Never Removed My Local Listings?

[Rachel_J]

Hi Local SEO experts,

A while back we created Google My Business listings for a few of our company locations. A couple of months ago we removed them, because we realized that G might not consider them company locations as they weren't constantly staffed.

Only problem is that they started showing up again. Truthfully I don't mind, but I just want to make sure the business won't get penalized for it. They say "claim this business" on the local listing because it's not claimed by us anymore.

Is this okay or can we get in trouble for it? If it's not okay, how do I go about removing them if I don't have access to it?

Thanks for your time,

Rachel

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Rachel!

Without being able to see this directly (it's totally okay if you can't share) advice here will have to be general rather than specific. Yes, you can get docked for having Google My Business listings that don't follow Google's guidelines. I recommend that you phone Google directly so that you can talk to them about what happened and see what your options are for closing out the listings, if appropriate. You can get on the phone with Google via the CONTACT US button here: https://support.google.com/business/?hl=en&rd=1#topic=4539639

[GlobeRunner]

If these were previously closed locations or removed in Google My Business then most likely Google picked them up from the aggregators. It sounds as if that's the case, as those locations were probably listed on other websites, the local search data providers.

Moz has more information about these here: https://moz.com/learn/local/local-search-data-providers

What you'll need to do is figure out where your other listings are--and get those removed, as well. Otherwise, even if you get them removed from Google again they will show up again once Google pulls the data from the data providers again.