One of the most common complaints I hear from service area business owners, like plumbers, locksmiths, and housekeepers, is that Google has always treated them as an afterthought. If you’re in charge of the digital marketing for these business models, it’s vital to understand just how accurate this complaint is so that you can both empathize with SAB brand owners and create a strategy that honors limitations while also identifying opportunities.
In marketing SABs, you’ve got to learn to make the best of a special situation. In this post, I want to address two of the realities these companies are facing right now that call for careful planning: the unique big picture of SAB local listing management, and the rise of Google’s Home Service Ads.
Let’s talk listings, Moz Local, and SABs
I was fascinated by my appliance repairman — an older German ex-pat with a serious demeanor — the first time he looked at my wall heater and pronounced,
“This puppy is no good.”
Our family went on to form a lasting relationship with this expert who has warned me about everything from lint fires in dryers to mis-branded appliances slapped together in dubious factories. I’m an admiring fan of genuinely knowledgeable service people who come to my doorstep, crawl under my house where possums dwell, ascend to my eerie attic despite spiders, and are professionally dedicated to keeping my old house livable. I work on a computer, surrounded by comforts; these folks know what real elbow grease is all about:
It’s because of my regard for these incredibly hard-working SAB owners and staffers that I’ve always taken issue with the fact that the local Internet tends to treat them in an offhand manner. They do some of the toughest jobs, and I’d like their marketing opportunities to be boundless. But the reality is, the road has been rocky and the limits are real.
Google goofed first
When Google invested heavily in developing their mapped version of the local commercial scene, there was reportedly internal disagreement as to whether a service area business is actually a “place” and deserved of inclusion in Google’s local index. You couldn’t add service area businesses to the now-defunct MapMaker but you could create local listings for them (clear as mud, right?). At a 2008 SMX event, faced with the question as to how SABs could be accurately represented in the local results, a Google rep really goofed in first suggesting that they all get PO boxes, only to have this specific practice subsequently outlawed by Google’s guidelines.
Confusion and spam flowed in
For the record,
- Both SABs and brick-and-mortar businesses are currently eligible for Google My Business listings if they serve customers face-to-face.
- SABs must have some form of legitimate street address, even if it’s a home address, to be included
- Only brick-and-mortar businesses are supposed to have visible addresses on their listings, but Google’s shifting messaging and inconsistent guideline enforcement have created confusion.
Google has shown little zeal for suspending listings that violate the hide-address guidelines, with one notable exception recently mentioned to me by Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky: SABs who click the Google My Business dashboard box stating that they serve clients at the business’ location in order to get themselves out of no man’s land at the bottom of the Google Home Service ad unit are being completely removed from the map by Google if caught.
Meanwhile, concern has been engendered by past debate over whether hiding the address of a business lowered its local pack rankings. The 2017 Local Search Ranking Factors survey is still finding this to be the #18 negative local pack ranking factor, which might be worthy of further discussion.
All of these factors have created an environment in which legitimate SABs have accidentally incorrectly listed themselves on Google and in which spammers have thrived, intentionally creating multiple listings at non-physical addresses and frequently getting away with it to the detriment of search results uniformity and quality. In this unsatisfactory environment, the advent of Google’s Home Service Ads program may have been inevitable, and we’ll take a look at that in a minute.
Limits made clear in listing options for SABs
Whether the risk of suspension or impact on rankings is great or small, hiding your address on SAB Google My Business listings is the only Google-approved practice. If you want to play it totally safe, you’ll play by the rules, but this doesn’t automatically overcome every challenge.
Google is one of the few high-level local business index requiring hidden SAB addresses. And it’s in this stance that SABs encounter some problems taking advantage of the efficiencies provided by automated location data management tools like Moz Local. There are three main things that have confused our own customers:
- Because our SAB customers are required by Google to hide their address, Moz Local can’t then verify the address because… well, it’s hidden. This means that customers need to have a Facebook listing with a visible address on it to get started using Moz Local. Facebook doesn’t require SAB addresses to be hidden.
