I LOST 539 Google reviews for my electrical business overnight! | 68

Too many of you are building your electrical business on rented land — and Google just reminded me the hard way.

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Transcript

I wrote to you, but you still ain't calling. I left my cell, my pager and my home phone at the bottom. I sent two letters back in Autumn. You must not have got 'em. Welcome to Simplified Sparking Marketing. I feel m and m's pain. I feel that gentleman trying to get hold of m and m. He wasn't actually trying to get hold of m and m.

He was trying to get hold of fucking Google. If you have seen my reel on Instagram, I had a bit of a pickle the other day. I think a day yesterday or the day before, I received an email at 8:15 PM and it just said that my Google my business profile had been suspended. And no real reasons. It just said for infringements, and this is what I'd done.

And this is a warning to you if it happens to you, because I jumped the gun and I should not have done this. When I got the email, I clicked on it, had a quick read and a quick panic, and was like, what the fuck is this about? So I clicked on appeal, I clicked the appeal button, and I was just, after coming back from soccer, I was wrecked.

Checked the laptop and was like, what the hell is this about? No, fuck whatever. Just clicked and just clicked appeal and submitted it. And when I did that I realized afterwards that I could have submitted documents with it. But to be fair, I didn't realize or know what kind of documents that I needed to submit with the actual appeal as well.

So I was between a hard place and a rock. Anyway, so I just hit submit. So it's been two days since I heard back. 'cause I literally heard back from them. Once I posted the reel. It was like serendipitous. I fucking posted the reel and I think my phone buzzed with an email from Google.

Firstly, I thought it said it had been improved, which would've been fucking crazy. But yeah, it's disapproved. So now I've got to have a look at this again, see what I can do. But the very frustrating thing is. Once I submitted that appeal, I couldn't go back in and edit it, so I could not re-click on it and say, okay, add documents or resubmit.

It was just like, tough shit. You've hit the button. A wait to hear from us. So I've Googled forums, I've looked on freelancer websites that could help me, and it was all. The people that could help were people that were saying, we can help you before you hit submit, essentially. So I was like, fuck.

So that's a warning to you listening. If this ever happens to you, don't press any buttons. Don't hit submit or appeal. Speak to somebody that knows what they're doing before you try and appeal. Now, I don't know what the hell it is, whether they have to verify my address, but my inkling is. For whatever reason, when I moved the address previously, I changed the address in my listing, which was a SA in itself, which I'll tell you about.

And I had a secondary listing, just appeared outta nothing in the old address, so I was like, fuck it, I'll leave it. But the more presence, the better. So I left it and there was. One review was put on that. The both reviews that I've got on the, that profile have been accidental, and I feel like that may have been, the reason it got shot down was I was working for a guy a week ago, I think, and he left the review on that profile for whatever reason.

I was like, fuck, that was really weird. And I was actually going to message him saying sorry to be a pain, that profile is dormant. Can you put it onto this one? 'cause there was 500 and I was, there was actually 540 at the time. But hey, who's counting? So it would've been 5 41 and I feel like him leaving the review.

Triggered something with the two profiles. I don't know what's going on, but it triggered something and that then led to it flagging with Google and then for whatever reason they pulled it down. They didn't even send me an email saying, Hey, what's the story? Why is there two accounts? Which one is your preferred account?

We'll shut the other one down. It was just like, this one's going down the top dog you've been working on for what, eight, nine years? I've been building this fucking profile up and treating it religiously. And something I preach to my members as well is to treat your Google business profile with a lot more love than you actually treat your your Facebook page, your Instagram page, because that's where people are actively looking to buy electrical services is on your Google business profile.

So I had two, two accounts and they took that one down. So existing at the moment, that's why. It's very pissing off. It's very annoying, but it's not the end of the world because if they don't reinstate that last one or the previous account, I have got my, I have got a secondary backup one, but I am gonna have to dig up the reviews again.

Now what I'm going to do, I've got a strategy around this. I actually. Have a plugin on my website and it shows who's left the review. So what I've done is I've made a screen recording and I've taken names of all the reviews that are there. It was fucking slow and steady and very fucking monotonous. But flick through all the reviews and I've got their names.

I can then get my virtual assistant to go through the database, make a personalized email for every single one of those people that has left the review explaining the story, and people with a good heart will leave a new review. Now, I'm hoping, I don't, it doesn't come to that, but that was my point in the reel and that's my point in this podcast as well, is we are building on rented land.

