For the third time in six months, Google has decided to suspend my listing on “Google Places for Business”. My business is still showing up on Google search results, but it is having disastrous results for my search engine optimization which is a death knell for a business in this day and age.
The last time this happened, I was forced to make a new email address and new listing. This required abandoning all of my wonderful 5star reviews left by my appreciative customers. I refuse to make another gmail address and listing. I am trying to fix this with Google, even though the last time this happened I spent countless frustrating hours on the phone with Google who kept telling me there was nothing more they can do. Apparently they are slaves to their own algorithms now.
This time around, I tried verifying my business by phone. This failed. Google instructed me to “Listen for your PIN and enter it below:” and after I clicked the call button, it said, “Call failed”. Google, did you forget to pay your phone bill? What’s going on?
As an experiment, I tried adding a Google Voice number to my spare cellphone. A chirpy robotic female’s voice called me up promptly and had me enter a two digit confirmation code. Unfortunately, Google Voice then failed to find a phone number for the Seattle area. Once I chose a texas number, I tried calling my phone with it and it, too, failed. I can call my phone with my spare cellphone every time, so what’s wrong Google?
While trying to post about my problems on Google’s Business Help forum, the forum kept timing out. I have a solid connection to the internet, I am not timing out to any other server. What’s the problem, Google? Why is your server spitting out error codes at me? Why does it say “Loading…..” for minutes at a time?
Chinks are beginning to show in the search giant. I wonder if Google has spread themselves too thinly and that giant Chinese search engine, Baidu, will take over the internet?