- Once the customer gets started, their ultimate consistency score will generally be lower than what a brick-and-mortar business achieves, again because their hidden GMB listing address can’t be matched to all of the other complete listings Moz Local builds for them. It reads like an inconsistency, and while this in no way impacts their real-world performance, it’s a little sad not to be able to aim for a nifty 100% dashboard metric within Moz Local. Important to mention here that a 100% score isn’t achievable for multi-location business models, either, given that Facebook’s guidelines require adding a modifier to the business name of each branch, rendering it inconsistent. This is in contrast to Google’s policy, which defines the needless addition of keywords or geo-modifiers to the business name as spam! When Google and Facebook fundamentally disagree on a guideline, a small measure of inconsistency is part and parcel of the scenario, and not something worth worrying about.
- Finally, for SABs who don’t want their address published anywhere on the Internet, automated citation management simply may not be a good match. Some partners in our network won’t accept address-less distribution from us, viewing it as incomplete data. If an SAB isn’t looking for complete NAP distribution because they want their address to be kept private, automation just isn’t ideal.
So how can SABs use something like Moz Local?
The Moz Local team sides with SABs — we’re not totally satisfied with the above state of affairs and are actively exploring better support options for the future. Given our admiration for these especially hard-working businesses, we feel SABs really deserve to have needless burdens lifted from their shoulders, which is exactly what Moz Local is designed to do. The task of manual local business listing publication and ongoing monitoring is a hefty one — too hefty in so many cases. Automation does the heavy lifting for you. We’re examining better solutions, but right now, what options for automation are open to the SAB?
Option #1: If your business is okay with your address being visible in multiple places, then simply be sure your Facebook listing shows your address and you can sign up for Moz Local today, no problem! We’ll push your complete NAP to the major aggregators and other partners, but know that your Moz Local dashboard consistency score won’t be 100%. This is because we won’t be able to “see” your Google My Business listing with its hidden address, and because choosing service-related categories will also hide your address on Citysearch, Localeze, and sometimes, Bing. Also note that one of our partners, Factual, doesn’t support locksmiths, bail bondsmen or towing companies. So, in using an automated solution like Moz Local, be prepared for a lower score in the dashboard, because it’s “baked into” the scenario in which some platforms show your full street address while others hide it. And, of course, be aware that many of your direct local competitors are in the same boat, facing the same limitations, thus leveling the playing field.
Option #2: If your business can budget for it, consider transitioning from an SAB to a brick-and-mortar business model, and get a real-world office that’s staffed during stated business hours. As Mike Blumenthal and Mary Bowling discuss is in this excellent video chat, smaller SABs need to be sure they can still make a profit after renting an office space, and that may largely be based on rental costs in their part of the country. Very successful virtual brands are exploring traditional retail options and traditional brick-and-mortar business models are setting up virtual showrooms; change is afoot. Having some customers come to the physical location of a typical SAB may require some re-thinking of service. A locksmith could grind keys on-site, a landscaper could virtually showcase projects in the comfort of their office, but what could a plumber do? Any ideas? If you can come up with a viable answer, and can still see profits factoring in the cost of office space, transitioning to brick-and-mortar effectively removes any barriers to how you represent yourself on Google and how fully you can use software like Moz Local.
If neither option works for you, and you need to remain an SAB with a hidden address, you’ll either need to a) build citations manually on sites that support your requirements, like these ones listed out by Phil Rozek, while having a plan for regularly monitoring your listings for emerging inconsistencies, duplicates and incoming reviews or b) hire a company to do the manual development and monitoring for you on the platforms that support hiding your address.
I wish the digital marketing sky could be the limit for SABs, but we’ve got to do the most we can working within parameters defined by Google and other location data platforms.
Now comes HSA: Google’s next SAB move
As service area business owner or marketer, you can’t be faulted for feeling that Google hasn’t handled your commercial scenario terribly well over the years. As we’ve discussed, Google has wobbled on policy and enforcement. Not yet mentioned is that they’ve never offered an adequate solution to the reality that a plumber located in City A equally services Cities B, C, and D, but is almost never allowed to rank in the local packs for these service cities. Google’s historic bias toward physical location doesn’t meet the reality of business models that go to clients to serve. And it’s this apparent lack of interest in SAB needs that may be adding a bit of sting to Google’s latest move: the Home Service Ads (HSA) program.
