Why Google WONT Approve Your GMB (GBP - Google My Business)

Why Google WONT Approve Your GMB (Google My Business)

In this article, we will discuss the reasons why Google may not approve your Google My Business (GMB) listing and how you can overcome these challenges. We will also explore the importance of engagement and reviews in improving your GMB ranking. Additionally, we will address the question of whether WordPress is a suitable platform for your website and introduce an alternative option called Footbridge. Let's dive in!

The Importance of Engagement and Reviews

When it comes to ranking factors on GMB, engagement and reviews play a significant role. Increasing engagement and obtaining more reviews can greatly improve your business's visibility in Google listings, particularly in the map section. If you have more reviews than your competitors, even if you are located further away, you have a higher chance of securing a top position in the map pack.

Changing Address on Google

If you are planning to move your office to a new location within the same city, you may be wondering about the correct protocol for changing your address on Google. The decision to change your address on Google depends on several factors. If your current location is performing well and generating good leads, it may be best to hold off on changing the address immediately. However, if the new location is more ideal and you believe it will attract more customers, it's worth considering the change.

When changing your address on Google, it's important to do it properly to avoid any negative impact on your business. One effective way to ensure a smooth transition is by using a tool like Yext, which allows you to distribute your new address information across various directories and lock it in to prevent it from being overwritten by outdated data.

Footbridge: An Alternative to WordPress

If you're considering building a website for your local business, you may be wondering if WordPress is the right platform for you. While WordPress offers customization options and a wide range of plugins, it can be complex to navigate, especially if you're not a web developer. Additionally, the use of multiple plugins can slow down your website's load time, leading to a poor user experience and higher bounce rates.

Footbridge offers an alternative to WordPress with its proprietary platform specifically designed for local businesses. Unlike WordPress, Footbridge's platform is optimized for speed, both on mobile and desktop. It provides an ecosystem that is proven to be effective for local businesses, with a monthly cost of $199.

The Benefits of Footbridge

One of the key benefits of using Footbridge is its ability to handle Google My Business (GMB) suspensions. If your GMB listing gets suspended, Footbridge can appeal on your behalf, saving you the hassle and increasing the chances of a successful resolution. This is particularly valuable as GMB suspensions can be challenging to navigate and can negatively impact you

Transcript

All right. All right. All right. I think we're live here on YouTube. What's up guys? Welcome back to the channel. We're going to have people pouring in here, here in a second. And I wanted to go live today because I think this topic is very pertinent. I think it's very important. And I think it's causing a lot of guys, a lot of stress and a lot of issues, rightfully so, because we're talking about, we're talking about your money. We're talking about your leads and leads flow is cash flow and we want to get that cash flow up. So today's video is why Google will not approve your GMB. Google's been kind of on this tear for a good while but I know a lot of guys out there are having different types of struggles and I've got Chris Lonergan here from Footbridge Media. He's gonna be talking about why they're not approving it and kind of how we can mitigate some of the damages and get that thing approved as quickly as possible. What's What's up, Chris? How are you doing? Good. How about you, Aaron? Man, I'm good, dude. I'm good. I want to open this, uh, this, this chat up here. So the guys, guys, if you have any questions or anything, go ahead and post it in the comments. And if we can towards the end of this video, we'll definitely get to it. We'll answer any of your questions that you have, especially if you're dealing with something like an unapproved Google My Business Chris. So talk to me about like, why is, you know, that used to be not this it's hard to get your Google My Business approved. Why is it so difficult now? Google's really being careful and trying to avoid lawsuits, probably, at the end of the day. And early on in the Google My Business, when it was still officially Google My Business, those Google listings, there used to be a couple of really shady folks who were creating tons and tons of GMBs. They were popping up specifically in the home improvement space. The most popular story is the locksmith scams that were happening in California. Basically, these kind of shady companies were putting up all these Google business listings using foreclosed homes or using anything they can get their hand on. They created these listings, so they blanketed these areas. People would call these contractors thinking they're working with somebody local, and then those companies would then turn around and resell that lead to an actual local locksmith. And the lead cost was so high, the locksmiths would have to go out there to do the most expensive service possible, drilling out a lock, whatever the most expensive way to fix the problem was. And they got a lot of grief for it. And Google, at the end of the day, wants customers to come back and continue to use Search so they can continue to show ads, they can continue to make money. And that scared a lot of people off of Google listings real early on. So really, ever since then, we've seen it slowly escalating over time. And now it's just really, really difficult, depending on the area you're in, especially for home service contractors for home improvement guys. They really put the screws to the verification process and sometimes you know overrunning and kind of destroying some of these these businesses in the process on accident because they want CYA. They want to make sure that they are not going to be in trouble for for somebody else's scam the activity so they're just kind of mowing everybody down the process in some of these some of these problems. Man that is yeah I've noticed it. I've heard it, you know, my GMBs have been approved for a while and it's, but I'm hearing it from, you know, kind of having my finger on the pulse and listening and hearing new guys getting in the business. And it's just been a challenge. Hey guys, before we keep going in this video, Chris is