A suspension takes your business off Google Maps, hides your reviews, and stops your phone. It is usually fixable, but the process changed and most advice online still describes a form that no longer exists.
This guide follows Google’s current appeals process. Work through it in order, because doing step four before step two is the most common reason appeals get rejected.
Before you do anything: do not click the appeal link in Google’s email yet, and do not edit your profile. Both of those can cost you your best attempt. Read the next two sections first.
First, Find Out Which Kind You Have
There are three, and the fix is different for each.
Soft suspension
You can still sign in and see your profile, but the public cannot. Your listing shows as unverified and disappears from Maps and local search. Reviews are hidden.
Hard suspension
The profile is gone from your dashboard entirely. You cannot access or edit it. This usually means Google believes the listing itself violates policy rather than one detail on it.
Account-level restriction
This is the one most guides miss, and it changes the order of everything. If your Google Account is restricted, every profile you manage is suspended at once and you cannot create or claim new ones. Appealing an individual profile will not work while this is in place.
Check your Google Account restrictions page. If there is a restriction listed, submit that appeal first and wait for it to be lifted. Only then appeal the profile itself.
Do Not Start the Appeal Yet
Google’s email tells you the profile was suspended and links you to the appeal. The instinct is to click it immediately. Do not.
Your appeal is judged on the state of your profile at the moment you submit it. If your business name still has extra keywords in it, or your address is a mailbox, or your categories are wrong, the appeal gets rejected on that basis and you have spent one of a small number of attempts. Fix the violation first, then appeal.
Before you appeal, read Google’s guidelines for representing your business and compare them against your profile line by line. Also take screenshots of your current name, address, categories, hours and service areas, so you have a record of what you changed.
What Usually Triggers a Suspension
Google keeps its exact reasons deliberately vague to avoid helping spammers, but these are the patterns that account for most cases.
- Keywords in the business name. Your Google name must match your real-world signage and registration. “Maple Plumbing Vancouver Emergency 24/7” is not a business name, it is a keyword string.
- An address you cannot prove. Virtual offices, mailbox rentals, coworking desks you do not actually occupy, and PO boxes are all common triggers.
- A service-area business showing a street address. If customers do not come to you, your address should be hidden and only your service areas shown. Getting this wrong is one of the most common suspensions for trades and home services.
- Duplicate listings for the same location.
- Rapid edits. Changing your address, phone or categories several times in a short period reads as suspicious activity.
- Category or content violations, including prohibited content in photos, posts or descriptions.
- A manager with a bad account. If someone with a flagged Google Account has access to your profile, that can pull yours down with it. Check your list of managers and remove anyone who should not be there.
Our complete Google Business Profile guide covers how to set each of these up correctly in the first place.
The 60 Minute Rule Nobody Warns You About
This is the single most important operational detail in the whole process, and Google states it plainly: once you open the evidence form, you have 60 minutes to submit it, or your documents will not be attached to your appeal.
Which means an appeal submitted without evidence gets reviewed without evidence. So gather everything before you open the tool. Have your files scanned, named clearly, and sitting in one folder on your desktop.
What Google Actually Accepts as Evidence
Google names these specifically:
- Official business registration
- A business license
- Tax certificates
- Business utility bills: electricity, phone, water or internet
Two or three strong documents beat a folder full of weak ones. And the detail that decides most cases: the business name and address on your documents must match the profile exactly. Not close. If your registration says “Maple Web Design Ltd.” and your profile says “Maple Web Design,” fix one of them before you submit.
In Canada, the most reliable combination is usually your provincial or federal business registration plus a municipal business licence, both showing the same address as the profile.
Never Create a Second Profile
Google says this directly: do not create a new Business Profile for the same business while your appeal is under review.
Starting fresh feels faster. It is not. A duplicate listing can get the new profile suspended too, and it puts your Google Account at risk, which escalates a single-profile problem into an account-level restriction. You also lose every review the original profile earned, and those do not transfer.
How to Submit the Appeal
- Fix the violation and confirm your profile matches Google’s guidelines.
- Gather your two or three documents into one folder.
- Open the Google Business Profile appeals tool, signed in to the account that owns the profile.
- Select the profile. The tool shows the restricted profile, the reason for the action, and a link to the specific policy Google says you violated. Read that policy before continuing.
- Select Submit Appeal.
- When prompted, select Add evidence, upload your documents, and add a short written explanation. Finish within 60 minutes.
Keep the written explanation short and factual. State that the profile was suspended, that you have reviewed the guidelines, exactly what you changed, and what each document proves. Skip the backstory and the frustration. The reviewer is working through a queue and clarity helps you.
What the Statuses Mean
You can check progress in the same appeals tool. Google shows one of five states: Submitted, Approved, Not Approved, Can’t be appealed, or Eligible for appeal.
Google does not publish a turnaround time, and in practice it varies from a few days to a few weeks depending on the case. While it is under review, do not edit the profile. Changes can restart the review or trigger another suspension.
If Your Appeal Is Denied
You get another chance, but not unlimited ones, so treat it as your last self-service attempt.
Google allows an additional review of a denied request, where you can provide evidence that was not included the first time. Before you use it, work out honestly why the first one failed. Submitting the same case again with the same documents will get the same answer.
If that also fails, post your case in the Google Business Profile Help Community with your Business Profile ID and what you have already tried. Product Experts there can review a case and escalate it to Google if it has merit. That route typically takes one to two weeks.
If you are in the European Economic Area, you have additional redress options under the Digital Services Act. Canadian businesses do not.
Owner Removed or Manager Removed
Worth knowing because the consequences are very different.
If Google removes the profile, the public cannot see it and neither owners nor managers can act on it, but you can ask for reinstatement and both the profile and its people come back together.
If Google removes the owner’s Google Account, every location that account owns goes with it. Reinstating the account reinstates the locations.
If Google removes a manager’s account, only that person loses access. The locations themselves are unaffected. This is why auditing who has manager access is worth ten minutes of your time.
Staying Clean After Reinstatement
Reinstated profiles get watched more closely, so the month after is not the time to experiment.
- Use your real business name with no added keywords, ever.
- Make changes gradually rather than editing several fields in one session.
- Keep your name, address and phone identical everywhere online. Our guide to building local citations covers how to audit that.
- One listing per real location, no exceptions.
- If you serve multiple cities, build proper location pages on your website instead of creating extra profiles.
- Ask for reviews normally and never offer anything in exchange. Our guide on getting more Google reviews covers the compliant way.
What It Costs to Hire Someone
Reinstatement services run from about $150 to $800 per listing. The cheaper end is usually someone filing the form for you. The higher end is a specialist who diagnoses the root cause first, and several of the well-known providers only charge on success.
Our pricing is published here so you can compare.
- Diagnosis only, $150. We review your profile and website against Google’s guidelines and give you a written list of the violations, the fixes, and a filing plan. You do the rest yourself.
- Done for you, $395, paid only if you get reinstated. We diagnose, fix the profile, prepare the documents and file the appeal. If it does not work, you owe nothing.
- Previously denied appeals, $595. Harder cases with fewer attempts remaining, priced accordingly.
Want Us to Handle It
We are in Port Coquitlam and we work with businesses across Metro Vancouver. Send us your business name and the email Google sent you, and we will tell you which kind of suspension you have and whether it looks straightforward or difficult, at no cost.
If your profile is fine and the real problem is that nobody can find you, that is a different conversation and we would rather have it honestly. See local SEO services.
Get help with a suspended profile | Call 778 927 7424
Serving Vancouver, Burnaby, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, New Westminster, Richmond and Surrey.