You’re not alone if you don’t feel totally comfortable with Google becoming a lead gen agent between customers and, to date:
- Plumbers
- House cleaners
- Locksmiths
- Handymen
- Contractors
- Electricians
- Painters
- Garage door services
- HVAC companies
- Roadside assistance services
- Auto glass services
...in a rapidly increasing number of cities.
Suddenly, SABs have moved to the core of Google’s consciousness, and an unprecedented challenge for these business models is that, while you can choose whether or not to opt into the program, there’s no way to opt out of the impacts it is having on all affected local results.
An upheaval in SAB visibility
If HSA has come to your geo-industry, and you don’t buy into the program, you will find yourself relegated to the bottom of the new HSA ad unit which appears above the traditional 3-pack in the SERPs:
Additionally, even if you were #1 in the 3-pack prior to HSA coming to town, if you lack a visible address, your claimed listing appears to have vanished from the pack and finder views.
*I must tip my hat again to Joy Hawkins for helping me understand why that last example hasn’t vanished from the packs — it’s unclaimed. Honestly, this blip tempts me to unclaim an SAB listing and “manage” it via community edits instead of the GMB dashboard to see if I could maintain its local finder visibility… but this might be an overreaction!
If you’re marketing an SAB, have been relegated to the bottom of the HSA ad unit, and have vanished from the local pack/finder view, please share with our community how this has impacted your traffic and conversions. My guess would be that things are not so good.
So, what can SABs do in this new landscape?
I don’t have all of the answers to this question, but I do have these suggestions:
- Obviously, if you can budget for it, opt into HSA.
- But, bizarrely, understand that in some ways, Google has just made your GMB listing less important. If you have to hide your address and won’t be shown in HSA-impacted local packs and finder views because of this guideline compliance, your GMB listing is likely to become a less important source of visibility for your business.
- Be sure, then, that all of your other local business listings are in apple-pie order. If you’re okay with your address being published, you can automate this necessary work with software like Moz Local. If you need to keep your address private, put in the time to manually get listed everywhere you can. A converted lead from CitySearch or Foursquare may even feel like more of a victory than one from Google.
- Because diversification has just become a great deal more important, alternatives like those offered by visibility on Facebook are now more appealing than ever. And ramp up your word-of-mouth marketing and review management strategies like never before. If I were marketing an SAB, I’d be taking a serious new look at companies like ZipSprout, which helps establish real-world local relationships via sponsorships, and GetFiveStars, which helps with multiple aspects of managing reviews.
- Know that organic visibility is now more of a prize than previously. If you’re not in the packs, you’ve got to show up below them. This means clearly defining local SEO and traditional SEO as inextricably linked, and doing the customary work of keyword research, content development, and link management that have fueled organic SEO from the beginning. I’m personally committing to becoming more intimately familiar with Moz Pro so that I can better integrate into my skill set what software like this can do for local businesses, especially SABs.
- Expect change. HSA is still a test, and Google continues to experiment with how it’s displaying its paying customers in relationship to the traditional free packs and organic results. Who knows what’s next? If you’re marketing SABs, an empathetic and realistic approach to both historic and emerging limitations will help you create a strategy designed to ensure brand survival, independent of Google’s developments.
Why is Google doing this?
I need to get some window blinds replaced in my home this fall. When I turned to Google’s (non-HSA) results and began calling local window treatment shops, imagine my annoyance in discovering that fully ½ of the listings in the local finder were for companies not located anywhere near my town. These brands had set up spam listings for a ton of different cities to which they apparently can send a representative, but where they definitely don’t have physical locations. I wasted a great deal of time calling each of them, and only felt better after reporting the listings to Google and seeing them subsequently removed.
