Google Business Profile suspended: what to fix before you appeal

The "Account-level restrictions" section of Google's policy overview names two causes that sit outside the profile itself:

• Google Account not in good standing: "If a Google Account is not in good standing (e.g. it is disabled, suspended or deleted), a merchant must take steps to fix the issue before they can access their Google Business Profile."
• Profile suspension due to other Google product account restriction: when the profile was created through an account associated with another Google product, a restriction on that account "may result in suspension of the Business Profile". "The non-Business Profile account must be reinstated before reinstating the profile."

Order of work: clear the account restriction (My accounts page, myaccount.google.com/restrictions), then appeal the profile. When you audit access, keep two removal rules in mind: if Google removes the owner's Google Account, all locations owned by that user are removed; if a manager's account is removed, the manager is suspended on the accounts they manage and the locations aren't affected. Separately, owners who don't access a profile for long periods may have access revoked and content removed after adequate warning.

Business Profile ID: More, Business Profile settings, Advanced settings. Google describes it as the unique identifier for the listing, to share with support by phone, chat or email. If support has written to you, keep any case reference from their email with it.

Ten or more locations: the appeals tool asks "Are you requesting bulk reinstatement for 10 or more suspended locations?" and takes a spreadsheet of Business Profile IDs. That route is for agencies and multi-site businesses.

Only useful if your Google Cloud project already has Business Profile API access. Access is requested through the GBP API contact form, and a quota of 0 QPM means the project hasn't been approved yet. The OAuth scope is https://www.googleapis.com/auth/business.manage.

The Verifications API's getVoiceOfMerchantState method reports whether a location is in good standing and, if not, what Google wants done:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  "https://mybusinessverifications.googleapis.com/v1/locations/LOCATION_ID/VoiceOfMerchantState"

A suspended location returns something shaped like this (field names from the reference, values illustrative):

{
  "hasVoiceOfMerchant": false,
  "hasBusinessAuthority": true,
  "complyWithGuidelines": {
    "recommendationReason": "BUSINESS_LOCATION_SUSPENDED"
  }
}

• hasVoiceOfMerchant: "Indicates whether the location is in good standing and has control over the business on Google."
• The action field is one of waitForVoiceOfMerchant ("The location is under review for quality purposes"), verify, resolveOwnershipConflict ("This location duplicates another location that is in good standing") or complyWithGuidelines.
• complyWithGuidelines.recommendationReason is BUSINESS_LOCATION_SUSPENDED or BUSINESS_LOCATION_DISABLED, which maps onto the suspended and disabled cases above.

Search Console has no report for Business Profile suspensions. Its Manual actions report covers websites, so a clean Search Console tells you nothing about the profile, and a profile suspension doesn't mean the website has a problem.

UK businesses use the appeals tool for profile suspensions, rejected profile edits and media restrictions. Google's appeals page also describes an out-of-court dispute settlement option, but it's stated for businesses in an EEA member state or territory, so it doesn't apply to a business in the UK.