Podiatrists’ Guide: How to Restore Your Suspended Google Business Profile

You're listening to podiatry marketing, conversations on building a successful podiatry practice with Tyson Franklin and Jim McDannald.

Hi. I'm Tyson Franklin, and welcome back to this week's episode of Podiatry Marketing. With me, as usual, every week, my good friend, Big Jim Mack, aka Jim McDannald. How you doing, Jim? Jim?

How you doing, Jim?

Things are good, Tyson. Things are good.

Almost called you Jim. I don't know why.

I've been called worse things, so it's it's no worries.

Okay. How have you been since last week?

Things are good. Just enjoying the winter here in Oregon. No. It's no complaints.

Okay. Well, I'm back from The UK. Had a fantastic trip. It was unbelievable. I'll tell you more about it on another episode because there's gonna be a few things there that will be worth sharing.

I'm looking forward to that. It's gonna be great. So what are we talking about today?

So today, we're gonna jump onto a topic that I got to know very I became very familiar with right when I got back from the holiday break, and that is what to do if your Google Business profile gets suspended. Oh.

I I I can just imagine that actually happening, and I don't think it'd be good.

No. You definitely wanna stay in the good graces of Google. It's definitely gonna have an a hugely negative impact on your visibility. So when you get that email from Google saying that your Google business profile is suspended, and it wasn't mine. It was actually a client that I was working with, and we'll get into this some of those details about why it happened.

But Yeah.

One of my clients had this issue pop up and, yeah, there's just a lot of stuff you have to be aware of because obviously, you know, any loss of visibility, you know, having a suspended listing is gonna really impact your visibility for prospective patients. Right? So, you know, it's it really cuts off a huge potential, you know, traffic source, and it can be something that you definitely need to get on as soon as possible because it it can definitely have an impact. Not only that, but the kind of online credibility as well. Like, if you're just not showing up.

Right? You know, they might be confused or, you know, people that, you know, are looking for you and can't find you, they're like, what you know, why isn't your website showing up on Google anymore?

Yeah. I suppose it's one of those things. Like, I won't ask why, Strayer, because I'm sure you're going to explain why, and you probably wanna lead up to that. But I'm hoping it's not like when Facebook suspend you for just no reason or or anything like that. So I'm I'm hoping there's a little bit more detail to it, and the person did actually make a mistake.

No. It's actually there was a mistake made, but it wasn't by by the owner of the practice, but we'll get into that. Yeah. But, you know, like we talked about on previous shows, the Google Business Profile is one of the most important aspects of your practice because it's almost like a little mini website. Right?

Yeah. So, you know, you you probably heard on previous episodes when we've talked about it. This for for the audience, you know, if you're this is your first time hearing about it, you know, definitely go back and listen to some of our previous episodes because we won't go into all those details with Google Business Profile. But it is one of those things where if you're not if you don't have it, it's a huge, you know, kind of negative impact on kind of your ability to acquire patients. So kinda going over, you know, what are some common reasons for the Google Business Profile to be suspended in the first place.

You know, sometimes it can be because someone either hacks into your account or maybe you had a maybe you had a previous agency or previous person working on your website that, you know, they got phished or somewhat some way your login and password for your Google or maybe you got phished. Basically, this is what happened with the with my with my client is that somehow somehow to gain access both to their Google business profile and to their Google Ads account. And there was enough kind of strange things going on in both those accounts that Google Google saw that it has enough kind of smart I don't It's machine learning or something within the system that if, you know, someone's trying to, you know, do, like, two or three thousand dollars a month of Google Ads that's kind of, you know, out of the out of the norm. And there's a bunch of other accounts, you know, that are logging in maybe from addresses that haven't logged in before. We're talking about an IP address, which kinda tells what device or where you are at in the world.

So that's kinda what happened to my client. Know, they're both these accounts got basically suspended, like, right at the beginning of the year because someone had hacked in somehow and, you know, caused reached a little bit of havoc in my client's account.

