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Small Google Business Profile Updates Triggering Re-verification

October 29, 2024 /
All industries  /   Google Business Profile 

Having your Google profile unverified locks you out of listing features and is a major time drain to navigate successfully back to verified status. Claiming one’s listings is one of the first and most crucial steps a business undergoes to optimize its online presence, so reverting these listings to their unclaimed status is a huge setback for marketers. Business owners would do almost anything to avoid such a scenario, but an update from Google is now causing otherwise mundane business profile updates to trigger a loss of verification status.

A large uptick in unverified listings throughout October prompted an investigation into the issue. With the number of routine updates made by many businesses across various aspects of their Google Business Profiles, it was difficult to pinpoint the exact cause. After several weeks of DAC investigating what triggered the unverification for our clients, we believe the primary cause is alterations to a profile’s business categories.

DAC’s testing revealed that updating aspects such as hours, phone numbers, Google posts, Q&A, and other business details is generally safe. However, businesses are warned to proceed with caution. For businesses that optimized by adding new secondary categories or altering their primary category for better positioning, these changes often triggered the need for re-verification. We also noticed that Google recently updated its help documentation to specifically mention that altering categories could unverify a listing. This suggests that Google’s decision to reverify listings was not a glitch but a conscious one.

Not every category alteration results in re-verification, but it occurs frequently enough that business owners should be aware. Marketers now need to weigh the benefits of improved performance from adding a category against the effort it might take to navigate the verification process. Unless Google relaxes its stance on adding categories, businesses can no longer add them quickly or without risk. Ultimately, it becomes a case-by-case decision whether to follow through with optimizations that may require the additional work of potential re-verification, as there is no workaround other than completing that manual process.