Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
GMB Account Fallen Off Rankings in past 24 hours
-
My map pack presence has fallen off the face of the earth over the last 24 hours. My location The Escape Game Chicago was top 3 yesterday for 'escape room chicago' and now they only show up when searching for the exact brand name.
What's weirder is I still rank #1 organically for that keyword.I have looked through the account, nothing seems to be totally amiss. Google has not notified me of any issues or penalties. I have no clue what happened.Can anyone point me in the right direction or provide some insight as to how I can recover my ranking?
-
Thank you for bringing your question to the forum, Daniel. Likely, what you will need to do is a full competitive audit (for which you can find some guidance here: https://moz.com/blog/basic-local-competitive-audit) to discover why your business is being outranked by a competitor. My glance at this here in the forum can't replace an audit, but I will take a look and jot down some notes about what I see.
1. You mention that you were previously in the 3 pack for "escape room Chicago" but on March 10, you dropped. Looking from my location on the West Coast on March 16, I see you are at position #10 in Google's local finder (the mapped results you see when you click on the 3-pack for more info). So, you haven't disappeared altogether, but you have definitely fallen at least 7 spots since you last enjoyed your 3 pack ranking. When you search from your location at the place of business, what position are you seeing yourself in today?
2. Your review count is many times greater than that of any competitor, with the exception of Fox in a Box also having over 1,000 reviews. You currently have 1,399 reviews vs. the top competitor for this search term, Escape House, which has 95. Pardon the frank question, but are you certain you haven't done anything to violate Google's review guidelines in a way that might have prejudiced them against your listing? This would include incentivizing reviews in any way for your business, having employees review your business, etc. The advantage should be to you here, in your far greater number of reviews, but when the total number of reviews is so much greater than most of the rest of the field, it's important to be sure guidelines are being adhered to.
3. Your overall star rating of 4.9 is .1 greater than Escape House's 4.8. Advantage to you.
4. Your categories are the same as your top competitor's. No difference there.
5. Your competitor has written Google posts in the past. None are showing for you. Advantage to them.
6. You are doing a much better job responding to reviews than your top competitor is. Advantage to you.
7. What is going on with your business being located next door to two other escape businesses? Do you have a relationship with Escape House or Safe House? What is the scenario here?
8. In terms of business names, the name on your street signage as seen via Google Street View does not match what you have called your business in your GMB listing. Your street sign reads: The Escape Game. Your GMB listing is titled: The Escape Game Chicago. Adding extra keywords to your listing title is considered spam. Meanwhile, Escape House does not have extra keywords in their name. Technically, because Google's algorithm is still rewarding business name spammers, the advantage in this could be to you, but on the other hand, it could be possible that your business name was reported to Google and they are docking you for this.
9. The MozCast reported a bit of heavy weather on March 9th which could have included a shakeup in your pack. Local Rank Flux also reported a "hot" day on the 9th (see https://www.localsearchforum.com/threads/sudden-gmb-ranking-drop-for-all-keywords.55923/).
So, these are some things I'm seeing at a glance. I would recommend that you follow through with a complete audit between yourself and the business ranking #1. And those questions regarding your reviews, your business name, and the geographic scenario regarding your business and the 2 competitors being next door to one another deserve a closer look. You aren't being impacted by the Possum filter, from what I can see, because you are present on the map despite your close proximity to the two other competitors, but you are in a densely competitive area, for sure.
Please, feel free to come back with answer to the questions I've asked or with further questions of your own.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Hi all, we recently started to claim Apple Maps listings on behalf of our agency's clients, is it possible to transfer ownership of an Apple Maps listing from one Apple ID account to another Apple ID account?
We'd like to claim and complete our clients' Apple Maps listings with our agency Apple ID, then once we're finished completing and verifying each listing, transfer to the client's Apple ID. Is it possible to transfer ownership of an Apple Maps listing from one Apple ID to another? Thanks
Local Listings | | NOUS-Australia0 -
Local Ranking with No Physical Address in New Service Area - How to Rank?
OK, SO, I am a wedding company in Maui, Hawaii and have an established business on one island with a physical address. http://simplemauiwedding.net We have started a new team in Oahu, Hawaii http://simpleoahuwedding.com and we provide service there and have a full team in place. How can I rank for Local Search on that Island with no physical address? I would love to hear some proven strategies. Thank you 🙂
Local Listings | | photoseo10 -
How to Rank in Yelp
Hello everyone! I manage SEO for a pretty large brand that has close to 100 office locations nationwide. In the last year we have completely revamped our Yelp pages. This has been a great secondary source of traffic and conversions for us because of the type of industry we are in. The problem is, it can be exponentially better if we were more visible. We have done almost everything we can to make our pages as good if not better than almost any competitor regardless of geographic location. We even have the enhanced profiles (extortion) that remove competitors ads from appearing on our listings. Here is what we have done in the last year to each listing: Uploaded tons of photos Increased reviews Added proper categories Fine-tuned all of our CTAs Added in a unique and optimized business description ( Available with enhanced profiles) Set the proper service area range on their map Increased our review response rate ( both negative and positive) to 100% Still, even after months and months have gone by we struggle to rank on the first page for our service category. Doing manual searches often turn up competitors, who do not even have their listing claimed, have no photos, little reviews will rank higher than us. Even though we have an account rep because of our business size, bringing this issue up to them is about as useful as talking to a blanket. They push CPC so hard that its the last thing they are willing to help with. It has gotten to the point where I am honestly starting to believe in a self-curated conspiracy theory that they purposely hold larger brands back in organic to sell CPC harder. Obviously certain brands that hold the branding clout like a "Best Buy" would be hard to get away with. But still, we do all the right things and we are getting very minimal results compared to where we should be. Has anyone else had issues with Yelp or have any ideas on some steps we could take to appease their particular algorithm? Thanks! -Ben
Local Listings | | Davey_Tree1 -
Facebook Locations - Good or Bad for Local Rankings?
