HELP! Google Business listing removed - check out my SERP free fall!

[danlovesadobe]

Hey Moz Community,

I need your help. I have (had) a google local business listing. I made some changes last week to clean it up. Now it's gone and I've had a massive fall in my rankings (see images).

Changes I made:

• I changed the business name from a spammy name: BYOL Graphic Design & Web Design Courses. TO: **Bring Your Own Laptop PTY LTD. **
• I added Local business schema to my website. I added my telephone, address etc. Previously it was all an image.
• I tinkered with a few other things while I was there too but I can't remember them all.

Other notes:

• Initially I blamed the dramatic drop on Hummingbird but after doing some research I'm not so sure. I think it's because I was messing around with Google Local.
• My listing is/was here: https://plus.google.com/111689574762050943425 (though it doesn't work any more).
• My website is www.bringyourownlaptop.com.au

Questions:

1. Do you think the loss of my Google local listing could be the cause of such a big drop?
2. If it is my Google local listing - Is there a way to find out what I did wrong?
3. Is there a place to ask for it to be re-checked?
4. Is it better to just start again with a new listing?
5. Do you think it's tied together with a Hummingbird change some how?
6. What else can I check?
7. What would you do?

Thanks for your time.

Dan 
_The nervous business owner. _

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[MiriamEllis]

Hi Daniel,

So sorry to hear of the trouble you are having! My guess is that your issue may be complex enough to require a professional audit, but I will take a stab here and pointing out a few things and asking a few questions. Let me number these points, as they are sort of all over the map.

1. Normally, when you change the business name in the Google Places for Business dashboard, you will be required to re-verify the listing. Were you prompted to do so? Did you receive a postcard and re-verify? Where are you at in this process?

2. If you had a spammy business name on your Google+ Local page, did you also build citations this way? A ranking drop could certainly result from the new, correct business name not matching other third party listings of your business with the old spammy name. This is important and worth checking! If you find your street address and phone number listed anywhere in conjunction with the spammy name, or with any variant of the business name other than what you've provided in your Google Places for Business dashboard, then you may be dealing with the fallout of citation inconsistency and would need to do a citation cleanup campaign.

3. Second issue - I have seen a number of reports of 404 error pages like the one you are seeing coming into the Google And Your Business Help Forum. Check this search out and see if you see your experience/issue reflected there:

http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!searchin/business/404|sort:date

4. Next - is this also your business?

http://www.bringyourownlaptop.co.nz/

Could you be having an issue with duplicate content between the two websites? Always important to check on that.

5. Is your physical location at Level 2, 80 Mount Street, Sydney, NSW, 2026 a real physical office wherein you make face-to-face contact with your clients? Is the office shared by any other business? How long have you occupied this address? That's 3 questions to consider, I know, but important ones.

6. Since I can't look at the +Local page, unfortunately, I cannot diagnose if there could have been problems with it. You've been admirably honest about saying it was spammy, so that leaves me wondering if there could have been multiple violations of the Google Places Quality Guidelines that could have led to your being de-listed. I'm not saying this is what happened, but it is something to consider. I'd read through them and make a list of points besides the spammy business name that you may have violated. You should also try hard to remember what you edited on the listing.

7. Because the Google+ Local page is 404d, you can't click the 'Report A Problem' link on it, so that's problematic, but you could try this troubleshooter: https://support.google.com/places/#contact=1 You can select the 'my listing no longer appears on Google Maps option' and see if you can get somewhere with that.

8. Likewise, you could report the problem in the Google And Your Business Forum http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/business in hopes of getting feedback from a Top Contributor there. TCs have the ability to escalate an issue like yours to Google staff.

Lots of suggestions. I hope at least some of them give you some ideas of what to begin investigating. Good luck with this!

[crackingmedia]

That's a really good comprehensive answer Miriam - for everyone! Thank you.

Peter

[danlovesadobe]

Wow.

Thanks for such a quick and valuable response Miriam.

I started working through all of your suggestions and I stumbled across a new Google+ business page. It has all my new updates but none of the reviews or posts. Looks like it's been around for a while as I've added a post in April but I swear I had another page.

Any chance my reviews and posts can be moved to this new account or are they lost?

My rankings are still screwed though. Do you think a change like this would effect a page's rankings so much Miriam? Or do you think it might be someone else hurting the site?

My new page is: https://plus.google.com/108827536040942698968

Any suggestions for this new page? Thank you so much for your help so far Miriam - I really appreciate it.

Dan

[crackingmedia]

Hi Dan

I have seen a suggestion before that you can use Google Takeout to transfer content from one Google account to another, but I have never done that, so it may be worth investigating (cautiously) the options with that.

Peter

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Daniel,

You can attempt to transfer reviews with this form (https://support.google.com/business/#topic=2794267&ts=3054546,3141976&contact=1) but given the fact that your old page is gone, I'm not sure what will happen. I've not seen any form for transferring posts, but suggest you research that to see if you can turn something up.

Are you able to get into the dashboard for the new page? Have you verified ownership of it?

[MiriamEllis]

Thanks, Peter! Nice of you to say.

[danlovesadobe]

Thanks again for all the help.

I'm trailing things slowly. I don't want to change lots of things again and not know which actually helped. I'll post my ranking ranges again in a week or too and let you know what I found to be the solution.

Thanks again to Miriam & Peter.