Difference In How 'Suggest An Edit' Is Handled?


Sep 29, 2015
I've been seeing a lot of Local SPAM lately as others have seen. In trying to help Google clean it up I've suggested edits to businesses names or identified duplicate spam listings from the same business. In many cases my suggestions are published or listings removed in a matter of minutes. In other cases you don't hear back from Google other than it's being reviewed. I'm wondering a few things:

On the ones that aren't quickly published, does that mean that those are the edits Google is asking the business to approve or is it just needing a more in-depth review by Google? I would guess the former as I'm sure Google wants to keep their human resource needs to a minimum and have developed an automated review process.

Has anyone identified any consistency as to how different types of edit suggestions are handled or are other things factored in as far as the profile of the user suggesting them and their suggestion activity history?

Phil Rozek

Local Search Expert
Jul 26, 2012
@consultant, the strongest pattern I've noticed is that Google is WAY more likely to accept partial edits of business names (i.e. removing stuffed-in keywords and city names) than it is to accept complete revisions.

Other changes are more hit-or-miss. Did a blog post back in August about that.


Jul 18, 2012
I have found if the listing is verified it's less likely that a public edit will go through. Same thing with reviews. Google doesn't even alert business owners about pending edits to their listing. Literally the only way to see them is through the Dashboard in Search which is challenging for agencies since you literally have to check every single listing. You won't see it anywhere in the regular dashboard until it gets published.

More people submitting the same edit over time also will help it publish.

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