I’m very sorry to hear about the downturn in events related to your business getting liquidated. This story is not only unfortunate, but not uncommon among the woes of SMB’s. Google is the type of beast that hard to understand, and even harder to control for the average business owner. Everyone falls for the same trap when times are good, and rarely does one ever plan for create what some in our industry call ‘defensible traffic’.

Defensible traffic essentially brings about the concept of never having to rely on one sole provider of a leads to your business, whether that be Google or any other form of advertising.

My sincere hope is that you do not get discouraged to the point where you never want to do business with Google again. There’s a community of SEO/Local Search experts who can help you in these situations, in the same way a lawyer or doctor might for legal or medical complications. I definitely suggest diversifying your basket of lead acquisition sources, and soliciting the advice of a qualified SEO/SEM professional for your next venture.

Sincerely,

Dev

Finlly, people that were searching for my services were finding me- and rightfully so! After all, I’m not only the best on my location, but one of the best in my industry, credited with multiple awards and years of expertise. At the time, I was so happy with Google that I would have kissed their shoes. They gave me the means to connect with clients where my limited resources could not.

My home business grew to more than I could handle by myself. I needed to hire help, but to do so, I needed to get an office. I hired an attorney to draft up a business plan and we shopped it to the banks. Our pitch was simple “We need this much to expand- we’re making twice as much so it won’t be hard to pay back.” The loan was approved.

I paid thousands for all the right licensing, hired 2 employees and moved into a warehouse. As sales increased and I expanded my inventory. Here’s where it turns bad:

We moved into a warehouse lot with similar businesses. We all shared the same street address but different suites. One day, callers started complaining about products that we didn’t even carry and services that we didn’t perform. Turns out, one of our competitors had managed to rack up multiple negative reviews on his Google local listing and it had somehow MERGED with our listing.

Now, dealing with damage control isn’t so tough. We explained to callers that they had the wrong number and gave them the correct one. The icing on the cake- when our business came to a screeching halt- was when we found that our phone number was nowhere to be seen. No one called for our business. To put it lightly, our phone lines had become the enemy.

For nearly 2 months, we struggled with finding new customers. We passed out flyers but that proved to be ineffective. We heavily relied on Craigslist advertising. In fact, that was our ONLY source of revenue.

Google was no help. They would not even entertain the idea of listening to us. What baffled me the most was how a company that employs 20,000 people (that’s right, twenty-thousand) didn’t have a single person to answer the phone. Here’s Google’s phone number, call them and ask them about anything and see what happens: (650) 253-0000. They will shut you down like a light.

Like a broken record, Google’s android receptionists repeatedly chanted the anthem of: “We do not offer tech support for ‘free services’. We do not offer tech support for ‘free services’. We do…” Ok, as a professional I can understand that a business would not give free support for a free service, but I was willing to PAY. Alas, there was no one at Google that would take my money. Then I remembered that I had paid Google thousands of dollars in Adwords, a $21 Billion dollar company and they couldn’t help me.

Finally, I ended up deleting my Google Local listing. I created a new one and waited a week for my conformation code. After verifying the code I searched daily for my listing to appear. About a week later I found it… It was on page 4. I’m sure you can figure out what happened in the proceeding weeks. We liquidated.

There’s an old proverb: “Don’t put your eggs into one basket”… Whether that’s true or not, I know that basket is not Google.

Thanks for debt,
Out Of Business

@Michael Seals – That’s a really neat idea. You could even put special incentives or coupons on the page to track local search driven customers.

Going to have to see about embedding a pre-defined maps page, on my retail client’s “Contact Us” page where all the visitor has to do is enter their location and click “Get Directions”. If that works the data should help make for some well targeted PPC ads.

Very cool stuff from Google. This will definitely have a positive impact on both SEO and PPC as more and more insightful data is shared by Google that we can use in our campaigns.

I’m also really loving the new and improved insights for search – a great tool for clients that have seasonal fluctuations. The search-based keyword tool is also proving to be a valuable resource in some cases.

Google is really doing an excellent job of giving local business owners the opportunity to be more visible and drive more qualified traffic to their sites (in this case for free). Wonder what they will come up with next!