Yeah. But I don't know the episode numbers, but I do recommend everyone goes back to listens to the the things about the Google Business profile. Because even a client I was talking to recently, and I was asking them, I was inquiring about it. I went online and had a look at their profile, and there was it hadn't been nothing had been added to it or updated for ages. And I actually brought it to their attention, and all of sudden, they realized, oh, god.

It was a past employee who set that up. They have the password. They have all the details.

No. It's hugely important to know what your password is and to have the the login and the password in a secure place to make sure that, you know, this kind of stuff doesn't happen because, yeah, like, it it can take a while and we'll get into that. It's it can take a while for it to to kinda come back online even if you, you know, you can you have to sometimes prove who you are, but we'll get into that.

Yeah. So so what are the common reasons? What what are the the most common reasons that this would happen?

Sure. So the most common reason is that there's certain Google has certain guidelines as far as what you're able to put, you know, into the kind of the business name or the information that you display there. Generally, you know, for your clinic, it has to be the the exact business name of your clinic. So you can't put in, like, you know, let's say it's like, say you call yourself, like, Springfield Foot and Ankle Associates. Well, you can't, like, go in there and put podiatry clinic and podiatrist and add a bunch of different things that we would call keyword stuffing.

If you're just trying to put every word associated with podiatry into something that's, you know, really should be only your your your basically, business name in there. Yeah. Your legal business name in there. That's one of the most common ones that you'll see. Also, you know, either by mistake or sometimes if people are just being a little bit overly aggressive, any kind of duplicate listings, you know, if there's multiple profiles for your clinic Okay.

That can trigger red trigger red flags. Sometimes you'll see these happen. Sometimes patients will or someone will make you an extra one accidentally when they're trying to leave you a review. So that's something that that can kinda pop up and know that, you know, you are able to have a kind of a business listing on Google Business Profile for your clinic. And then every every kind of podiatrist to work that they're gonna have a separate kind of a provider listing as well.

But you've gotta be careful about making sure that those aren't, you know, duplicated. You don't put, you know, three different Google business listings for your singular clinic. That's a really, really important factor.

Did you say a patient could set one up for you?

Well, yeah. Sometimes there's actually ways that people can create Google business profiles. It's not like, you know, sometimes they're able to people are able to set those up. They're they're not always verified, but you'll see kind of duplicate listings sometimes crop up because patients or some people have created them kinda without your permission. But Google that's something that Google, at least in the previous previously allowed.

Okay. But wouldn't Google know like, so if I wanted to set if I if there was a business owner and you didn't have a profile, but I want to leave a review, and they don't have a profile, I can wouldn't that Google know it's me that's logged on?

But maybe they they messed up on the address or maybe the address doesn't match exactly. So, you know, basically, they'll let Google will also let you make recommendations to different profiles, like, you know, is that address in maybe you can suggest a correction or suggest a change. Yeah. Maybe the, you know, the address wasn't exact or the phone number was off. You can make suggestions, but you can also like I said, sometimes you can make, like, unverified other other Google business profile listings as well.

And and sometimes Google, for whatever reason, they don't seem to be so great about finding these duplicates.

Okay. So what what else can so you've got the guideline violation. We got duplicate listings. What else?

Yeah. Sometimes just making a significant amount of changes to your Google profile can really send a kind of a red flag to Google. Know, maybe if you're you're changing the business name, you're changing the phone number, you're changing a lot of stuff on there. Maybe you are changing your location. That would be normal.

But Google may ask you to reauthorize or reverify.

Okay.

Like I said, there this is kind of, you know, if someone's trying to take over, they could think that, is this you know, just to be on the safe side, sometimes they'll freeze or pause an account because, you know, all this stuff happened in a short period of time. Maybe it's from a computer that wasn't recognized by Google. Like I said, you have these IP addresses maybe, you know, a % of the changes previously had come from two different IP addresses, and now there's like a different one that they don't recognize making all these changes. So there are some ways that Google tries to preemptively protect Google Business Profiles.