And if you don't build your own house, somebody else is gonna knock it down. You need to have. Your own, you need to have your own database, your own website that you own. So if something happens as I said on that, that reel, which I had to tip tiptoe around because I mentioned Zuckerberg in it is if they decide they're gonna make an algorithm change or they are going to, for whatever reason you've done something wrong in your account.

I was even considering I've got so much Tesla stuff on the website or on my Google business profile. Had that, anything to do with it. Like I probably had 50, 60 Tesla pictures on that profile of just work that I had done and charges that I installed, and I'm seriously questioning had that, is it like an affiliation with Musk that it's bad that, that has to come down?

I don't know. 'cause I've heard of one other Sparky. Last week at a meeting that I was at, he said that his had gone down, but it didn't get too much context with it. And now somebody else has commented on my post on Instagram links underneath in the show notes. And he has said that it's happened to him and his is still down at the moment.

You may even be listening to this podcast. And then. Big shout out to 40 from New Age Electrical. He has sent me sent me a guy's details that I'm gonna get in contact. If I can't figure this stuff out tomorrow, I'll have a look in the morning. I, it's too depressing to look at that email and I'm flying out to Japan tomorrow, so I don't wanna depress myself.

So I might leave that safe for a bit. And just contact my, people and see if they can sort that out. But yeah, so that is where I'm at with that. And it's like a few months ago there was this thing that happened. It may have happened to your electrical business profile that they removed reviews and same thing happened.

I think my reviews dropped down to five 10 or something. So 30, 30 reviews got removed or there thereabouts. And. There was no reason behind it, and it was just a glitch. Something happened. But I reckon Google are fucking around with ai. AI bots are fucking looking at stuff and they're flagging just weird shit.

Like they might've flagged that there's a duplicate account with this. Let's just pull this one down. But as I said, the most infuriating thing is. I cannot just get onto a chat thing and go, Hey, what's the story? Oh yeah, no, we'll fix this, fix the address, and we'll go from there. I thought I had outsmarted them because in 2021 I had to go through a whole saga, which I mentioned at the start of the podcast, of changing my address on the listing.

So when I moved, like I don't have, I don't have a fucking shop or a warehouse or whatever. It's literally in my house. So I had to deck out my garage. There was already electrical gear in there. There's like ladders and gear and shit like that in there. And there was, like I had to get my like logo and signage from like a builder's fence thing that IU that I had luckily had since when I started the business.

'cause I don't touch construction now. But I had that, I had to literally like drill that to the wall on the outside and FaceTime this person from Google and walk around my garage and show them. I showed 'em my fucking ladders and shit like that. I parked my van right outside with the sign writing. I was like, yep, that's my vehicle.

This is where I fucking store all my stuff. And people come to buy electrical cable. And it was, I don't know where I was getting beamed to, but it was like very weird. It was a FaceTime call, but they didn't have their camera on. So now who the fuck I was speaking to? But anyways, that got approved and.

That whole email thread was still in my emails, and I was like, you fucking Butte, I am going to reply to this stating that the above address is there, everything's been approved. What's the issue? So I made out a whole email, sent that, and then it got pinged back straight away saying This email. Fred, this email doesn't exist anymore.

Essentially it's here, use the really shit helpline link, and then you go to the helpline and you just go around in circles and chase your tail. But I really fucking hope that I get an answer for this and the fucking day I get an answer. I will make content and I will make a podcast. That it will be helpful to you all listening because it could, somebody listening to this now, it could fucking happen to you, particularly if you've got duplicate profiles.

I would be getting worried. And if my old one does come back up again and it does get reignited, I am going to delete or get rid of the second dormant profile. Because I feel like that's the issue. So if you're acting the bollocks and you have got two profiles, get rid of one. I would suggest or not run the vet, see what happens.

If one goes down, at least you'll have a backup. But it just all depends on the area. As I said, with the with the solution. If I hear anything or get a solution or it kicks back in and I figure out why. I will be fucking that day putting content up there because I wanna be helpful to all you listeners and shout out to all the listeners as well.

There's some crazy crazy beaming being done a lot around Cardiff, Birmingham, London New Zealand, and Auckland Ireland, Australia. It's fucking, it's amazing. Anyway, there is, if you want anymore a lot of people that listen are not aware. That there is a link underneath to my electrician's only email series.

The likes of this stuff is covered in it. I like to just keep the emails real short. Sweet. It's essentially a podcast in an email, but it's not the podcast. It's more ammo for your business. Anyway review, like all that stuff and we'll catch in the next one. And hopefully the next one I'll have my fucking profile back up and running.