I’m sharing this daily-life anecdote because it encapsulates the very best reason for Google rolling out Home Service Ads. Google’s program is meant to ensure that when I use their platform to access service companies, I’m finding vetted, legitimate enterprises with accurate location data and money-back satisfaction guarantees, instead of finding the mess of spam listings Google’s shifting policies and inadequate moderation have created. The HSA ad units can improve results quality while also protecting consumers from spurious providers.
The other evident purpose of HSA is the less civic-minded but no less brilliant one: there’s money to be made and Google’s profit motives are no different than those of any other enterprise. For the same reason that Amazon has gotten into the SAB lead gen business, Google wants a piece of this action. So, okay, no surprise there, and if the Google leads wind up growing the revenue of my wonderful German handyman, more power to them both.
But I hope my plumber, and yours, and your clients in the service markets, will take a step back from the Monopoly board and see this as a moment to reevaluate a game in which Google and Amazon are setting up big red hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place. I do advocate getting qualified for HSA, but I don’t advise a stance of unquestioning loyalty to or dependence on Google, particularly if you haven’t felt especially well-served by their SAB policies over the years. If Google can drive lucrative leads your way, take them, but remember you have one advantage Google, Amazon and other lead generation agencies lack: you are still the one who meets the customer face-to-face.
Opportunity is knocking in having a giant of visibility like Google selling you customers, because those customers, if amazed by your service, have grandmothers, and brothers and co-workers who can be directly referred to your company, completely outside the lead-gen loop. In fact, you might even come up with an incentivization program of your own to be sure that every customer you shake hands with is convinced of your appreciation for every referral they may send your way.
Don’t leave it all up to Google to make your local SAB brand a household word. Strategize for maximum independence via the real-world relationships you build, in the home of every neighbor where the door of welcome is opened in anticipation of the very best service you know how to give.
Hi Miriam
Here in Spain there are cases where the same locksmith can have the top 5 positions of Google with different phone numbers and addresses and also be away from home. I suppose there should be an algorithm to detect these frauds
Hi Luis,
Right - that's exactly the type of spammy scenario that Google's HSA program should fix. There's definitely sense in that. In the meantime, you have the option to report the spam if you've determined the listings violate Google's guidelines. I've seen such reports work within 24 hours.
Hi Luis, I too agree that still GMB program is not that much effective to detect the frauds and spams. Found in local results the same company is coming more then two times with different locations. Although those listings have no real existence.
Miriam, this entire post is 100% on point, and I'm going to go share it a ton. Fantastic work.
From the way that Google has implemented HSAs so far, it's clear that they lack some crucial understanding of home service companies and how they operate.
I've had clients hang up on their sales reps because they sounded exactly like the phone spammers who claim they're from Google. I've seen plumbers show up in searches for "sprinkler repair," which is not a service your average plumber offers. I've seen handymen show up for "kitchen remodeling," even though unlicensed contractors (like most handymen) can't charge more than $599 for work and the national average for a kitchen remodel is over $20k. And perhaps the most bewildering part is that none of their marketing materials or sales scripts emphasize that HSAs let contractors get leads from other nearby cities, which could have easily been the cornerstone of their pitch.
After years of Google emphasizing quality content, user friendliness, and all the elements of white hat SEO, HSAs threaten to negate those investments and replace them with more paid ads. If the program rolled out faster or there were more contractors present on social media, we'd be looking at another techbro bodega incident.
P.S. I actually wrote a piece about the "evil genius" of Home Service Ads almost exactly a year ago. I think it's time to update it, in light of all the mistakes they've made with implementation, and I would absolutely love your input.
P.P.S. One of my clients actually is a plumber with a brick and mortar location in a market with Home Service Ads. He rents a warehouse with a small lobby area where customers can come to drop off their bills, among other things.
Wow, great comment, Joe - and ah, yes, Google Bodegas! I really appreciate the hands-on details you've mentioned in your comment,and in the post you link to. The most comprehensive piece, I've read, to date, about some of the difficulties of HSA stems from a guest post by an HVAC expert on Mike Blumenthal's blog, which I highly recommend to all who are interested: https://blumenthals.com/blog/2017/07/27/how-google-...
