How to Deal with Malicious Attacks Against Your Google My Business Page

Last week we uncovered an serious issue affecting a prospective client. In doing research we found that their Google My Business listing had been marked as permanently closed. Keep in mind this business has been operating for about 30 years in the same location. It seemed odd that it would be marked as closed. One can only wonder how long it had been marked as closed.

We claimed the listing and published it to Google again. Shortly thereafter it was marked as closed, again. Now this confirmed the previous inclination that something was amiss. Within a few minutes we had Google support on the phone.

The support agent looked into the issue and found nothing right away. After explaining that it had been marked closed before and was then marked closed again after republishing the support agent agreed it was likely the result of a user maliciously reporting the listing as closed and escalated the ticket.

Withing a few days they confirmed this was indeed the issue. Google took the appropriate steps and has banned the user from making any further edits to the page. The person is most likely a competitor or dislikes the business or owner. Whoever it is, shame on you!