To the surprise of many legitimate businesses, they woke up to the following message regarding their Google Business Profiles.

Either due to a glitch or a failed attempt at curtailing spam, Google mass disabled many businesses in certain categories. The affected sectors include:

1. Garage Door Services
2. Waste Management
3. Personal Injury Lawyers

These business categories, and many others, are typically rife with spam. Google has yet to successfully rectify that issue, and it seems their latest attempt at removing bad actors has also targeted many legitimate businesses. This means that if you are a listing manager working in one of these industries, and possibly other spam-heavy categories, you must review your listings and ensure they haven’t been wrongfully suspended.

Despite this being a widespread issue, Google has yet to provide a way to bulk-appeal listings. This means that if all of your brand’s listings have been suspended, a manual appeal must be filed for each one. It is a tedious process, but it is just another unpleasant reality of being a legitimate business in a field full of bad actors.