I have noticed that when I've traveled and I've gone to log in, and even though I've got my my laptop with me, you're not thinking anything of it, but I might be in a different location, different country. And I'll get a message from Google almost immediately saying, is this you trying to log in from this address? And and at the same time, you go, I think it was me.

I hope so.

I hope it was me. I hope there isn't someone who's hacking at the same time. So I just go, yes. It was me. It's all good.

Yeah. And a lot of times, they'll also if you have, like, Gmail or if you have Google installed, you know, some of the apps on your phone, sometimes you'll get that kind of two factor authentication where it'll say, okay. You know, open up the Gmail app, open up the Google Ads app, whatever, and you just have to kinda, like, do this to kinda two factor authentication, and that sometimes can help give information to Google to make sure that they know that it's you. Last but not least is user complaints. You know, sometimes people are very competitive.

And sometimes with AI image generation and those things, people can kind of and I've heard I've heard stories that's not in podiatrist necessarily, but in like the dog grooming business where there's like a mobile dog groomer, you know, that they're on the the photos on Google Business profile. It's like they show a branded van. They show people with, you know, branded t shirts, and it looks very professional. And then all of a sudden, someone shows up at their front door in, you know, unmarked van. The person doesn't look very professional.

They're running late. So some they will sometimes listen about user complaints saying like, you know, it didn't feel like this was legitimately this company. Right? So there there if you can make like I said, you can review and send Google, you know, recommendations about it. We can also kind of flag and say, hey.

You know, it can lead to kind of a manual review of a of a business if it doesn't seem like it's either legitimate or it feels like some kind of odd bait and switch situation might be going on.

But is Google trying to protect the fact that somebody might just be taking stock images, putting them together to make their business look better than what it is?

No. Absolutely.

And when someone puts a complaint and Google looks at those photos and goes, oh, this is this is not you. Boom. You're out. You're gone.

Yeah. Exactly. It's I guess it's becoming more more prevalent these days.

Okay. So if it does happen, and there's probably other reasons why it could happen, but if it does happen, what should you do about it?

Yeah. So there's different ways to fix the problem. Right? So the first way is to kinda identify kinda what the root cause is. Like, kind of review with you and maybe your staff or the person that's doing your marketing, like, you know, have we made any changes over the last I don't know.

Usually, it's pretty quick. I mean, but let's say over the last seven days.

Google won't send you a message and go, hey. We're suspending you for two weeks or for a month until we investigate something?

Well, sometimes you'll get like a trigger thing and say, hey, your your account is your Google Business profile account is suspended, but doesn't necessarily give you the reasoning why. Like for example, the client that I was working with, like, it wasn't clear to me, you know, what had happened. If she had maybe made some changes, you know, I I work remotely. She was getting back from the holidays. Was there something that she saw that on her Google Business profile she wanted to do and since she hadn't done it, was that a red flag?

Was there someone on her staff that had messed around with it? Had we, you know, added some kind of keyword stuffing to things? I was concerned that maybe, you know, look look inward first to see like I hadn't, you know, touched that account during the holiday, so it was kind of odd to me that all of a sudden, the first day back that we're having these these issues. But it got a little to me like, okay. Not only is our Google business profile suspended, but also our Google Ads are.

So we we took a little time. And and I think about Google, especially Google Ads, you can kinda see all the changes that are made in an account. It just shows you like on that basically, there's a section within Google Ads where you can see, you know, this time, this day, the person this login made this account change. And there's some very glaring things there. So you basically kind of first step is to try to help identify the root cause whether that's you or the the marketing folks you're working with.

Also, you can reach out to Google. There's gonna be, you know, maybe some additional information in that email they send that might give you a general sense of what's what's what's happening, and then, you know, further reaching out to them. And and I think I feel like it's getting harder and harder to actually contact them. You know, used to be a phone call or a chatbot used to be able to contact them. Now it's more like emails, which isn't necessarily that helpful because you're, you know, just kinda sitting around on your you know, twiddling your thumbs while, you know, trying to figure out how to get this up and going.