going to answer some of the main reasons. We have a few points and just stuff that data they're getting over there in the office at Footbridge about why Google is not approving GMBs and kind of what we can do about it. But before we keep going, if you don't have a website set up or you don't like the current website, it's not performing like you want it to, give the guys over at Footbridge Media a call. They have been running my website, Cody's website, my website for probably six years now. We have another website with, you know, Justin has another website with them that's doing really well. And mention Lina Mean when you call over there, Aaron O'Hanlon will speak to you, Aaron will shoot you straight. Obviously he's not gonna charge you for talking to him, that's free. So give him a call, check it out, see if Footbridge is right for you. And if you mention Lina Mean, you'll save $600 a year, which is a decent amount of money. So go ahead and give him a call, mention Lina Mean, chat with him about getting your web presence up because we're going into the winter season, but we're gonna be coming into spring before you know it. you want to get this website set up now. So in the springtime, it's already launched, it's already aging a little bit with Google, and that ranking is starting to climb up slowly to where next year can be a boomer year instead of you getting started next year and wishing you got started now. So give them a shout over there, and I think you'll really enjoy it. Like I've said, I'll show you a few testimonials toward the end of this video. But Chris, let's start with number one. Why won't they approve my GMB? So, one of the biggest issues we see are people who actually aren't claiming and verifying the process, or there's issues in the verification process. So the verification process, for those who don't know, the easy route is you try to claim your Google business profile, you try to assert that it's yours, and the way that they try to have you prove that is they will send you an actual physical postcard in the mail with a PIN number. That's the easiest way to get it done. And even though I say it's the easiest way, it still can be a big pain. It takes, in the best of times, 10 to 14 days for that postcard to show up at your address. We've seen instances where it takes longer than that. But also, if for some reason, when you're trying to do the verification, if you have a typo in your address, if you have a typo in your phone number, something you've tried to commit to, sometimes those verifications don't work or they get delayed. So if you've got these NAT problems, these name address, phone number, connection problems, and you just waited at least 14 days to get a postcard and you don't get it, now you've got to re-trigger a postcard again. We're talking about another 10 to 14 days to try to get that information. Or if it's perhaps a PO box or some other box that you don't check very often, those verification codes only last for so long. They only last usually for 30 days. So we get some folks who try to go through this postcard verification process repeatedly, and they just don't get the postcard for whatever reason. For typos, for delivery issues, they just don't get these postcards. Without that verification finalized, entering that PIN, you don't have any control over that Google Business Profile. And if you don't go through the postcard claim process in an efficient time, sometimes they kick you down and they make you do the video verification process, which is an even bigger pain. It's slightly faster in that it's a little more real time because you've got to be on the phone on a video call with a Google rep. They've been doing it since 2016, these video verifications, but it's way more effort than a postcard claim is. you've got to prove a lot more and walk around your property and show the front door and show the address number. And it's a whole lot more involved. Bro, that's some good stuff. So those verification failures can be really problematic. They were looking in on me, man. They're trying to peek in on me. So I got a question. What if I got that old 98 Mad Max, man? They gonna prejudge me for the fresh wash and dry? As long as you got a Google sticker on the side, you're probably fine. A Google sticker, like the cops, I mean, you get that black and that blue, but you know, the little, the little strike, Hey, don't pull me over, man. I support the same team, same team, same team, same team, bro. Same team. Uh, that's funny. That's really funny. So how can footbridge kind of help with this process of getting verification either sent or, you know, the video process, if that's possible, what, what can footbridge do to kind of help with this and take this load off of the contractor? So one of the big things is, is I started to reference NAP there. your name, address, and phone number. That's something that most folks outside of the industry don't even think about, but the consistency of your name, address, and phone number and how they're placed throughout the web, starting off with your Google business profile, is really key. So one of the things we do really early on in the process, even when we're starting to build the website, is we go through, we make sure we have a fine-tuned, exact copy of what that's supposed to be. And that's what we're gonna push hard on when we go through these verification processes, is that we are adhering to this one specific exact pattern, you know, street spelled out or avenue spelled out or however we're gonna do it, we wanna make sure there's consistency there. Starting off with that really good data in the beginning process, when we work together to trigger the verification, that's key, because if you can get the right information and you can get to the verification process much faster. So if you're not thinking about it, if you're not prioritizing it, because honestly, you shouldn't. I didn't know that until I got into this industry. Most folks don't recognize the importance of having that exact match information. So that's something that we're there to try to educate. We're trying to help you to understand how these little finicky processes work so that we can cut down the delay time for verification problems and explorations. So name, address, phone number has to be consistent. Where does it need to be consistent to trigger this verification? Pretty much all throughout the web. One of the services that we offer, again, something most folks don't think about, is called offsite optimization. A lot of people have maybe heard of Yext. If you've kind of done some small business marketing research, we partner with them with Yext. We also have our own processes internally to make sure that your name, address, and phone number is correct on