It appears that Google is experiencing a bug in Local Business Center. We have heard from several innkeepers this week that their TripAdvisor reviews are disappearing from their Google Local Business Listings, which is causing the client's Google Local Business Listing to drop from page 1 placement to page 7 or 8 in the Local Listings. We searched the Google Maps Help Forum, and found that this is a known issue in Google.
If you see that you have lost your reviews and are not seeing your listing in Google local, make sure you go into the forums and post a comment with your information so that Google knows this is affecting your business.
A Tip: Make sure your information (Name, address, web address, phone number, etc.) on your Google Local Listing matches what you have on TripAdvisor.
Google doesn't have humans sitting around matching business information. It's all electronic, so if Google doesn't see that your Local Information matches what you have in TripAdvisor, BedandBreakfast.com, etc, it's a good possibility they won't pull those reviews into the Local Business Center Listing.
Why did this all of a sudden start happening? We don't know, but can speculate...
What we do know is that both Google (Place Pages which are related to Google Local) and Trip Advisor (Owners Page updates) have made changes to their systems in the last week. But we have been unable to pin-point any root issues other than the tip we have listed above.
We are going to continue to watch this issue, so keep an eye on this blog post for updates.
Also, if you are experiencing anything you want to share, click to type in a comment below.
Update: The same day this post was written, Google / Tripadvisor appeared to work out their issues, and customers that dropped in Google Local placement all returned to page 1. Was it something our innkeepers did? We can NOT say for sure. Each customer did go in and update their Trip Advisors Owners page, but we cannot say for sure if that had any effect on putting their Google Local Listings back on Page 1. Or if Google / Tripadvisor worked it out on their own. We can say that we do know that keeping all your business information consistent across any listings online is a GOOD thing to do. But did it fix this issue? We can not be conclusive.
Annie Buck
Pre-Development Manager
Acorn Marketing
