New google maps listing was showing & now is not

[eWebify]

Here is a brief description of what I am doing and what happened.

I recently acquired a new client who had an unclaimed google business listing.   We claimed the listing and within 2 days it was showing up for its main search term on Google.  Almost immediately my client was receiving new calls from the listing. Within a week the listing no longer shows up with the other listings on the home page but does show up when searching on google maps.

Does anyone have a lot of experience with Google+ & business listings?  If yes, what are some of the most common reasons listings might be removed, shuffled around, increased or decreased in ranking, etc.

Sincerely,

Garret

[MonicaOConnor]

Are you signed into Google when doing these searches? That is a huge factor in local rankings. Can you track the SERP of the map listing in any tool?

[MoosaHemani]

Monica when he said the client is receiving calls this means that the listing was actually there and if those calls are stop this means that the listing isn’t there anymore…. (This is how it logically should be).

When you are saying the listing appears when you go to Google Maps but not in the main results I assume that other competitors will have some edge may be better listing optimization against the desired keywords, better reviews, better rating them yours and more.

My recommendation is to do the audit and figure out where the problem is and go from there accordingly.

Hope this helps!

[mrodriguez1440]

Hi,

Without knowing the particulars of your listing, I'll attempt to answer your questions:

"(1) what are some of the most common reasons listings might be removed,

(2) shuffled around,

(3) increased or decreased in ranking, etc."

(1) Removal could be due to spamming the description (keyword stuffing), though lately I have seen highly over optimized listings that are not being removed. In the past, a listing could be removed if the business owner attempted to keyword stuff the business name, but again this seems to be allowed now (it's referred to as a "descriptor."). Is it possible they have duplicate listings?  That could be causing a removal.

(2), (3) --> I see the shuffling around with my clients all the time. This is influenced by the keyword, where the search is being conducted (meaning where Google thinks you are when conducting the keyword search), and other factors that I do not think Google discloses. I have noticed that at different times of the day my clients appear higher or lower in the local rankings.  Perhaps Google shuffles around the results to see what gets better click-through-rates (and in theory creating a better user experience.)

Increase/decrease in rankings can be influenced by the user's location.  Then again, what kind of increase/decrease are you talking about? A few spots? Totally common. 20 spots? Tough to say.

You mentioned that the listing is not in the local pack, but appears when you click on "Map results for [Insert Keyword]." I have seen that too, but cannot tell you why that happens. There has been speculation that it has to do with either onsite optimization or GMB over-optimization, but I don't know if anyone outside of Google really knows. What I can tell you is that this happened to one of my clients. His listing would disappear from the local pack, but be #3 in the map results. Within a few weeks this stopped happening, and now his listing is consistently in the local pack.

If you would like, PM the listing in question and I'll take a look.  Good luck.

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Garret,

I have some questions and then some thoughts for you:

Where was the listing ranking before you claimed it (what letter)?

Where did it rank after you claimed it (what letter)?

When you say it is showing up in Google Maps, what position does it have in the list view?

Is there any chance that claiming the listing might have drawn Google's attention to the accidental existence of you having more than 1 listing in existence for this business? Have you searched for duplicates?

How good is the client's organic authority?

Did you notice a general ranking shift at this time for any of the client's competitors? Could Google have coincidentally been reordering results at the time you claimed the listing or has everybody else in the pack stayed in about the same position?

Some ideas: read through this article to check off potential issues with ranking failures:

http://moz.com/blog/troubleshooting-local-ranking-failures

The other thing I'm thinking of hearkens back to my early days in Local SEO. It seems to me that I remember instances in which a newly claimed listing would appear high in the packs for a brief period of time, then fall off to a much lower position and then would have to climb back up the rankings based on effort/strength. I haven't heard this phenomenon being mentioned in many years, but I wonder if it might still exist here and there.

I'd highly advise looking into the duplicate listing possibility and do go through the article I've linked to:)