your website, where you can control it directly, but also other places all throughout the web. So we're talking about Chamber of Commerce's BBB type situations, any business type profile or directory listing that's appropriate for your industry. We try to get placement all throughout those places. or square and all these random places that you wouldn't necessarily think need to check up on, what the Google understands is basically a moniker of trust. So if they try to figure out where you're at, they try to figure out you're legitimate. Again, Google is trying to make sure they're not having scammy listings out there. When they're trying to make sure you're legit, they're gonna go through and they're gonna check your nap all throughout the web. And if they see, even in instances where it's legit, if a business has maybe moved or changed phone numbers, which happens from time to time, When they see these disconnects, these are all kind of points against you. When you have something that's consistently done, which is again, a part of what QuickReach does, fixing all those offsite issues, working with you when there are instances that maybe we need you directly to work with us, and then working without you as much as we can to try to remove that burden from you, to try to get the name, address, phone number to match all throughout the web, all those places that again, aren't in direct control. You can't necessarily just log in to BBB you don't have access or to Foursquare if you don't have access, but we create and try to obtain and claim and modify all that information so it's consistent throughout the web. And that's specifically for your Google business listing, but also that helps in general with your local optimization. It gives Google a better snapshot of where your business is so it can connect you to local searchers. So for instance, if you have, say you sign up with the BBB guys and you wrote down your addresses 111 James Ave for Avenue. But in another one, another listing say on Yelp, it says 111 James Avenue. That's a problem. Yeah. And in your Google, we hope we'd be able to figure out those little ticky problems. But again, a lot of what we do is trying to spoon feed Google with the exact information that we need so that we can be sure that that's not a problem. You have to make it. A lot of technical optimization and online optimization is this nitpicky, grain of sand stuff. You've got to be just a little bit better than everybody else you're trying to outdo. Right. It's inches and a mile. Absolutely. Right. Yeah. So Google's kind of trying to, it seems like now, well, at least they used to want you to be in business. They're like, they're like, uh, we don't really want you to be in business. We want you to, they've gone the way of Yelp. It seems like you're going to Google ads. That's cool. Coming over. Yeah. Now you can spend some money on some Google ads and look, guys, if you get somebody to run your ads, get Footbridge to do it because, uh, I've seen you guys speaking of Google ads, just a little sidebar here, you know, I've seen you guys tell, tell guys that y'all do an analysis of the marketplace they're in and speak just briefly on that analysis. Like y'all will analyze cause I've had guys, there's just too much competition and you'd be like, look, you're going to be spending a lot per click where a normal guy without y'all service doesn't have the ability to analyze the market like that. And so how much money do you think he wastes going like, I'm going to, I'm going to run Google ads myself. And he spent an $800 a month with like no calls. Yeah, absolutely. And so then he believes, Oh, Google ads don't work. No, they just don't work with you running them. A consultant tell you kind of the lay of the land, the X-ray vision, if you will, you guys have softwares and programs to be able to do that type of research to see the competition and if it's even worth embarking on spending that money. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. We've got, you know, the processes in place where we look at every single client who is interested in that kind of information, that kind of data you're considering running Google Ads. Yeah, we'll take a look and see. It depends on your competitors, depends on your area. You know, if you live in Indianapolis, that leads probably going to cost more than if you live in Portage, Indiana. You know, so you've got, we want to make sure that the spend is right for you. Of course, do we want to make money? Sure. We'd like to make a PPC management fee, but we don't have contracts. So we know that if you're going to stay, it's because this stuff works. So if you're coming into us and you say, hey, I've got a budget of $500 and I'm in Chicago, I'd like to specialize in new commercial roof installation, PPC is probably not going to be for you. But we'll go through and we'll make sure that we're making a recommendation that fits your business because we want you to do really well. If you're doing well in getting those leads and you've got good ROI, of course you're going to stay with us. That's what we want. So if you've got, if you've got a setup where, Hey, we're going to invest, you know, a lot of hours and time and setting up this campaign. We know that's not going to work. No, that doesn't work for us. I love that y'all do that because y'all are, y'all are on the cheaper end. Like, you know, and I, but you also have the quality, Mike Termins in the chat right here. He's talking about how easy it is to communicate with you guys. Mike Termin loves y'all. All right. Pick up power wash out of New Jersey. Mike's doing about a hundred to $110,000 a month in his pressure watching business, love Footbridge Media. But I love that y'all do all of that work on the front end to make sure that you can get the client a win because y'all don't have a contract with the client, right? So they could just leave at any time. So why would you waste the time trying to take the money and then you don't get the result and then they leave. y'all's goal is long game, long-term relationships with every client that y'all service. And that comes with being completely honest with them on the front end saying, hey, look, this is not something you may wanna embark on because you're gonna have to fork out this amount of money to Google to be competitive. Yeah, absolutely. You know, we're, you know, sure, we do customer service. We want you to feel good, but also we're not gonna lie to your face to make you feel good. We're not gonna say, oh yeah, that's totally gonna work great. Yeah, you've got an extra $200 and you want to be in one of the largest markets in the country, yeah, we'll make that work. No, that's not gonna- That's not gonna work. Largest market in the country for