Definitely worth a read, as is your comment, Joe. Many thanks!
Thanks! I've absolutely read Dave's post (heck, I check Blumenthal's blog daily) and it floored me when I first read it. I especially agree with his warning that price will eventually become the sole focus, since everyone in the program will eventually be a 5 star company, turning their services into a commodity.
For local SEO providers, I think that means the new goal has to be to help these brands become more than commodities, so they don't have to compete on price. If you can get someone to skip the HSAs to click on your client because they already recognize and trust the name, that's mission accomplished to me.
Great points Joe, branding will be a huge challange though for these SAB´s. Most plummer´s and alike´s really like what they are doing in their area of expertise and don´t have the interest to turn into full time marketers. So yes thats where local SEO providers can make a difference but even then these business owners need to have a basic understanding of what´s going on. Well with great challenges great rewards.
Miriam, thanks for highlighting this. The vast bulk of sales for my business are international, but I am preparing to launch a new brand that will rely a bit more on local sales. I can't imagine how frustrating the current situation is for people who are pure SABs. We need to make some noise to be heard by Google - and your article is a welcome addition to the groundswell of discontent!
Thank you so much, GuideNoi. And good luck with your new local brand! I hope your team can make use of the Moz Local Learning Center as you move into this area of marketing. Tons of good, free educational info there.
For the SABs that we work with, Yelp has been as significant a driver of good leads as Google. They are often better as the consumer understands that they have a strong reputation. We don't recommend that pay for Yelp advertising, but we do recommend that they make all of their customers aware that they have a Yelp page. The more reviews they get, the better their business grows.
Hi Luke,
Agree with you the Yelp can be a great way to diversify beyond Google. I'm addicted to reading Yelp reviews to form an impression of business reputation :)
Interesting article especially with all the local SEO boom. It is always good to continue training. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it, Richard!
Great article Miriam. Regarding your comment "Honestly, this blip tempts me to unclaim an SAB listing and “manage” it via community edits instead of the GMB dashboard to see if I could maintain its local finder visibility… but this might be an overreaction!" I wouldn't suggest doing that because unverified SAB listings aren't allowed on maps unless they have a storefront. So if people find listings that are at residential addresses and they aren't verified, they often get removed completely because they are only allowed if they are in GMB. Maps rules doesn't allow them because they should not get a pin, street view, or a place label since they aren't a place people visit. The GMB "hidden address" feature keeps these features from being on the listing but once GMB is out of the picture, it's not eligibile to be on maps.
Hey Joy!
I want to thank you again for the discussion we had about the plumber last week. Seeing the example of this unclaimed, non-storefront plumber showing up in the finder view was what sparked my comment about being tempted, but I'm definitely not suggesting it as a strategy, for the risks you've mentioned. Give your special insights into the way of things with Google, what would you expect to happen to that plumber in my example? In your experience, will a business like this end up being reported, will Google catch them on their own, something else?
Also: your comment highlights something for me I would LOVE to see an expert like you do a post on: you are speaking to the differences between GMB and Maps rules, which I feel are rarely discussed. I'd love to see you write an epic post on that, Joy.
Oooh, good idea. I will add that to my list. I wrote one a couple years ago and surprisingly most of what is in it is still true: https://searchengineland.com/5-major-differences-go...
So the unverified listings will most likely stay there until someone reports them. Usually this is a competitor or a mapper.
Hi Myriam,
What exactly would get your account suspended? You got me worried, since we have offices that customers can come and see us, but we also work with businesses in other cities, in which we don't have offices. So, I added those to the SAB without hiding my business address. I am not sure about what can get you blacklisted.
