Google My Business overreacts to Covid-19

As the entire world is feeling the effects of CoronoVirus or Covid-19, Google is doing their part further complicate matters. While Covid-19 is a completely unprecedented phenomenon, Google had no game plan in order. When people fail the plan, they plan to fail. Google is overreacting and appears to be making it up as they go.

On Friday, March 20th, 2020 Google removed the ability for users to post reviews on Google My Business listings. Not only was the ability to post a review disabled, but Google also disabled the ability for businesses to respond to reviews. Currently, if a user leaves a review, Google is confirming that the review was posted and the user can see the review in their account. Once the user logs out of Google, they won’t see the review. The business will not get the review and has no way of seeing it. It is unclear if the review will be published at a later date or if the review will just disappear into the ether.

Google also removed the Q&A section completely. Instead of turning off the ability to post a new question or add an answer, they removed the feature completely, along with old questions and answers. I am failing to see the logic here unless Google couldn’t temporarily stop or pause this feature. This would be a great opportunity for businesses to let their customers know that they are still open or what options they have to serve their clients. Time will tell when Q&A’s get added back onto GMB and in what capacity.

The worst thing Google has done is starting marking open businesses as temporarily closed. Google came up with a method to determine which businesses are open and which ones are closed. Sadly, it appears that Google has mistakenly been marking open businesses as temporarily closed. Any business marked as ‘temporarily closed” will not show up in normal searches. For example, I performed the following search.

I was presented the knowledge panel for their corporate location. I had to search on Google maps to get the business listing to show up by looking for a business near them and zooming in on the map and then clicking on the business I wanted.

I don’t see how hiding or filtering out temporarily closed businesses is good for users or the business themselves. One of the main purposes of a GMB listing is to provide valuable information to consumers. If I want to know if a business is open, I can’t rely on Google as I can’t even find the business listing to find the telephone number or check the status.

Hopefully, Google will reevaluate its response to Covid-19 and help businesses and consumers. In the meantime, we are at Google’s mercy.