Why has my business disappeared from Google Maps / Google Places?

Google Places should really be regarded as a BETA program – full of bugs – it is hardly supported considering the millions of users across the globe, with just a handful of American technical workers managing hundreds of thousands of complaints and problems.

1. Google do not care if your business is damaged by their ineptitude or the errors within their system.
2. In many cases, businesses who have relied on their website generating business from Maps and suffer a Maps bug which removes them from appearing, will be forced into buying Pay per click ads to keep their business afloat.
3. So in general, try to keep in mind these limitations when you have problems with your Google Places listing.
4. Read more about Google Places bugs that have caused major damage to small business owners http://marketing-blog.catalystemarketing.com/google-places-bug-listings-disappear.html

I generally use the 3,3,3 rule when assessing google issues that they have acknowledged as not right… Sometimes it gets fixed in 3 days as it was a minor issue. If not 3 days then 3 weeks as it takes time for the index to update and catch the changes If not 3 weeks then 3 months as it is is a serious problem and takes significant coding, debugging and reindexing.Google does not function on business time as we know it. Their fixes, annoying as they are, arrive due to the time frames dictated by internal demands and update schedules.After watching Google Places for 6 years I have come to the conclusion that most problems get fixed sooner or later… that is not very comforting to you as you are experiencing the loss caused by one of their bugs.

Take a look at some of the Places support forums:

• https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!category-topic/business/technical-issue/mPz5bqu7ViM
• https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!category-topic/business/technical-issue/9JszqkewMVU