Hi Jean-Christophe,
Thanks for asking about this. So, basically, as I've shown in the screenshots in this post, SABs with claimed listings with hidden addresses seem to disappear from the local packs/local finder when Google HSA rolls out in their city. To get around this, some SABs are then un-hiding their addresses, which makes them pop back up in the packs/finders. However, Google is completely removing businesses from the results if they do this. I learned this from a conversation with Joy Hawkins, who is a GMB Forum Top Contributor, and who let me know she plans to write more on this topic soon. The upshot is: if you know you're supposed to keep your address hidden because of your business model, un-hiding it could lead to your complete removal. So, it's not worth the risk.
What you're describing, however, sounds different. Please let me know if I'm misunderstanding, but it sounds like you have physical offices for which you've created GMB listings (which is fine) but that you've created additional GMB listings for cities in which you serve but do not have a physical location (which is not fine). If this is what you've done, it's extremely important that you remedy this situation, as it could, indeed, lead to suspension if Google notices or if a competitor, consumer or marketer reports the listings. Here are the steps I'd recommend:
1) Read the Guidelines for Representing Your Business on Google, in full, so that you understand their core policies: https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177...
2) Then, read this earlier post of mine that details how to manage unwanted GMB listings in a variety of scenarios: https://moz.com/blog/delete-gmb-listing
Going forward, remember that GMB listings should only be created for staffed, physical locations, never for service cities. Hope this helps!
Thank you for your answer Myriam. In fact, I have only created one listing. But in the "My business delivers goods & services to customers within this area" section, I have added multiple locations, and then I mentioned "I also serve customers at my business address", in order to promote areas we serve.
Ah! I see. Well that's good news, and it's fine for you to use those features of Google that show that you serve customers both at their locations and at yours. There is no risk in doing that, so no worry. Unfortunately, the function of listing service cities seems to have little impact on what you rank for, but listing them out does not put you at risk for suspension in any way.
Good! Thank you again for this great piece of insight.
Thanks Miriam for clearing this point.
"...Google’s policy, which defines the needless addition of keywords or geo-modifiers to the business name as spam! "
Yet this is a ranking factor according to the Local Search Rankings:
The biggest headache for me in the local map stack are businesses that are trading under a name that uses both 'Keyword" + "Location". The issue we face is that a business with a creative, made-up brand name, like "Sweptaway" can't outrank a competitor who has the name "Cleaning Services Tampa Bay" ( Trading name and in the domain ) despite having a larger quantity of higher-rating, newer reviews, and a stronger DA / CF / TF website.
Because these businesses, sadly several in every industry, trade under that name, one gets nowhere by flagging/reporting the listing...
Hi Aron,
How right you are about the keyword-stuffed name issue. Google continues to weight that factor heavily, while generally failing to catch guideline-breakers. I'd recommend that, if this is impacting a local pack that's important to you, you don't give up on reporting. Often, it happens that you report it, Google removes the extraneous keywords and things go along like that for a bit, and then the owner comes back and re-adds them in. Even if you have to play cat-and-mouse, it may be worth it to simply keep reporting the violation. I know it's really a frustrating one, and it has been highlighted in the industry repeatedly, but we're still waiting for Google to make a move. Thanks for your comment!
First I think it is fantastic that MozLocal will help out via just a solid FB listing, and I am seeing that with many SAB's lately too, where you will see their FB showing in the results over their own site at times. In the past it seems there was no option other than recommending getting a brick and mortar or nothing. I think a possible strategy would be to go about it in terms of solid link building and reaching out to local sources that will share the website of a SAB or even have a solid presence in terms of the community so people start to know the business as a household name.
Great thought provoking post and contribution.
Good suggestions, Tim! And I've seen those SERPs, too, in which an entity's Facebook Place is outranking its website (typically if the website is kind of weak). Thanks for mentioning that!
Interesting point about the internal conflict at Google over including SABs. I'd bet that a lot of the controversial applications instituted by Google have some group internally that are not fans. Like the introduction of and push towards HSAs though, we can always count on Google to find ways to make more money. It's probably one of the most reliable things they do.
Hi Daniel,
Yes, Google is ingenious at finding revenue! And, of course, there's absolutely nothing inherently wrong with lead generation. So many service businesses depend on it. Google, with their massive resources, should be able to do a good job at this and see profits from it. But if I were an SAB, I surely would be ramping up my WOM to become as Google-independent as possible.
