Any advice on how to remove GMB listing? [HELP]

[ethan_adm]

First post here.

A year ago I took ownership of a store / business that had shut down.

The previous owners got many bad reviews on their GMB listing, and now that the store in "under new management" I want to improve the business' score with genuine good reviews.

The problem is, my staff don't even want to ask customers to give us a good review because of the embarrassing 2.7 star rating and all the bad reviews on there already - they don't want the customers to see this.

Google don't seem to care that the store is trading under a new company. They won't remove the listing.

I paid someone to post some good reviews to bury the bad ones, but they told me the reviews don't stick and now they are ghosting me.

Any advice??

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

First post here.

A year ago I took ownership of a store / business that had shut down.

The previous owners got many bad reviews on their GMB listing, and now that the store in "under new management" I want to improve the business' score with genuine good reviews.

The problem is, my staff don't even want to ask customers to give us a good review because of the embarrassing 2.7 star rating and all the bad reviews on there already - they don't want the customers to see this.

Google don't seem to care that the store is trading under a new company. They won't remove the listing.

I paid someone to post some good reviews to bury the bad ones, but they told me the reviews don't stick and now they are ghosting me.

Any advice??

Is the corporate entity name the same as the previous owners?

 

[ethan_adm]

Is the corporate entity name the same as the previous owners?

The corporate entity is different, but the store is trading under the same brand name.

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

The corporate entity is different, but the store is trading under the same brand name.

You could create a new listing with the corporate entity and inside the listing itself share the business name I bet.

XYZ, Corporation - name of listing.

Content inside would be the store name and all the other promotional content you can add in there.

Should that not be a viable thought process for you marketing to your current clients and link to the current GMB listing in the emails.

Personally, I'd have a talk with the employees letting them know I don't care if they do not want to ask for reviews and let them know that is part of their job.

 

[ethan_adm]

You could create a new listing with the corporate entity and inside the listing itself share the business name I bet.

XYZ, Corporation - name of listing.

Content inside would be the store name and all the other promotional content you can add in there.

Should that not be a viable thought process for you marketing to your current clients and link to the current GMB listing in the emails.

Personally, I'd have a talk with the employees letting them know I don't care if they do not want to ask for reviews and let them know that is part of their job.

Thanks.

The issue is, when customers search for my store, they will find the "bad" listing as it has the brand name and address.

The store and business model are very sales-oriented. It's not just the staff - I don't want customers to see all the bad reviews because it can make them lose trust in the business. Trying to justify it with "we're under new management" doesn't always work. So many reviews on there talk about pushy and dishonest salespeople and I don't want to have to justify against that image... It's just annoying that a person can't "start fresh" and lift up what was a failing business because of Google's policies.

 

[BassTrackerBoats]

Maybe someone else will have an idea that makes sense and will help you out.

 

[firstnamelastname]

google will not just "Remove" a GMB at your request.
if you permanently close it, it will still be up, but it will have a permanently closed notation and I think it's not possible to leave reviews for a permanently closed business.
in these situations I'd just spam the fuck out of the GMB so it will get suspended. these days it's not too hard to get a GMB suspended.
then put up a new GMB using the new business name

 

[ethan_adm]

google will not just "Remove" a GMB at your request.
if you permanently close it, it will still be up, but it will have a permanently closed notation and I think it's not possible to leave reviews for a permanently closed business.
in these situations I'd just spam the fuck out of the GMB so it will get suspended. these days it's not too hard to get a GMB suspended.
then put up a new GMB using the new business name

Thanks. Spamming to get suspended is a good idea but risky... If they don't suspend the listing I may be left even worse off...

 

[DevMask]

Here is how helped a brand from an angry customer.

This particular brand was facing negative campaign from a single customer. They had 4+ rating for a long time with some 10+ reviews. One customer faced some problem with the product after using it for almost an year and asked for a refund! They denied the refund but was willing to repair. He gathered all his friends, family, aquintences and within a week there were almost 50 one star reviews! And the total rating fallen to 1.3 something.

This has a huge impact on their business because their major traffic was from Google search and Ads. So people see the poor rating and believed in it.

So it was a desperate time. I reported to Google from multiple accounts, multiple times but no luck.

Finally I came up a plan and did this.

1. I renamed the business to altogether something unrelated. Like an imaginative brand.
2. Waited a week, got a temporary number and replaced it with the old number in the listing. Also sent multiple number change suggestions from various accounts.
3. Removed all the infos like images, posts etc.
4. Took the suggestion from Google for getting a bsuiness.site and removed the existing site with this. The site has basic imaginative info, images and we are closed in the bottom.
5. Removed the location and updated as 'No location; deliveries and home services only'.
6. After almost a month I created the new listing with the 'company name - main keyword' from a different account.
7. Enriched it with citations, map embeds, geotagging, google stacking etc.
8. I kept updating new listing with posts, images, positive reviews etc.
9. For the old listing, I was updated it as temporarily closed it multiple times but Google wasn't updating it. After multiple attempts it is accepted and after few weeks I updated it as permanently closed.

Altogether it took almost 3 months for the process. After that business as usual.

 

[Rankster]

Just log into your GMB dashboard,
You could change your listing information.
Or, Navigate to your business listing on Maps,
Select bad Reviews as inappropriate.
Deleting your Google Business account will not prevent bad reviews,
The only chance, is to change or delete the unfavourable review.

 

[DevMask]

Just log into your GMB dashboard,
You could change your listing information.
Or, Navigate to your business listing on Maps,
Select bad Reviews as inappropriate.
Deleting your Google Business account will not prevent bad reviews,
The only chance, is to change or delete the unfavourable review.

Google won't remove reviews just because the business says it is inappropriate. If that was the case, there wouldn't be any negative reviews to any business and will have no value of reviews.

 

[gmbmapverify]

Google won't remove reviews just because the business says it is inappropriate. If that was the case, there wouldn't be any negative reviews to any business and will have no value of reviews.

with recent updates they do care about the reviews if business report those reviews.

 

[DevMask]

with recent updates they do care about the reviews if business report those reviews.

Yes, but they won't remove it unless there are good reasons to.

 

[firstnamelastname]

Thanks. Spamming to get suspended is a good idea but risky... If they don't suspend the listing I may be left even worse off...

lol how could you possibly mess this up? these days they suspend without any reason. let me know if you need my help, I will get you suspended within one minute lol

 

[ethan_adm]

Altogether it took almost 3 months for the process. After that business as usual.

Thanks that's a solid advice! I'll go ahead and try that.

And thanks everyone for all your advice and support.

 

[Wiccanda]

lol how could you possibly mess this up? these days they suspend without any reason. let me know if you need my help, I will get you suspended within one minute lol

I pm u