But the the first step is really to identify the root cause, and then like I said, kind of start the ball rolling as far as gathering information about what it is, you know, they're with you and your team or reaching out to Google.

Okay. And if you do now is there like a a list of an order of violations that you actually check?

Yeah. So I mean, there's different violation like I said, like, you know, maybe, you know, if there's been changes to the business name, you know, you wanted to kind of ensure that the address is yours, you know, when you probably one of the things that people, if they wanna break into your Google Business profile is what they'd wanna do is to try to use that link or the phone number in your email to maybe kinda like for podiatry clinic, it's probably less prevalent, but, you know, they continue to nefarious malware sites or something like that with with the link that's in your Google Business profile. So if it's someone that's, you know I'll you're never gonna get another podiatry clinic that's gonna, you know, break into you and try to, like, send patients to them. No. But it it might be, like I said, might be malware.

It might be some kind of, you know, virus, computer virus or something to trying to get get people to go to this website for some reason. So those are probably the two areas to check first. But, you know, just trying to get that communication with Google is really really helpful because if you're not sophisticated, you don't really know where to look at, in your Google's business profile can be kind of a it can be difficult for a clinic owner to really know where to look and what to do. So you know, working with your your marketing help, but also having that open line of communication. Even though it's kind of slow and annoying with Gmail or or with with with email, that's usually the best way to kinda move forward to, you know, then correcting, you know, once you can find out from them what the issue is, going in and, you know, working with them.

Sometimes they're gonna ask for, you know, screenshots or additional information. They obviously wanna make sure that you are associated with the business. So sometimes they're going to ask for your business license or your your your medical license, your podiatry license. So there there might be additional documentation you need to gather. And when it comes to Google Business Profile and even with Google Ads, you wanna make sure that give yourself like, you know, once they say, okay, can you give us this documentation?

You know, make sure you send, you know it can be a bit like an electric bill. But all enough information where they feel like they know that it's you because they don't, you know the the last thing they wanna do is, you know, reinstate your account if someone still has control of it. So it's a really, really important factor there. Yeah. Then the next step is really to, you know, look at look around and see if there are duplicates.

You know, if if you if you're still unsure, you're still waiting for Google to get back to you, you can look and see if there's been duplicate listings.

And when you're saying a duplicate, could it be you you were in one location, you've moved to another place, you and you just set up a new Google business profile, not realizing you could have just edited the original one. And and if you've moved a couple of times, you could have three different locations.

It could be you. It could be maybe, you know, you gave this job to your staff, and then two members of your staff accidentally did it. You know? Or it could be, for some reason, you got away from whether you knowing you had a Google Business profile or not, and you make one five or six years later kind of confuse that or you changed your business name. So there's a lot of different reasons why these duplicates will exist.

So it's a matter of just like, okay, what is my clinic be been called over the last, you know, since I've been in practice, you know, have you, you know, added additional podiatrists to the practice, you know, these kind of practitioner listings. But just making sure that whatever the account is being suspended that you do a little bit of due diligence when it comes to moving those duplicates.

Okay. And then once you figure out the problem and you make the changes, will Google just put it turn it straight back on or have you gotta do something else?

Yes. So generally, like, the the next like, the last step is is kind of submitting. And this is, like I said, once you get enough information from Google, maybe you fill out some different forms, there's usually a a submit kind of reinstatement request. Know, after you have gathered all the documentation that is you, you and Google have kinda figured out what it is. You can kinda request this reinstatement, and it can take a little while though.

You know, it's the timelines are kind of different. And for a while, I think Google is pretty understaffed. I'd heard other marketers talk about it taking somewhere between three to four weeks sometimes for Google Business Profile to kind of resurface. We were lucky in this case. We gave them a lot of information.

