Google Places is a service that every business should sign up to, however Google’s policies at the moment mean you have to take care with how you use the listing.
At present Google are enforcing their listing rules in unpredictable ways and we’re hearing businesses are having their accounts suspended for what appears to a misreading on Google’s part of their own policies.
More importantly, there are stories of businesses who have updated their details and found their listing goes into “pending” status and their page is pulled from local search results until their revisions are reviewed by a Google staffer.
Often when the review is done, the listing is denied as being in breach of the rules which effectively bans the business from Google Places until the error is fixed.
Fixing the problem is difficult as the Google rejection emails are cryptic and, unfortunately in this era of the social business, come from a “no-reply” account with no sign off name, so there’s no way to find out exactly where the problem lies.
Given the uncertainty around Google’s policies in this space, it’s best not to make any changes to your Google Places account unless it’s absolutely necessary to update essential information.
If you haven’t already listed your business on Google Places, we’d still urge you to do so. Just make sure you get all of your details correct and pictures uploaded before you submit the entry.
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