commercial roof installation. How much do you think one needs to start with? Just give me a- Oh, that's probably gross. That's probably thousands and thousands of dollars at that point, yeah. Because roof installation is hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop. If you're gonna make five figures on an install job, it's gonna be more than a couple bucks for the leads. For sure, right, right. So it's kind of relative, I'm sure, with how much guys are willing to pay commercial roofing. They're probably willing to pay a couple hundred dollars a lead. Oh, easy. Yeah. I think of, uh, you know, the, the long-term, uh, joke was, I think Mesothelioma was one of the most expensive PPC terms for a long time. Yeah. It was, uh, like based on, you know, uh, uh, class action lawsuits, you know, it was, uh, it was these slam dunk win for attorney. So for a long time, I don't know if it still is, that was the most expensive Google search term to buy ads for. Um, It's a sliding scale. Some ads can be really affordable for the right terms for the right areas, but yeah, but other ones, you kind of got to know what's going to work well. And that's kind of part of our logic too, when we're talking about these things is let's find terms that might work for you. You may not rank for Chicago pressure washing, but let's talk about Oak Lawn roof cleanings. Maybe we can get some traction there. Maybe we can get you some business there. We don't want to say no, we want to make it successful. We need to make sure we're on the same page. Sure. I love that. I love that. It's not just about, it's a, it's a long play. I love that because guys don't know. And I'm going to do a web class on this about just how much goes into building a website. Like if you were to build it yourself, right. Which people don't understand that once you build it, you get to maintain it. They don't anything. The work is not done, but just to build it, the amount of work that goes into it. I loved Aaron O'Hanlon, Mike Badan, my business partner, a good buddy of mine, he's had his business for 20 years and he ranks number one, right? And his big tipping point for not really knowing Footbridge to loving Footbridge, Mike and Justin invented Quote IQ, they got a CRM now. And so he called over there and Aaron said, dude, you're ranking number one. I wouldn't even do this. Don't just stay where you are. Aaron shot him, wouldn't even take his money. Yeah. Because of the result. He was like, we don't want to mess this up. You got a good thing going. Like stay where you're at. Like, I just found that to be so honorable to not even be willing to take the guy's money. Yeah, I mean, we want people to do well. At the end of the day, it's all about you doing well. And if you're doing well right now, we can give you pointers, but yeah, we're not gonna break it. We're gonna make sure that you're, we got good processes in place, whether you're a current client or whether, maybe you're doing real well right now. We see so many clients who, and you and I were talking off beforehand about how I wanna do a case study at some point. I've got some folks I'm working with about folks who leave us and come back. You know, that grass is always greener. You know, that's not always the case. Sometimes who you've got now, you know, we are on the lower cost side of things. You can certainly go and spend tens of thousands of dollars elsewhere to get a website, but we do it the way we do it with the methods we have because we're efficient at it and we're good at it. We wanna, you know, we want contractors to come and do well with us. Right, right. And guys, look, it's $249 off the street. It's $199 a month with a lean and mean deal. So you save that little $50 a month. That's, hey, that may not sound like a lot, but that's like, if you're poor right now, that's five Chipotle bowls worth of savings. And that's how I used to- Or four with guac, yeah. Or four with guac. That's all I used to think in 2017, boy. I was like, I remember when I first got signed up with you guys in 2018, man. I was like, bro, I don't, oh man, I got a monthly bill. I gotta make this, and look, obviously it worked and I still rank amazing. And we just got a $50,000 bid out for a school cleaning straight from my website from you guys. We got a $153,000 bid out for a major condo cleaning which is really tall here, straight from my website From you guys, these are free leads. So pretty much free, like I pay $199 a month. So it's free to me. But it's like, you're talking about big numbers from a little investment, the ROI here is huge. So Chris, let's segue. Let's talk about number two on why Google won't approve your GMB. So a classic one is that business names aren't, Google is very particular about the business name that you enter in. If it thinks your business name is spammy or if it contains stuff that it shouldn't have, If you try to add in a tagline or some extra location information, that's just not going to work. We talked about name, address, phone number. The name part is really important here. So you can't add symbols or your slogan or emojis or anything like that. You've got to have your actual proper business name. That's one that Google will real quick shut you down. It also includes really spammy names. We've had some issues where someone actually has a DBA for a name like Chicago Pressure Washing or something like that. That's a really keyword heavy business name. even that can be problematic sometimes because Google thinks you're just kind of keyword stuffing that business name. So having a business name that makes sense, that isn't overly spammy, and that is consistent with your actual citation history, with your name, address, and phone number. That's really important. That's a real easy way to get kicked out and to lose verification or to not get verified at all initially for Google business profiles. So Google say, yeah, man, I know you got a DBA and everything, but see them keywords right there, them some heavy, heavy keywords into those yellow pages. Like we're a one towing, you know, that's how you, Hey, you know, tell the truth. That's how you can know a guy right now has been in business for at least 25, 30 years. If his name currently is a one towing, bro, he's been towing for a minute. He'd been towing for a while. He's been in it for, since the yellow pages, man. Right. So that's a little tell, but um, so very good, no spam, no emojis. I mean, some of you guys got some real creative names. I had a guy one time who came through and he was talking to me, wanted some help on his GMB verification. And I was just like, well, what's your name, man? Like, let me, I'm trying to look you up. And he was like, it's Miami pressure washing, money sign, money sign. And I was like, what are you