I think it also helped that it was tied into the Google business or the Google Ads account kind of being taken over. So they were pretty quickly. We got it done in about, I think it was two and a half days for them to reinstate to reinstate it. But it it can be much much longer. It can be up to weeks for some people because like I said, sometimes Google has a backlog.

I think maybe it helped that it happened right after the the holidays. Maybe there wasn't a lot of, you know, fraud going a hunter in the holidays. So I don't know. Maybe we got lucky in that way, but it was very very helpful. Like I said, make sure you have enough verification, you know, you have because they're gonna ask for the documents about, like I said, your your medical license, your proof of address, your business license.

Those things are super important. And there's different ways, you know, that it you know, when it's very clear that someone had tried to take over both of these accounts, you know, they're gonna probably reinstate you more quickly. Know, if if you're the one that's at fault, because people can be at fault themselves by, like I said, you know, putting a bunch of keywords in there, you know, you know, doing things that are a little bit, know, kinda like how, like, black hat when it comes to Google Business Profile. If you're kind of, you crossing the line a little bit yourself, that's something that maybe they'll be a little slower to reinstate you.

Yeah. Because I know I had not run-in so much with Google. A little bit. A little bit of a a concern. But this is only because of, like, YouTube account because it's attached.

And it's the same thing. I've got money sitting there that they wanna pay me, but we keep going backwards and forwards. And like you said, it's hard to actually talk to anybody or get some information where you've got a feeling like, say, tax information. And you give them everything. And they go, thank you.

And then they still don't do it. And they go, we need more information, but then I tell you what, you know, you just need to fix this. Which parts do I need to fix? So it sometimes it does. It's a lot of backwards and forwards.

No. It's gonna be really frustrating. It's kind of a black box there, Google. We've talked about that a lot, you know, the about the the way you set up Google Ads and the way you run ads. But even just trying to get a straight answer from anybody at Google can be a very, very frustrating thing.

And, you know, trying to it's it's got to be very diligent. I think, you know, you know, checking in with with the Google team and sending multiple emails, it can be one way of doing it, especially if you have someone that does your marketing for you. Luckily, you know, she was she was busy in clinic while I was, you know, trying to hit up the phones and trying to send, you know, emails on a pretty significant, you know Yeah. You know, over a period of time. Not to the point where it's, you know, crazy annoying for them, but at the same time, I wanna let them know that this still is not resolved.

We've, you know, we've done what you asked, you know. So it's one of those things where you have to be diligent about getting after them because otherwise, they're not always the best of following up.

And they don't it's not always like a when they have suspensions, just one full on suspension, or will they will they limit your access sometimes?

Yeah. I mean, sometimes I think if it's tuned to fares, they might just completely not let you have access at all, and you have to basically get it totally unlocked. Luckily with ours, like I said, it was pretty clear. So they they gave us the opportunity to, like, just review both our Google Ads account, and I didn't require kind of a like an in-depth kind of, you know, audit or review that just internally from their team because we were kinda working together in that way. Yeah.

So if possible, you wanna make sure that, you know, you're you're sending good information to Google and then they're gonna be much more receptive because if they can if you're giving them good information, they can kinda resolve it more quickly. I think they really want to do that. They wanna resolve these cases as quickly as possible. But if you're unable to help them or the person who are just doing your marketing can't really provide them helpful information, it requires a lot more time on their side, and then thus that requires you to be your your profile to be down a lot longer.

So once you went through this process, you got it all up and running again, are there certain things that you had to tell your client to make sure it doesn't happen again? So in the future, they don't get suspended.

Yeah. I think it's important for anybody that sets up Google Business Profiles to kinda have kind of some right ways to go about doing it. You know, there's certain standard operating procedures when you're doing things with Google Business Profile to make sure that you don't accidentally trigger one of these suspensions or for your for you to lose visibility with your business profile. That includes, number one, setting up an accurate and consistent, basically, NAP, or that's your your name, your address, and your phone. You wanna make sure that you know that that is kind of clear throughout the internet not only on Google, but you wanna make sure that that is you know, use those same things to describe your business, your address, and your phone to make sure that it looks legitimate across all the different online properties.

