Edits on Google Maps Can Take a Long Time to Make an Impact

Google My Business allows anyone to edit a listing, and for quality purposes those edits are typically reviewed by human staffers. The process of editing a listing has always gone slowly in most cases, but since the onset of the global pandemic, things have gotten much slower.

Recently Local SEOs took to Twitter to share what their longest “Pending” edit to a Google My Business (Google Maps) listing was. For those who aren’t aware you can view your edits to listings on Google maps by visiting your Contributions page and then clicking on the “Edits” tab. When someone submits an edit for review to Google My Business / Google Maps it’ll be labeled as “Approved” (human reviewed and taken live), “Not Applied” (human reviewed and rejected), or “Pending” (not yet reviewed) on the contributions page.

View your Google Maps Contributions page here: https://bit.ly/google-maps-contributions

The title for the oldest Pending listing in the conversation went to Local SEO Amy Toman who has a Pending edit from September 22nd of 2019, that’s 10 months ago!

The other Pending edits mentioned have been waiting since:

  • November 17th, 2019 (Amy Toman)
  • November 26th, 2019 (Andy Simpson of Local Search Link)
  • February 5th, 2020 (Andy Simpson of Local Search Link)
  • March of 2020 (Jason Channel of Imaginuity)
  • March 27th, 2020 (Yan Gilbert of Sterling Sky)
  • May 12th, 2020 (Joe Youngblood of Joe Youngblood SEO & Digital Marketing Consulting)

Most edits we try on Google Maps go through within a few hours to a few days or get with the “Not Applied” label in that same time frame, but it seems like there’s a pattern of some edits taking months to get reviewed by Google’s human editor team. From the screenshots the Local SEOs shared in this conversation it seems apparent the more impactful and edit is on a business, the more likely it is to take a long time to be reviewed. Both of those Amy Toman shared were edits marking a business as non-existent, while the screenshot shared by Yan Gilbert showed the listing had been edited and marked as “Spam”.

Editing spammer listings that rank above your business in Google Maps can be a powerful and ethical local SEO tactic to increase your own rankings driving more calls and more business. However, the results are far from immediate and you should be prepared to wait or not see results at all.

View the entire Twitter thread here: