Your profile got suspended. What to do in the first 48 hours

Your profile is gone from Search and Maps. You cannot respond to reviews. The phone has stopped.

Most of the damage in the next few days is self-inflicted, so start with the things not to do.

Do not do any of this

Do not create a new profile for the same business. Google says this plainly: do not create a new Business Profile while your appeal is under review. It is the single most common panic move and it turns a fixable suspension into a much worse problem.

Do not start editing the profile. A flurry of changes while you are under review looks like exactly what a spammer would do.

Do not submit a second appeal because the first one is slow. Duplicates do not speed anything up.

Do not pay anyone promising a guaranteed reinstatement. Nobody has a back channel to Google. What a good operator sells you is knowing what to fix and how to document it, and they should tell you that up front.

Do not ignore it and hope. Reviews and photos survive a suspension, but the profile stays invisible until someone appeals.

Hour one: find out what actually happened

Two places to look.

Your email. Google sends a notification. It is usually vague, and that is deliberate, since detailed explanations would just teach spammers what to avoid.

The appeals tool. More useful. When you open it, it shows you the profile, the reason for the moderation action, and a link to the policy Google says you breached. Read the linked policy properly. That is your brief.

Also check whether this is a profile suspension or an account restriction. If your whole Google account has been restricted, every profile you manage is suspended and you cannot claim new ones. That is a different fix: you appeal the account restriction first, on your Google account restrictions page, and only once that is lifted do you appeal the profile.

Hours two to twelve: find the actual cause

Do not appeal yet. Fix the breach first, or you are just asking Google to review the same problem twice.

Work through the usual suspects.

Address on a service-area business. You go to customers but your home address is showing. Very common, and a frequent trigger.

An address that is not really yours. PO box, parcel locker, virtual office, a coworking desk you have never used.

Keywords in the business name. "Smith Plumbing" is fine. "Smith Plumbing Newcastle 24/7 Emergency Hot Water" is not. Your profile name has to be your actual business name, the one on the sign.

A pile of changes at once. Editing name, address and category in the same sitting is a classic trigger, especially on a newer profile.

Ownership or agency changes. A new manager account with a history of spammy profiles can drag yours down with it.

Category or business type mismatch. Listed as a storefront with no permanent signage. Listed in a category that requires a physical premises when you do not have one.

Review manipulation. If reviews have vanished or you have a warning on the profile, this is a fake engagement problem rather than a location problem, and it needs a different fix.

Online-only. If you have no premises customers visit and provide no in-person service, you are not eligible for a profile at all. There is no appeal that fixes that.

Fix what you find. Then move on.

Hours twelve to twenty-four: get the paperwork ready

This is where most appeals fall over, and it is entirely avoidable.

Google's evidence form has a sixty minute window. Once you open it, you have an hour to submit or it will not attach to your appeal. Do not open it until your files are sitting on the desktop, named, and ready to upload.

Google lists the evidence that helps:

• Official business registration
• A business licence
• Tax certificates
• Utility bills for the business, such as electricity, phone, water or internet

In Australia, that means things like your ABN or ASIC business name registration record, an ASIC company extract, your trade licence or contractor licence, a council permit if you hold one, a rates notice, or a power, water or internet bill in the business name at the business address.

The critical instruction, straight from Google: check that the business name and address on your documents match the profile you are appealing.

This is where the trading name problem bites. If your sign and your profile say "Hunter Valley Auto Care" and every bill you own says "J & S Bragg Investments Pty Ltd", a reviewer sees a mismatch and moves on. Find documents that bridge the two, like a business name registration showing the trading name held by the entity, and include both.

Photos are worth adding as context too: your signage, your premises, your branded vehicle, staff in uniform. They are not on Google's list, but they cost nothing and they answer the question a reviewer is actually asking.

Hours twenty-four to forty-eight: submit once

1. Open the Google Business Profile appeals tool, signed into the account that manages the profile.
2. Select the profile and confirm.
3. Read the stated reason and the linked policy one more time. Make sure you have genuinely fixed it.
4. Submit the appeal.
5. When prompted, select Add evidence, upload your documents, add a short plain explanation of what the business is and what you fixed, and submit inside the hour.

Keep the explanation factual. What the business is, where it operates, that customers do or do not attend the address, what you corrected. No pleading, no history of how long you have been trading, no mention of lost revenue. The person reading it is checking whether you are real and compliant.

Then stop touching it.

Then you wait

Google does not publish a timeline and you will find wildly different claims about it online. Assume days rather than hours, and possibly a lot longer. You will get an email with a decision.

If it is approved, the profile and its managers come back.

If it is denied, there is one more move: you can request an additional review of a denied request, and provide evidence you did not include the first time. This is your best and last shot, so do not use it to resubmit the same pack. Find something new. A licence you did not think to include, better photos of permanent signage, a document that resolves the name mismatch.

While you are dark

The profile is invisible but your business is not.

Tell people. Put your hours and phone number at the top of your website. Post on whatever social account you have. Ring the customers with jobs booked, because they cannot look you up.

And write down what you changed and when. If this happens again in a year, that record is the fastest way to work out what triggered it.

The uncomfortable part

Most suspensions are not random. Somewhere in the setup there is usually a shortcut: a suburb name in the business title, a home address left showing, a second listing for a neighbouring town, a batch of reviews that arrived in one afternoon.

Fixing it properly costs you a few days of visibility. Appealing without fixing it costs you the appeal, and then you are into the one shot you had left.

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Sources. The appeal process, the sixty minute evidence window, the evidence types and the instruction not to create a new profile are from Google Business Profile Help: fix suspended or disabled profiles. Account-level restrictions are covered in overview of Google Business Profile policies. Setup rules are in guidelines for representing your business on Google.

Last checked: 25 July 2026.