doing? You can't do that. going to apply. That's why. That's why. That's the problem. Go ahead. Number one, Miami, number one pressure, number one, Washington, number one, number one, number one, like it, get yourself a real name. That sounds like a real business. Don't try to game the system game. Gaming the system is very like, 1999, right? You could kind of game the system and that's pre GMB, but that's more like the keyword stuffing of like, you know, pressure washing Chicago. Like you could probably do that easily in the early days of GMB and it would fly because they would send anybody a verification card, but nowadays not the case. So Chris, tell us number three. So number three and probably one of the last one here and one of the most difficult ones to deal with is being disabled for going against guidelines. The problem there is that there are a lot of guidelines. And Google is not very willing to tell you what's wrong. They basically will give you a chance to appeal the decision once you've tried to make some remedies. But you've got to kind of figure that out on your own. They're not going to tell you exactly what's wrong. It's kind of like when you get your tax bill, and you just kind of have to figure it out for yourself, figure out what you've got to pay. Same thing with Google and going against guidelines for Google Business Profiles. So you've got to go through and make sure everything is correct structure in a row, phone number issues, link issues, you know, quality issues with your location selection. It's, again, there's no easy answer for what the error is that goes against guidelines, but you have to have the job of figuring it out and trying to appeal it. And the appeal process itself, again, can take a really long time. You've got to go through some automated measures before you finally maybe hopefully get in front of a human reviewer. And that's insanely difficult to do when you already operate a business, your expertise is in your industry and not in diagnosing Google business profile problem. You've been working all day, you get to come home and work again. Right, you get to do some research. Now you get to learn more stuff. So you know how to watch. Try to talk to a machine. Now you get to do some research to talk to a machine. That's hilarious, talk to an AI bot. So how can Footbridge help and kind of mitigate this or run interference for these guys and kind of create, I always look at you guys like an insurance policy when it comes to Google My Business. You know, I'd pay $199 a month, just that for your Google My Business team alone, not even the web dev team. But they get all of that with the 199 a month, which is insanity. Like there should be, I'm gonna call Aaron. Do y'all need to start? Dang, insurance policy on the side because you guys have been known to get Google My Businesses back for people. Now y'all don't guarantee that. That's not part of the guarantee. There is no guarantee. Google has a mind of its own. But tell me a little bit about some of the processes that you guys have that are pretty proprietary at this point. I've never heard of anybody who's dove into this at this level and been able to solve this ongoing issue that everyone's aware of with Google and this verification or suspension issue. How, you know, dive into that a little bit for me. Yeah, so I mean, at the end of the day, we use a combination of software. We talked about Yex and those kind of software. We also have basically paired accounts that we're trying to look over all of these Google My Business accounts at a time so we can have a good finger on the pulse of what's going on with these accounts. We can see when there are verification issues or verification losses. And at the end of the day, it's a very specific recipe of how we have to go through and to diagnose and research and then ultimately communicate with Google to try to get in front of the right person. We've been doing this for contractors since 2004. And we've worked with a lot of contractors. We've worked with a lot of Google My Business listings. I think they were still Google listings and map listings before they were Google My Business, before they were business profiles. So we've had a lot of time on as a company understanding Google and watching these transitions with Google and how Google works. So we come at this with a lot of experience and knowing how we need to reply to email chains and how we need to phrase things and what to look for, those common issues that we do see when we get these verification issues. Sometimes they're founded. Sometimes maybe you've gone through and you change your phone number without telling us and then we will yell at you and tell you to stop doing it. Sometimes it's not valid. Sometimes you get competitors you go through and they try to mark a whole bunch of Google listings as invalid and they flag them as closed. So you've got to kind of fight all these issues on all sides and prove who you are to Google all over again sometimes. And that's something we've become good at. Again, like you said, there are these crazy issues sometimes with Google that you just cannot get through to a human and cannot fix. But we work really hard to control every possible bit that we can, all the information that we can, the workflows we can, to try to get the best results possible for you in reclaiming and, and creaking, fixing verification issues for Google. So you wouldn't be willing to part with that recipe that, that I'm pretty sure there would be a sniper trained on me right now, that, that, that Google recipe to get back those, uh, the suspended, uh, accounts. Yeah. I think if you would hold the trick to Google and then you'd just see it. You'd see it. are, if I'm Aaron, I would definitely have that guy on hire looking y'all are in Florida. So there's probably definitely, you know what I mean? Like we could bring a guy from Miami. He'll do it. Like so why do you want me to, to, to whack him? Well, we have these Google my business recipes that help these guys get back to Google my business for a really cheap rate, and he just kind of leaked that, you know, to the public. So we can't, we can't have it. You know what I mean? We can't have it. So, so that's awesome, man. Y'all have, I think, you know, the interference alone, you guys being willing, a lot of guys don't factor this in as them being willing to do this work for you all day and help you and correspond with Google on your behalf while you're out making money and selling and working and working your business the big problem is guys are out there trying to do that and then they come home well you're not gonna be able to get anyone on the phone at Google anyway but your correspondence at night you're gonna be low in the queue dude you're just now