Our company has multiple (3) offices, including our headquarters, and each has its own Facebook page. Other than the primary company page, the other two locations have only been claimed and do not have posts, reviews, check-ins, etc. Now, Facebook recently granted us access to Facebook Locations, which, if I understand correctly, would remove 2-out-of-3 office pages and add a "Locations" tab to our primary company page where people can see the other offices. _See Starbucks Example: https://www.facebook.com/pg/Starbucks/locations/?ref=page_internal _ I've read mixed reviews regarding using the Locations feature, but nothing definitively answers whether or not this would negatively affect local rankings. Does anyone have firsthand experience going from individual business pages to a single parent business page with Locations? Is there any trustworthy documentation out there about this?
Local Listings | | MPlata1 -
Changing the business name in citations and GMB
In Australia, some businesses are Pty Ltd (Proprietary Limited) hence, their business name ends with xxx Pty Ltd. How accurate do we have to be when building citations or updating citations that Pty Ltd is included in the business name? We've got clients who have left out Pty Ltd in their previously built citations and we're wondering if it's worth the time to actually update them to include Pty Ltd. Also, does changing a business name affect its rankings? This is more than just "Pty Ltd", it's changing from XYZ to ABC. We've previously had to change a client's address on their GMB and this had a negative effect on the client's rankings. Will changing the business name have an adverse effect? Thank you in advance for your advices!
Local Listings | | Gavo1 -
Which Rank Trackers Include Local 3-pack Rankings?
Granted the Local 3-pack is heavily influenced by the distance between the user and the business, when you actually include the city name in the search, the local 3 pack result doesn't center the map at the city in the search and not the user's location so it is much more consistent despite the searcher's location. So my personal opinion is that it is worth tracking local 3-pack when you use a keyword such as "Home Inspection Seattle Wa" With that said, which rank tracking services includes the local 3-pack in their tracking results, other than of course Bright Local?
Local Listings | | JCCMoz0 -
Having two GMB listings at same address
We currently have two verified GMB listings at the same address - I "inherited" these when I joined the company, and was considering merging them, as I am aware it is generally not recommended to have more than one listing per company per location. However, the two listings highlight two different sectors of our company so I decided to keep both and optimised them as best as possible by completing the information, adding pictures etc. One of the listings uses our legal company name, one uses our name that we trade under as an e-commerce business. The listing with our legal company name links to our corporate website and focuses on installations we do, while the listing with our e-commerce business name links to our ecommerce website and focuses on products we sell through there so they differ a bit from each other. Both serve the entire country, so they are not targeted specifically toward local searches. The following differ: Business name, sector, website
Local Listings | | ViviCa1
The following are the same: Address, phone number, opening hours So far we haven't had any issues, both are verified and show up in Google, but recently, we have had the following notification pop up: Fix locations with duplicate addresses__Use shop codes to differentiate locations that have the same address. Click each location and give it a unique address or shop code, or remove it. I'd appreciate some advice as to what would be best in this situation. Should I just add shop codes to differentiate the two listings in order to be able to keep them both? If so, what purpose do these shop codes have, how should I format these and will these be publicly visible within our listings? If you would suggest merging them, how could I ensure that it shows up whether people search for our e-commerce business name or for our legal business name as these are different? Thanks in advance!0 -
Why I'm I ranking so low on Google Maps
About 3 months I started a website (www.guyetteroofing.com) for my roofing business in Montgomery, Alabama. The site is still a work in progress, however, because the competition doesn't really market via internet it was fairly easy to rank on Google Maps. Within 1 month the business was letter "A" in Google Maps. About 3 three weeks ago my ranking was dropped considerably, not showing up at all in letters A through G. The business is still indexed in Google Maps, but only represented by a small red dot. My website is still ranking pretty high for "roofers in Montgomery", but my position on Google Maps has all but disappeared. I have no idea what I've done to be rank so low on Google Maps but still have a solid position on regular Google Search. I've checked my citations and my NAPs, there are a few inconsistencies but nothing major. How can I rank so far below my competition if I have twice as many citations, an actual website, and a Google Plus page?
Local Listings | | billyguyette0