Google my Business: what exactly is the point of verification?
I have to deal with Google much more often than I would like as part of my work as an online marketing specialist, and I have expressed frustration on many occasions with Google’s practices including how their review system works, and their canned responses, seemingly not at all reading the support request, in that case, in regard to verifying a property without an onsite mailing address, which is still unresolved.
In this situation, I really question the point of verifying ownership of a business. I have been having issues with changing office hours for a single property, I have been verified and authorized to represent the property for seven weeks, but I am unable to change the office hours, from no hours to the actual hours.
I log into my account, select the property I want to edit, edit the office hours, click apply, and it shows as “Under review“, but when I return to the Google my Business dashboard for the property five minutes later, I see the changes have been rejected, highlighted in orange, and at the top of the page, it reads “This location has updated information from Google users or other sources. Review these published updates to make sure that they’re accurate“, and my only option is “Accept all for this location“.
I used the GMB support page to send a message detailing the issues I was having including screenshots, and after days of waiting, a canned response comes back, which is available on their self-service help website. I reply to this email, reiterating the issues I am having, and that the canned response does not help. I wait another couple of days, and another canned response arrives, which, of course, does not help, as I am unable to reject the Google updates, only edit again, which gets rejected minutes later.
I sent a reply to the second canned response, further expanding on the issues I am having. This time including that I am having the same issue with another recently verified property, asserting that this is a system problem, as I doubt that a human has reviewed and rejected my office hours change in a matter of minutes. Today, I received a third message, saying that my case has been escalated to a specialist, let’s see where this goes, it should not be this difficult to make a simple change to a verified business profile.
For me, the point of being verified is that you can make instant changes to your Google presence as required, not having to jump through the hoops of simply suggesting an edit, which can be done by anyone. You would think that Google would want accurate information on their search and maps websites, yet, on two properties, information is far from correct, and I cannot believe that I’m the only person having this issue. How many people edited their hours and didn’t go back to check that those edits had been applied, assuming that being verified would mean edits would automatically go live.
UPDATE (NOV, 2 2021): STILL BROKEN!
I left off by saying that my case had been escalated, and a few days later, I got an email saying;
“Please be apprised that I had raised this issue to the specialist team and as per the suggestion from the relevant team, the issue has been resolved and the changes might take 24-48 hours to go live on Google Maps. Please allow that much time for the changes to appear on Google Maps. ”
It is now 12 days later and yep, you guessed it, the hours edits are still being rejected within five minutes. The weird thing is that I can change anything else on this affected business profile, but not the hours. So, it’s time to write another response to support, explaining that their fix does literally nothing.
UPDATE (NOV, 9 2021): BULLSHIT EXCUSES, GOOGLE WON’T HELP!
Another week has passed, and I got a final response, which in the simplest of terms says “your business cannot set hours”, which makes zero sense, read on after the quoted text for why I believe this is true.
“Please be apprised that business hours for certain types of businesses, including those with varied hours (like schedules for different types of activities, including showtimes, worship services, or classes) and those that operate only by appointment may not be displayed on some of the platforms even though you have entered hours on your Google Business Profile dashboard. Examples of business that may not display business hours include, but are not limited to: hotels and motels, apartment buildings/complexes, movie theaters, emergency rooms, schools and universities, transportation services, airports, event venues, and natural features.“
Why do I believe it’s a bullshit excuse? well, there is a sister property with a Google business profile, 1 mile away, and I have zero issues updating those hours. This screams of “we can’t find the problem, so we are going to blame your business type”. But what can I do? I can edit every other aspect of the profile, just not the opening hours. The hours are static, Monday thru Friday, 9:00am to 12:00pm, 1:00pm to 4:00pm, which is not varied, or by appointment. If it were consistent, where none of our properties could set hours, I’d not have an issue, but that is not the case, it affects two specific properties only!
This is exactly why I hate using 3rd party websites, where I have no control over how information is displayed, or not, or even removed without notice, it’s their sandbox, they choose who can play in it!