you're on a downhill slide so guys listen hold on Chris tell me, um, tell me, so getting back those verifications, man, dude, I had something and I just lost it. I just lost it. It was good too. Uh, guys, listen, TCs, what's up in the comments who we got in here? Locksmith, Jeremy, Mike Turman, WRS guys, if you're watching right now, we got a bunch of people in this live, uh, post a comment below. If you get in some value from Chris. Uh, if you don't have a footbridge site yet and you're looking to get leads for your business, these guys are the Kings and just call them over there. I will. Here is the number 888-818-7215. They're out of Pensacola, Florida. Uh, like I said, I've had a footbridge site for how many years now? Five, six years, dude. Yeah. I think I remember those phone calls originally. Dude, I still pay. Gladly. I see that draft come out every month, bro. Ben and I are going to be going and cleaning. We've cleaned a church this past week with a lot of ceiling jobs that we've done this past week. There's a big uptick in leads coming now. I'm sure you guys are probably seeing that as far as the traffic goes for pressure washing at least this it starts to uptick right about now going into December. People are wanting to not decorate a dirty house and it's going to be really good. One guy, Google is not posting any of his reviews. Any advice, man? This is a, uh, and I got to go in here. Yeah. What is, what is that about, man? So it's part of, and funny enough, we actually, I posted a video about this, uh, uh, last week, I think, um, talking about Google account reviews basically. Um, At the end of the day, Google, again, is trying to gatekeep Google business profiles and making sure that they're as spam-free as possible. There's been a whole rash of people for years now trying to buy reviews. So when they see specific patterns, it might be that you've had one too many reviews from someone who may believe it's their first review. And that's a good on you. If you can convince someone to leave a Google review for the first time, that means you've done well. But on Google's side of things, on the automated AI-controlled system there, they may gatekeep some of those. And we have seen instances where people leave these new reviews and they don't show up for months if they ever show up. Unfortunately, the number one fix there is make sure you're still verified. Sometimes people see these and it's actually the first diagnostic where they can see, hey, actually when I log into my Google My Business, that's grayed out now. There's that little icon or the little red needs assistance box there. So number one, make sure you're still verified. You likely still are. Unfortunately, this is one where you just got to overkill it. You've got to push hard. We've talked a little bit before about review management systems. ForBridge Media has a built-in review management system with our partnership with BirdEye. You just got to kill it and absolutely destroy it and get more and more and more reviews to try to overcome these issues that Google's going to gatekeep. Another issue that we're going to see related to that is Google fairly recently announced that they're going to at least reserve the right to delete Google accounts that are two years and older if they're inactive. So if you have, we haven't seen it yet because this starts in December of 2023, but what we're hoping against and what we're trying to warn our clients to do now is to make sure, again, that you're building up those Google reviews. If you've been around for a while, if you've got Google reviews that are older than two years, and maybe they're from folks who are no longer active on Google, you have no control over that, but we might see chunks of reviews going away overnight quickly. So you've got to be pushing hard on those reviews constantly, getting that stuff up to date, and make sure that you are just constantly upticking that review count. It's good practice all around. So whether you are trying to outrun Google account suspensions that are coming up, or if you're trying to compete with this problem of new reviews not getting posted, or these extreme delays in getting them posted, you just got to push hard, continue to get more and more and more reviews. If you have one review go up for every three you get, that's unfortunately what Google's doing with some of these issues right now. You just got to kill it. Wow. Oh yeah. Speaking of BirdEye, I never talk to, there's so many features you guys have, but like BirdEye, a guy, we have a guy, John Newby, he's with you guys. He's been with you guys for a while. And he's like, I sent a text cause BirdEye will do this. And it comes with your 199 deal. Now, look, if you got a BirdEye off the street, what is it like 400 bucks a month? I think the cheapest platform was like 299. I think that 299 for the cheapest, but with footbridge, you get the website, you get the team running interference for you, for Google. You also get bird eye with the 1 99 a month. That's a huge deal that, uh, somehow y'all negotiated that one. That one was good. All right. And he sent a text because bird eye will send an SMS text to request reviews from it to a mass amount of his customers. and I think he got like 20 reviews in a day. It was awesome, dude. That's so clutch. And if they don't leave a review, Bird Eye will follow up with them a few more times. You can set the sequences and it will SMS them and say, hey, well, you know, will you leave us a review? It's just amazing. The automation that is included within y'all's process to help these guys get reviews. Because reviews are the name of the game, dude. Like at the end of the day, that they're gonna make that the king of the kingdom. I'm betting right now they're making this hard because it's valuable. Anything Google makes as hard is because it's valuable. So understand this. Hustle, triple time it on getting reviews because Google's making it hard. Because if they're making it hard, they're going to make it a ranking factor. Maybe even weighted more heavily than it is now. Which reviews are a ranking factor, proximity is probably a bigger ranking factor, but reviews I think are going to go up. I think Chris, correct me if I'm wrong. One way to kind of keep the Google AI from kind of spotting you and suspending you is to don't change anything on the information side. Don't touch that. If you're going to have to touch something like that, call the team over here and they'll kind of give you a clearance on when to do that. But stay posting, stay posting photos, stay active, right? So you're getting reviews, you're posting posts and you're uploading photos and up to 30 seconds worth of video, right? Be the one guy in your town who's uploading video, right? How many people