Not first and foremost. Yeah. Also helps to know kind of what Google's rules are. I I don't expect every podiatrist to go in there and look at the the Google guidelines for for a business profile, but definitely the people that are doing your marketing should know and understand what's allowed and not allowed. So making sure that, you know, you're in good contact and you you have faith in the person that's providing your marketing services, make sure that, you know, they're not doing anything that's gonna run afoul of of those Google guidelines because otherwise, it's a pretty quick way to get your your business profile suspended.

Well, some marketing companies that you work with, like, I'm sure there's some marketing companies that all they wanna do is try and get results for you, and they're prepared to bend or break the rules to actually get those results for you so they can show that, hey, look look how good we are, but long term, that could be damaging.

No. Exactly. It's a short term tactic that Yeah. People's gonna catch on in the long term and, you know, those days or weeks that you lose visibility for your Google Business profile.

So all those emails that you get that say, hey, we can get you 10,000 new followers. Just yeah. If you work with us, stay away.

Yeah. It's if it sounds like it's too good to be true, it probably is.

Yeah. I probably get probably only about half a dozen a week now. Every time I put a video on YouTube, bang, I just get inundated from Bangladesh and India. Just telling me, hey. We can do this.

I think, you know, if I put them all together, I'll have 10,000,000 people subscribe to my channel within two weeks. It's incredible. Absolutely. So so what else before we finish up?

Yeah. So you wanna make sure that you're monitoring the edits and reviews that happen, you know, on your on your Google Business profile. You know, there's different services that either, you know for example, you can it's like a dollar a month where you can kinda make you can see any change that happens to these profiles. And whether it's you or the business or the, you know, the marketing provider that you're working with, you really need to make sure that you're continuing to, you know, monitor what's going on in your business profiles, basically staying proactive. Right?

It's one of these reasons why your website, your Google Google Ads, your Google Business profile, these are not set it and forget it kind of situations. You need have someone that's proactively reviewing and maintaining your Google Business profile to kind of avoid, you know, the potential of either getting a suspension for the first time or getting repeat suspensions. It's something that can really, you know, once once you have it happen once, it should never happen again.

Yeah. And I think what you just said then about it's not a set and forget. And I think that is what's happened with people in the past. They've set it up maybe with the practice manager or another team member. They've set it up.

They've had the other person finish it off, you know, maybe they know what the passwords are and everything, and that person leaves. And it's just been sitting there for years doing absolutely nothing. And I I have a look at a lot of podiatry Google business profiles. I'm always looking at other podiatrists, what they've got up there, and surprising how many are just not touching it. It's just sitting there.

And I know they've moved and the information is wrong.

Yeah. That's a huge liability for your clinic. Not only losing, you know, the visibility of the clinic, but know, if the address is wrong, the phone number is wrong, the the link to make an appointment is going somewhere else that

you don't know

where it is going. It's a huge liability and a potential loss of reputation and trust with these prospective patients, which can be, you know, devastating to a practice.

So anything else before we wrap up?

No. I think that's a good place to get place to kind of end it here. I think, you know, if you haven't listened to some of the basics, we have, you know, some previous podcasts you can go back, you know, search through the archive and listen to, and then maybe this one will make either more sense or just feel even more relevant than it was. But, you know, try to stay on the right side of Google if you do run into, you know, Google Business Profile suspensions. You know, don't hesitate to, you know, obviously reach out to your, you know, your marketing provider and to your staff.

But if you if I can be of any help or you could provide any any guidance, always happy to do so.

Yeah. Learn from other people's mistakes, and don't make the same mistake yourself. Absolutely. Okay. Big Jim, I look forward to talking to you next week.

Alright.

Okay. Peace out. Bye bye. Okay. See you.

Thanks for listening to Podiatry Marketing with Tyson Franklin and Jim McAnnold. Subscribe and learn more at Podiatry Marketing. That's the website address, podiatry.marketing.