shared office spaces, stuff like that. A couple of years ago. This is the kind of the playbook that everybody used to go to a coworking space and put their, you know, put their address there on Google is really wise up to that. They understand that’s how people are abusing this system.
00:25:42:09 – 00:26:07:04
Patrick Carver
And so essentially, if you are putting yourself in a shared workspace now in 2024, it’s going to get flagged. And if it doesn’t, it will likely soon because I don’t see any situation or at least in the, you know, the near-term future, that they’re going to kind of revoke this stance and say that that co-working spaces are now okay.
00:26:07:06 – 00:26:34:14
Patrick Carver
I think it goes against everything they’ve done in space. So it is enticing, especially when you’re trying to scale, that you see opportunities in other city locations to say, well, we’ll just get a virtual office in those locations. I would argue they’re better with different strategies. If you don’t want to actually pay for an office, how are you going to use CO2 to accomplish that and get a bigger presence in an area where you’re not physically located?
00:26:34:16 – 00:27:12:16
Patrick Carver
Advertising also is a great way to do that, but you’re not. You. If you are planning on going into a market, you are going to need a physical space, right? That’s the absolute best way to do it. And even then we’re still seeing scrutiny given to our clients in some cases. So whether you are getting up a new Google business profile from the start or doing your transition before you apply for that change and switch them in Google business profile, you have to make sure your documentation is in order.
00:27:12:18 – 00:27:39:01
Patrick Carver
You need documentation that states that your business is going to be located at at this new address. So I’m talking about state business registration documents, lease agreements, utility bills, bills, any other bills or things like that at the new location. And this is essential for proving your case that you are physically located at these locations.
00:27:39:03 – 00:28:07:13
Patrick Carver
The business registration is probably the best one that has done the trick a lot because it’s kind of the ultimate authority in that world of documentation. So get all of that stuff prepped before you go in because they will almost 100% ask for this prior to doing a video verification. They’ll try to check you through here and you want to make sure to have all of that in order.
00:28:07:15 – 00:28:30:04
Patrick Carver
If you go through, give all the documentation, and they then do want to do a verification, sometimes they’re bypassing the documentation altogether and just saying, hey, we want to do a video verification, then this next one is essential. It’s establishing signage at your business. So this could be on the door, it could be on the hallway, it could be out on the street.
00:28:30:07 – 00:29:01:08
Patrick Carver
When I was doing a recent video, video review or video verification, I had to walk all the way from the street to show street signs, take them through the parking lot, go in and show the signage on the on the outside exterior, or I then had to show that I could put the key and unlock it when inside basically showing all of the, you know, the real business things that were happening along with signage.
00:29:01:08 – 00:29:31:02
Patrick Carver
The signage is kind of a key one that is very commonly asked for. It’s typically always asked for in these video verifications to show it so it doesn’t have to break the bank, but you need to have it up. It needs to look semi official, right? Not just a piece of paper or handwritten or something like that. Something that actually shows your business is you know, a physical tenant of that location.
00:29:31:05 – 00:30:15:04
Patrick Carver
Next one we want to do is update your address as many places as possible online as you can before going in and making that swap. So this includes your website, any directories that you have personal access to social media, and then you can actually do a more broad action on this by using a citation syndicator. Bright Local has this service where you can effectively give them your new address and it’s going to distribute this information to four or five big gateways of data that are going to populate hundreds and hundreds of map and directory services online.
00:30:15:04 – 00:30:39:02
Patrick Carver
That is a great way to do it. It takes a little bit of time, but it’s pretty inexpensive, about $100. And then you get to broadcast that information out there and you want to do it anyway. So the sooner the better. And that will start to fix any of those errors, because we do know from this the next point that you want to do some citation cleanup.
00:30:39:02 – 00:31:22:27
Patrick Carver
So you want to go and look for any of these directory locations or places where your business information is listed on the Internet and try to get it fixed, try to get it changed to that new address. Make yourself a list, have an assistant go through and do some of that. That work of going and just contacting the website and saying, hey, this is, you know, no longer address, how do I how do I go about it and get this updated because we got an interesting nugget after one of our last verifications, they came back to us with a specific citation that they were concerned about or believed, thought they was proof that this address
00:31:22:27 – 00:31:52:02
Patrick Carver
verification was not not legitimate. And they had actually been pulling information from the Chamber of Commerce website in that area. And so I found that pretty interesting because we don’t really get a lot of good details from Google as to, you know, what criteria they’re looking for when they approve or don’t approve of one of these address changes.
00:31:52:02 – 00:32:19:18
Patrick Carver
They just say, nope, it doesn’t meet the requirements. And so for them to give us that shows me that one, I would make sure you know, you are set up correctly with your Chamber of commerce because we know they’re going to those to look at your your business information and any other kind of local links that that you can get that they’re, you know, official.
00:32:19:18 – 00:32:45:13
Patrick Carver
Right. So if you have, if you’re set up with the bar in your state, in the bar directory, make sure your address has been changed. Anything like that is going to be potentially a big deal. And so in the context of lawyers, some of the most important directories are going to be those law firm directories, the big box marketers, you know and love like fine law and our own and some of those folks.
00:32:45:16 – 00:33:07:05
Patrick Carver
It is a great idea to make sure that your business information is accurate up there. And generally that’s not a problem because they’ll get to that pretty quickly because they want their system to be accurate as well. So typically not a good not a big problem. All right. So we’re moving on to the final issue that we’re seeing with Google business profiles.
00:33:07:05 – 00:33:39:15
Patrick Carver
And it’s really a nightmare that, you know, you would never want to experience, right. Where you wake up and your Google business profile is just completely wiped off the map. Just completely gone. Right. No reviews, no information, no more calls, etc.. This can happen. And it has happened to a number of our clients. We’ve been able to go in and actually get these resurrected and brought back to life and then put them in a position where it won’t happen again.