are uploading 30 second videos? Not very many, you know what I mean? Which think about this, you upload a video and somebody's watching the whole video, that's time on. And I guarantee you because long form video, excuse me, not long form, but the longer video, the verticals and just people staying in that environment, watching inside of your GMB, I guarantee it's gonna be a ranking factor because it's engagement. And that is something that's very, very hard to fabricate. fabricate. It's very hard to fabricate. Google knows that. YouTube's known that, which is Google for a while. If we can get a long watch time on a video, right? And they watch the whole video, bro, that video is going to keep bumping up, bumping up, bumping up because the market has spoken. The market has said, and what YouTube will do is they'll try to break it. They'll keep putting it out to more and more people until different avatars, wider wider avatars say, eh, we don't like that. And then they'll dial it. They'll dial it back. So Chris, I could be wrong. That's my prediction for ranking factors on GMB. I mean, I think engagement is a big one there for sure. And like you said, the things you can control are how you post, how you interact. Like you said, don't, don't putz with the phone number or the name of the address. You You know, we're, we're here to help out with those types of concerns, because if you got to change your phone number there, we got to change it everywhere. That's a whole conversation. Woo. Uh, don't just be making changes, you know, with it, without, you know, all willy nilly, uh, we will help with that, but yeah, I mean, getting those reviews, I've always said one of the, the easiest things you can do to make your business do better in Google listings, uh, in the map section and trying to get the top three in that map pack. You've got to get more reviews. If you've got more reviews than your competitors, chances are you're probably going to, you're going to do better. I've seen instances where people are much further away than a competitor and the guy that's further away, but with way more reviews, killing it reviews, you know, double and triple that other guy is in position number one and the closer person's in position number two. So it's, so it's top reviews is one of those three and then the other two are proximity based. Yeah. I, I, yeah, I think that's kind of the recipe there is ultimately at some point you'll get far enough away right you know you could be the best dang pressure washer in all of Texas but if I'm in Florida you're not showing up yeah I'm best dang pressure washer inside of Mississippi I have a hundred thousand Google reviews but I live in you know if I'm in Pensacola Florida that's of no use to me Redcon asks he already has a site I'm gonna answer this one can Footbridge run it for me it's WordPress that's a negatory so yeah Footbridge actually has their own platform that they run their websites through that they, it's a proprietary platform. They built it, they invented it. It's not WordPress. And so they built it specifically for local business. WordPress is kind of, it started as a blogging platform. Um, originally then they invented WooCommerce. And so they started running the Ecom through it. Um, not a bad platform. Um, but if you're not ranking, it is a bad platform. So if you're not getting leads from it, right, and you don't really know WordPress, I'm gonna tell you, I spent time in WordPress and there's nothing easy. If you're not a web dev, there's nothing easy about WordPress. I don't care what they say. The plugins, the plugins, Chris, they don't like each other. None of them like each other. They're usually fighting against each other. Yeah. Don't update one of them because that breaks the other one. I'm telling you, I, I have ended relationships with WordPress because it sounds fine. Cause they can say, make it simple. You have builders like Elementor and certain things that you can build out of, but where you start getting into the things you really want are these plugins. Well, hell man, WordPress wants to charge you for all of these separate plugins. They're like, oh, you want capital letters? That's a plugin. That's my watch. That's $1 a month for that plugin extra, right? Oh, you wanted to add buttons. Oh, you want a button? Well, we have a button plugin. It's not included. WordPress is a mess, dude. If you're, I know guys have stayed in there and there's web devs who know it like the back of their hand, but none of us, that's not what we are, man. And like the, I think the benefit with WordPress is like that, you know, the customer is like, like you said, if you know how to tinker with it, the customization is great, but it comes at a cost and that cost is load time. That's one of the biggest issues people have with WordPress is you can make a site that looks great with any drag and drop editor, with, you know, with a Wix or with a WordPress, but the cost of being able to make these things work these little components and plug in things here and there. For the most part, every single plugin is another HTML call, which will lead to at least another one. Cause like it calls the plugin and then the plugin actually does something. You're talking about more and more and more and more of the load speed. Which really contributes to people hitting your site and bouncing off, right? Because the load time. Yep, that's where you click and you wait and nothing happens, yeah. Or you got like a photo that's loading up. People are bailing out. They're like, oh, this dude's stuck in dial-up land. So Redcon, just give Aaron a call over there, talk with him, see if Footbridge is right for you. He's not going to charge you for the phone call, dude. So see if it's something. And if you like the design of the site, we can certainly, you know, we'll work with you to make sure that we get some aesthetics right for you. But yeah, as far as like, we'll just take over your stuff. No, Aaron's, Aaron's got that correct. Yeah. We're, we're, we're gonna, again, we want it to work well for you. Um, you know, even if you have, if you spent a good amount of time or money on the, on the website, At the end of the day, like Aaron said, the argument here is, is it working? Is it working for you now? That's where the real value is. What I've found with WordPress, my biggest pet peeve beyond the plugins and having to have a million of them to really get what you want, which runs everything slow, right? You gotta up your server speed, which you're paying more out per month for server if you wanna run more plugins and if you get more traffic. That's, Footbridge doesn't have any of that, dude. It's 1-9-9 a month. They've got the servers there. They've got plenty of speed. They've optimized for