If you have noticed that you have fallen from the Google Maps listings on the front page of Google, there are a few things you can do immediately to get your rankings back quickly. Hopefully, this will help a few business owners regain rankings that may have slipped over the last few weeks. We have noticed this happening on a number of clients’ sites and wanted to pass along this quick fix.
Log into your Google My Business account (https://www.google.com/business/) and look to see if you have any notifications from Google. You may notice on the top of your listing this little update from Google.
Before you freak out and think you have been attacked by one of your competitors, you want to click on the review update button and log in to find out what updates have been made. You will see highlighted in red what changes Google believes needs to be made on your Google My Business listing. In one instance we fixed this morning, Google believes there is information that should be changed with the hours of the business. This is how it looked when we logged in.
You can see that it is fairly obvious what needs to be done to fix this minor problem. In this case, the client is open daily from 8:00 am until 4:00 pm, with someone in the office answering the phone at this time. However, this company is in the service industry and provides emergency service 24 hours a day. In this case, we altered our hours to be open 24 hours a day, as shown by the example below.
Who keeps updating my Google My Business listing?
There are a number of reasons that there may have been changes to your account. Some of them are simply because Google has scraped the web, found another website online with different hours of operation, and is trying to determine which one is accurate. In the case of the client above, we believe this is the case. This is why it is so important to set up your Google My Business accurately across the entire web. Having the correct Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) is critical in getting you listed at the top of the maps listings. Of course, that is just the first step, but it is the most important one.
Another way this information may be updated is through user updates. When you pull up a brand on Google, you will see all the important information listed on the side of the page, such as images of the place of business, reviews, directions, and options to update the website. If you have a photo of work done by a company, you have the ability to go in and upload that work. You also have the option to state if the business is wheelchair accessible, if they accept certain credit cards, etc. This is all information Google will use to update your listing.
If you go into your account and update the listing, you should see your website pop back into the snack pack (top three Map results) if your business is set up properly and optimized correctly. If you need any help ranking your business in the Google My Business listings, you can always request help from one of our professionals.
The shadier side of Google Maps
While we have seen several interesting and slimy ways that people are using Google My Business to harm competitors, we really don’t want to go into that in this post. The goal of our blog posts is to help you capture more business online from organic search, not to hurt your competitors.
Karma is a bitch, and we don’t want to see that type of thing occurring online. You must be diligent about checking your updates and reviews from Google because these reviews can suppress your listing in the snack pack. Make sure you do this weekly at a minimum to ensure you are staying at the top of the Google search results page. Be sure your NAP is exact across all your online profiles. If you have a Facebook page (which you should), make sure that the name, address, and phone are the exact same as what is on your website. If you have multiple numbers on your site, have one consistent for each brick-and-mortar location.
Google My Business can be pretty difficult to manage and may not rank well even if you have most of the basics covered. We are experts at moving businesses into the top of the snack pack and would be happy to work with you. If interested, don’t hesitate to give us a call at 240-477-7085. Now go check your Google My Business listings!