00:33:39:15 – 00:34:08:26
Patrick Carver
So I want to go through kind of why this happens, some of the risk factors that you want to be aware of and then ultimately how you can go about getting the solution. So the one I will highlight today is where a firm came to us with it, with their GBP and then completely deleted it. And after a good amount of research, we were able to find that the GBP was deleted by a specific person.
00:34:08:29 – 00:34:38:16
Patrick Carver
That specific person had recently been fired. And so in kind of a parting shot for the firm, that person who had been tasked with creating this Google business profile probably six years ago or something, they were able to delete it. And because the rightful of the business were not at the administrative level as owners of that business, they basically had no recourse.
00:34:38:16 – 00:35:02:12
Patrick Carver
They were not able to get it. They had contacted Google support and basically said, look, you know, you’re not you’re not an owner. We don’t see you on the access. So, you know, there’s not really anything we can do here. And that is obviously a huge problem, especially in a situation like this where our client has good reviews.
00:35:02:12 – 00:35:32:02
Patrick Carver
They’re adding to them. They’re doing all the right things. And it’s creating a positive benefit where a bunch of their leads are coming from Google business profiles. So it’s a tap that simply cannot be stopped for they don’t want to shut down with this, but it immediately was. And so that’s when they came to us and we went into our research to try and figure out how, you know, basically how we would get this figured out.
00:35:32:04 – 00:35:58:05
Patrick Carver
So we ended up having to go deep into documentation of the business ownership agreements and other materials that we were able to provide Google that effectively showed that the people that we’re representing, our clients are the rightful owners of the business, and thus they should have access to this this Google business profile that it was created by someone who, within their professional duties, right.
00:35:58:06 – 00:36:24:27
Patrick Carver
As an employee of that business, we have to break that all down and show them that that whole situation. And again, this was not immediately available to our client. And so we had to go past that initial return of the response where they didn’t get what they wanted and keep persisting and going up different channels within Google to try and make this happen.
00:36:24:27 – 00:36:48:03
Patrick Carver
And so eventually we did. We were able to get it completely restored. And now they have full ownership of the GBP and they’re back to getting good, good cases from it. So what I would recommend, the best offense is a good defense here. And so what that means for me is that you need to own your assets, right?
00:36:48:05 – 00:37:13:09
Patrick Carver
The two that come to bear, three that come to mind, most importantly are going to be your Google business profile, your domain registration. Then advertising accounts. There is a desire sometimes to let the marketing agency handle all of that. And it’s easier. You know, you’ve got more important things to do. So I get it.
00:37:13:11 – 00:37:38:20
Patrick Carver
And you know, you might say, well, I’ll just go start the ad account. I want to deal with it. Right. And the problem there is that you get into this situation, right, where, you know, years later or maybe not so, so long later, the marketing company or an employee is now in full control of this. And they really, you know, have the keys to everything.
00:37:38:22 – 00:38:01:24
Patrick Carver
I think a lot of time this is probably handled pretty professionally. And, you know, most people are not going to be extremely malicious and try to bring it down or something like that. But you honestly never know and are honest. And really what I would warn you in these situations is that it’s not so much about these folks who are going to do something malicious.
00:38:01:24 – 00:38:24:29
Patrick Carver
It’s more of just an ease of use. Right. It’s going to create fewer problems in the long run if you have this access yourself so that you’re never on the outside looking in. And that’s the same with all these. Right. So the business profile where your domain is registered, you want to control all of that.
00:38:25:01 – 00:38:54:03
Patrick Carver
You can give people access to it, your marketers, your team members, your stuff like that. But you don’t ever want to be in a position where you are going to have to ask the marketing agency to give you access to your own domain and or access to an ad account after maybe it’s been doing doing really well and or not doing really well and you want to make a switch, but you want to keep your you keep your data, you want to keep your set up, look at your historical results, stuff like that.
00:38:54:05 – 00:39:16:04
Patrick Carver
That all gets wiped away if you do this. Now, there are other market forces out there who are going to control those things. They’re going to control the ad account, they’re going to control the Google business profile. And that’s kind of their hedge or insurance against being able to leave easily from their agency. I fundamentally think this is wrong.
00:39:16:07 – 00:39:43:01
Patrick Carver
It’s dumb. It doesn’t make anybody, you know, happy with that type of relationship when something, you know, changes and you don’t, you know, you’re no longer going to work together in that capacity as a marketing and law firm. So I you know, personally, we always have our clients coming, we always want to make sure they have their domain register on their own.
00:39:43:04 – 00:40:05:27
Patrick Carver
So if they ask us to purchase one for them, we’ll do it within their account. We always put them as admin, as the owner of the group. You know, it’s just the best way to do it because like I said, even if it’s not a malicious marketing agency it might go out of business. The people who have access to that Gmail may pass away, right?
00:40:06:00 – 00:40:30:00
Patrick Carver
May go completely change roles and never look at that Gmail again. You’re completely, completely on the outside looking in and it’s a terrible place to be. That’s a wrap for Google business profile nightmares. Hope you got some good information from it. And if you want to improve your Google business performance, we’d love to help. If you have any of these type of issues, we’d love to help as well.
00:40:30:02 – 00:40:53:13
Patrick Carver
It’s super frustrating. I totally get that. And you know, I’d be lying if I said this was our favorite thing to work on. But we have some proven strategies to fix these problems. We have a very high success rate when clients do get into these types of issues. So we’re more than happy to help and pass along that knowledge that we picked up over the years.
00:40:53:13 – 00:40:59:24
Patrick Carver
So you don’t have to experience the pain we have. Thanks for tuning in today and I hope you have a great day.
