All you know right now is that you’ve got an extra Google Business Profile page showing up on Google Maps and that it’s unverified (so you don’t have ownership or control of it). You may have found it by poking around on Google Maps, or someone may have told you about it. You may or may not know who created it: you, a helper, a former SEO person, a customer, a do-gooder, or Google. You may not know how long it’s been floating around. You don’t know how much it’s helping or hurting your local SEO effort overall. And you sure as thunder aren’t sure what, if anything, you should do with it.
Sometimes you’re better off leaving a GBP page unverified or soft-suspended. An unverified page is one you’ve never had control of. A soft-suspended page is one you did claim at one time or another, but that Google has (at least temporarily) locked you out of.
The prevailing local SEO wisdom pretty much always has been a version of, “You’ve got to claim your GBP page!” That is not a solid universal rule, though. If you’re confident you can owner-verify that page without incident (more on that in a minute), then sure, go ahead and do so. But IF you’re not sure you need to claim it, or you aren’t sure it’s a good idea, listen to your gut for now, because you may be right.
The first critical point to know is that you get no rankings boost from owner-verifying your page. None. Goose egg. That’s true whether you’ve never owner-verified it, or you did create or owner-verify it before getting suspended. Not only have I seen GBP pages not decrease in visibility after being soft-suspended, but I’ve also seen them increase in visibility as other local SEO factors come into play or are worked on. At this very moment I have some clients whose unverified GBP pages rank as the only Google Maps result on the page (AKA one-box results).
(By the way, if you want to test that out, you can unclaim your GBP page and continue to track its rankings or monitor its performance in Google Search Console, under “Pages,” if you’ve put a tracking URL on it. More on that a bit later.)
The other critical point to know is that all of the important parts of the GBP page are editable by the general public. Most SEOs will say you need to claim your GBP page if you want to optimize it at all. That’s true if you want to use all of its features, of course, but not all of its features help your rankings much or at all, and in most cases they’re not useful or noticeable enough to help your conversions, either. Meanwhile, all of the features that can noticeably influence rankings are editable via public edit: the name, the landing page URL, the address, the category, and the hours.
That last point I mentioned is the only big downside of leaving GBP pages unverified: vulnerability to third-party edits. Google is more likely to remove an unverified GBP page if someone (like a competitor) requests a change to it – or suggests its removal – via “suggest an edit.” Especially if a GBP page doesn’t have citations on the basic sites, Google’s more likely to conclude an unverified GBP page represents an abandoned location or an attempt to sneak one past the goalie. That’s one of many reasons I don’t suggest splattering Google Maps with user-submitted GBP pages. Easy come, easy go.
Even so, as usual, what the right move is depends on your specific situation. When should you probably not bother verifying or reverifying a GBP page?
- If you expect you’ll have difficulty completing the verification, for any reason.
- If you suspect Google will disapprove of the address (like because it’s a PO Box) or will want you to hide the address (like if it’s a residential address).
- If you suspect that in the process of owner-verifying and tinkering with it you will invite too much scrutiny to other GBP pages in your account. When multiple GBP pages aren’t in line with Google’s guidelines, often several of them will be suspended in rapid succession.
If you’re in of those specific situations or a similar one and still aren’t sure whether leaving a GBP page unverified is a good move, here are some other factors to consider – factors that might tip you in favor of leaving it alone for now:
a. You have reason to believe you get customers or at least calls from it.
b. It’s ranking well for some terms, but not so high that your competitors all want it to wear a toe tag. Let it quietly deliver for you.
c. It uses an address in an area where you really want to rank, and where your other GBP pages are much less likely to rank.
d. It doesn’t share an address with another GBP page of yours – one that you have claimed and that you’d prefer to rank.
e. It does share an address with a competitor of yours. Your unverified GBP page may cause its roommate’s page to be filtered out by Google.
f. It’s got solid Google Maps reviews.
g. It doesn’t have any reviews you feel you MUST reply to.
h. Its basic info is basically correct.
i. It seems to have been around for a long time, and you can’t think of a specific benefit in rocking the boat (now that you know an unverified GBP page can rank just fine).
So let’s assume you’ve chosen to let that GBP page sit around and mellow. Should you just go back to ignoring it? Not necessarily. You can still put an unverified or soft-suspended GBP page to work for your local SEO. Even though you don’t have direct ownership of it, there are still a few ways you might manage that GBP page from arm’s length and (probably) bump its visibility:
- Put a tracking URL on it, via a “suggest an edit” in Google Maps. Yes, you can do that, and it’s very likely to stick. You can see that URL in the “Performance” -> “Pages” area of Google Search Console, and can see the impressions and clicks it gets in the search results, and for which specific search terms. As long as the domain of the tracking URL is one you’ve installed Search Console on, it doesn’t matter that the GBP page isn’t verified.
- Change the primary category (also via “suggest an edit”).
- Submit Google Maps edits on other fields that might not be optimal, like the hours.
- Flag bad reviews. As far as Google knows, you’re just a civilian who saw a low-quality review and took issue with it.
- Flag bad photos.
- Report nearby spammy competitors, particularly those who outrank you.
- Build citations for that “location” of your business. On those it generally doesn’t matter whether you use an address Google doesn’t approve of. The citations will help suggest to Google that the GBP page is legit.
- Optimize the landing page on your site that the unverified GBP page points to. Load it up with info on the services / products / treatments / whatever you offer, and load it up with a list of the communities you serve, for starters.
- On other pages of your site add more internal links to the landing page your unverified GBP page uses. Internal links are a critical and often an underused part of on-page optimization.
- Get more backlinks to the landing page your GBP page uses. Even a couple of links from industry-relevant or locally-relevant domains can give you a serious bump in the Google Maps, organic, and AI results.
You’re in the good position of having options. You can always try to owner-verify the GBP page and simply not complete the verification if you run into problems. Or you can owner-verify it at a different address from the one it currently uses, even if you don’t know the address that the page was previously verified at. If you want, you can fix just about everything but the cigarette lighter.
What’s been your experience with unverified GBP pages? Are you on the horns of a dilemma? Leave a comment!