mobile. They've optimized for desktop. They just have an ecosystem that is proven for local business. So very easy, which is what we want it to be, but effective. I realized 1-9-9 don't sound like much. And that's, you know, that's the pro and the con, see? But give them a call and check it out. Let's see. He says, the real pressure wash punk says, We are moving the office next month, the correct protocol with changing address on Google, same city, couple blocks away. I don't want to say anything like black-hatty or necessarily if it's the same city and if where you're at now is still doing well for you from a location standpoint. So when we talk about optimizing Google business profiles, that address that you have is kind of like the hub. That's the center pushpin in a map. And your effectiveness kind of goes radiate around that endpoint. We've seen folks that have moved offices, and they accidentally move themselves out of an area that was actually doing a little bit better for themselves. So one possibility is if you're doing really well in that area, your Google Business is already working well there. You're getting good map-based leads, Google Business profile-based leads. And it's only a couple blocks over. Maybe you don't necessarily, again, not necessarily, you know, white hat, black hat here, maybe you don't necessarily change it right away, see if you can hold off. If it's a new listing anyways and you don't have a whole lot of Google reviews and you're moving to a place that is more ideal, you'd like to get your neighbors there to get pressure washing jobs more than you would in your current location, then yeah, then talk to us and we would go through and we'd make sure that we are pulling the trigger all at the same time so that we are sending this out in waves so we can go through, especially it was one of the great benefits of Yext, that again, the partnership we have with them, is that we can go through and distribute that information en masse and lock in that information so that data aggregators aren't overrunning that with that old address that you have before. Because that old address you have, depending on where you live, like business licenses sometimes get crawled and that information gets shoved in places where it shouldn't be. So you've got an old business license that has an old address on it. listings, other citation sites might pull from that public data, uh, with a tool like Yext, we can lock in, we can override that stuff. It's the specific agreements that Yext has with some of these directories and these, these other companies, listing companies. Um, so yeah, if you're going to make the change, if it's, if it's a change it's worthwhile making for you, uh, then it needs to be done properly all at once, uh, through Yext and through a partnership with, with Footbridge. Dude, that is a super power. Oh yeah, it's like, that's one of the, I think the best points of Yext. is it locks in that stuff? It stops. What people see all the time is that information being overwritten. You fixed this listing, but now two months later, because of your business license from, you know, 2008, it's overrun. So that site is pulling from the secretary of state? Yeah. Or like sometimes the locals, like the state, you know, state level listings. Yeah. Wow. Wow. So having yet with you guys allows you guys to lock it in to where they can't override that information, creating it all seamless, all the exactly the same to where when you do, when you do move and you file that change, Google can say, okay, looks good. Yep. Right. Okay. That makes sense, bro. There's so much damn SWAT team interference running around here, bro. This is something. And look, man, I, it used to not be this difficult, but I will say, you know, as it gets more and more difficult, especially with suspensions, when they started doing that, I was like footbridge. If you don't have footbridge, that I would pay you guys monthly just to not lose my GMB. Forget it. The like websites, amazing ranks really well. It looks amazing. It's everything I want. You guys are seamless customer service, but the fact that I can like, I don't, oh, I don't appeal it myself. If I get a suspension with Google on my GMB, I don't appeal it. Never do this guys, but you have a footbridge. I don't appeal it personally. I call footbridge or they'll probably call me because I'll see it. But it's like, Hey, we're going to appeal it for you so we can run our protocol. I will tell you, do not make the mistake I made. I had Footbridge at this time and I was stupid and I years ago I got suspended and I appealed it and Footbridge can't do anything because they can't come into my computer there in Florida, right? So let them appeal the suspension and start that dialogue and that process for you. Otherwise, if you appeal it, it's on you. You have to do it because they can't. You know what I'm saying? You rung the bell. Yeah, you run the bell. You can't repeatedly appeal. Right. Let, let footbridge ring the bell for you. All right. All right. Um, yeah. Then you can tell, oh yeah. The pressure wash punk. What's up, man? He says, give you a bell after ringing, uh, he'll give you a ring after they settled in. Then you can tell me, uh, who they really are. Yeah. I don't know who the pressure wash punks are, you know um they've been on the channel for a while they used to hate me they don't hate me anymore i guess you know that's a long story but it's a funny one i i appreciate it man they're still here seem like some uh seem like some cool guys now but uh he's got a five-year-old gmb from that location so yeah man give him a call see if it's for you like i said aaron will shoot you you straight, man. So I hope you guys got a lot out of this video. Okay. Um, TCs. Yeah. I mean, just give them a call over there and they'll talk to you about it. Right. Um, I hope you guys got a lot of this video of why Google won't approve your Google, my business. And, um, maybe some of these things can kind of help you either understand where you are to where you can do this stuff if you don't have a bridge or if you see the value, go ahead and give them a call over there today. Talk with them. The call is free. Aaron, my promise will tell you straight up, whether it's a good investment or it's for you, or you should stay where you are, right? Aaron is not the kind of guy to just take your money and run. He's more interested in a, at $200 a month guys, you can't really take the money and run. That's like, you know, two or three bus tickets, you know, about as far as the circle K and so he's interested in a long game with you guys, the relationship and everybody winning and you guys making money. So I hope you guys enjoyed this, Chris, thanks for coming on, man. We will see you guys in the next video.