Fascinating question about how a plumber could make a brick and mortar business. I think the general blueprint for forming a brick and mortar company would look like this:
(1) Keep costs down: Share space and personnel if possible. Perhaps you are really good friends with your locksmith buddy and he will let you move into his office for a notional fee and his front office staff can service your calls.
(2) Look for parallel markets: Home Depot has an entire plumbing isle filled with products like drain cleaners. Besides direct profit, you also get to offer expertise on how to use the drain cleaners but also, I would be sooner or later your drain cleaner customer will need a full drain snaking.
(3) Provide point of sale service: Unlike the first two items, which deal with money directly, this is a pure service feature. A lot of people what to speak to a real person when they call, especially with an issue. If plumber A phone goes to voice mail when the hot water heater blows up and plumber B has his front office staff take the call, guess who is servicing that water heater. Likewise, if there is any compliant, such as the toilet still runs after you cleared the drain, the last thing your customer wants to hear when he calls to complain is voicemail or your distracted conversation as you drive around town. A brick and mortar , flesh and blood experience might retain a loyal customer who has had a bad day.
Great article. Thanks for putting it together Miriam
Hi Coleman Concierge!
Thanks so much for taking on the question of how SABs might transition to brick-and-mortar models. I was hoping this post would inspire some suggestions on that, and your 2nd point is my favorite. On the first point - you'd have to be careful about sharing space. While it's okay for two businesses to occupy the same building, they need to have their own phone number which is directly answered by the business. Your third point is a good one, too! Enjoyed your comment.
Miriam,
Have you had any experience with Google Home Service ads being suspended? We had two customer accounts suspended. One was down for weeks and Google wouldn't speak to the customer. Google then came back to the customer and said he has been suspended based on a glitch in their system, and he had done nothing wrong. I have a feeling this second suspension is for the same reason, but once Google suspends you in HSA they become non-communicative. Very frustrating! I would love to know if you have run into any similar situations?
Hi AshleyASO,
I've not personally experienced an HSA suspension. The closest I've come is reading about causes for them: https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/23...
What I'd recommend, if you are trying to get more data about a glitch causing suspension, would be to 1) post your case notes in the Google Advertiser forum asking that other forum users let you know if the same thing happened to them and what details they may have amassed from the situation, and, 2) post on Twitter and Facebook to see if anyone else was suspended over a glitch. I'd want to know what that glitch was. I'd try to escalate my question as much as possible to see if I could determine if the same bug was impacting the second business you mentioned. That sounds extremely frustrating that Google isn't being communicative. I hope some sleuthing might at least help you feel better-informed about what's going on. Google bugs rarely affect just one business - so you may find you have lots of company, and comparing notes might help you figure out what is going on. Good luck!
Hi Miriam,
WOW! What a great in depth article about SAB´s and Google. You couldn´t be more right than to call Google´s policies on them to be muddy, whilst this industry, due to its lack of resources, really needed clarity. In Portugal the competition is far from being as competetive as the US market so it will take some time before HSA will come (probably also why mozlocal is not available here). I really loved your idea on the incentive program. I guess you need to think out of the box if you want to have a thriving business in the future.
Hello Ramon!
Thanks for giving us an update from the Local SEO trenches in Portugal. Seems like every week, HSA is spotted in a new city in the US, but your comment has made me wonder about their plans and the feasibility of Google doing this type of lead gen internationally. First time I'd wondered about that, so thank you. I really appreciate the kind words and am glad you found this post to be accurate.
Thanks for the interesting additional insights into the SAB business on GMB that I didn't have until now.
Great insider knowledge, thanks
Thank's so much for the insight! Will be keeping an eye on HSAs
You're welcome, Brendon!
Hey Miriam, I never worked with SABs so everything from your article was a new landscape for me to learn. Thank you very much for the insights, they were really interesting!
So glad to hear that, Angel! I appreciate you taking the time to let me know this one broke new ground for you that will be useful in your work.