Texas small business owners are calling out one of Silicon Valley’s biggest firms for allegedly damaging their businesses.

Sarah and Nate McDowell’s Google Business account for their birthday bounce house company was suspended three weeks ago, and this is not the first time this has happened to one of their three businesses.

Each time, the McDowells encounter the same thing: their business disappears from general Google search engine results and Google Maps, their customers can’t find them, sales plummet, and they can’t get Google’s representatives to help until they pay for advertising.

In a fit of “desperation,” Sarah says she reached out to Google’s advertising department on March 19. After agreeing to pay $10 a day (or roughly $300 a month) for advertising, the advertising rep said he could input an internal ticket with the business department that might help her case. Within an hour, Sarah says she heard back. The problem was not resolved, but this is the first response she has received from a human.

Sarah and Nate McDowell

Sarah said this Google disturbance is having a significant financial impact on the family business, noting that their sales have fallen by two-thirds in the company’s busiest season. Sarah mentioned that unless Google addresses the issue soon, her family may have to rely on their savings to get by.

According to the company’s Profile Help page, appeals for suspended Google Business accounts are supposed to take 3-5 days. Yet, McDowell’s appeal has remained unresolved for weeks. Sarah showed The Dallas Express documentation that reveals business owners are put in a loop when they ask for help.

The appeals process endlessly links back to itself without more information or resources.

Sarah said there are Google Forms that are supposed to help business owners, but the “product experts” who respond to inquiries are not Google employees and do not resolve the issue.

She explained that one of the most frustrating elements of this process is that Google’s initial email in the middle of the night announcing her company’s suspension does not explain what they supposedly did wrong. She showed the email to DX, and it only links to the entirety of Google’s terms of service, not any specific violation.

Beware of scammers.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE DALLAS EXPRESS APP

Asking for help online introduces a barrage of scammers. After Sarah sought help on Facebook and X, she started receiving phone calls and texts from individuals seeking payment on CashApp in exchange for supposed help resolving her appeal. Her social media posts were likewise flooded with messages from suspicious accounts with nearly identical messages promising help from third parties.

Many of the messages appear to originate from overseas posters, and some have grammatical errors that appear to confirm the sender is not a native English speaker.

The prevalence of these scammers is widespread across the web, and some of them even contacted DX when the outlet began reaching out to small business owners on X to investigate their stories.

Suspensions have affected (at least) hundreds of Americans.

For months, nearly every response to Google’s Business Profile X account has been about a small business being suspended. A digest of complaints on the company’s Business Profile Community page reveals nearly identical issues.

“Google has removed my business listing of a decade because I moved cities and changed addresses. It’s been 5 months and my family is starving, Google is actively discriminating against a particular set of industries. File a discrimination complaint with your ag,” the official X account for Austin Mobile Locksmiths posted.

 

“We understand how important it is for you. We have responded to your query via a DM. If you have any questions, please reply over there. Thanks. -Ava,” Google responded.

The locksmith was not impressed. He hit back at the company and implied that he was questioning whether the responses are automated, given that they are often signed with a three-letter name such as Gem, Dax, Dan, and Ava. “That’s what you said last month and month before that and the month before that ‘Ava,'” he posted on X.

“I havent gotten a single call since my profile was shut off, and Im [sic] devastated [sic]. I cannot believe Google has this kind of power to shut down a small buis [sic],” Jason Dufresne, owner of American Pride Home Improvements in Whitehouse, Texas, wrote on the Business Profile Community page. He said he had his company for 8 years before he got suspended for the first time. He claimed to have paid someone $800 to help him appeal his suspension. He apparently got his account back before being suspended again two months ago.

A common theme between the stories of the various small business owners is that they notice the suspensions typically come after they have made even the slightest change to their business profile. In Dufresne’s case, he said the respective suspensions came after he moved the company and added some new services to the profile.

Sarah said the suspensions typically occur when she discontinues advertising during the months when some of her businesses go out of season. However, the latest suspension occurred when she changed her company’s primary phone number to another number listed on their profile.

She feels her company has no alternative but to use Google: “When Google is such a monopoly as it is… I can make my business come up on Yelp or Facebook, but I’d say almost probably 70% percent of people are going to search Google.”

Google’s response literally kept us in the loop.

The Dallas Express contacted Google and informed the company of the general issue and Sarah’s specific case.

“Making sure we represent businesses accurately on Maps is a top priority. We’re aware of this issue and are working on a fix,” a Google spokesperson responded.

Google shared some information with the outlet, saying its staff works hard to keep content on Google Maps authentic and reliable. The company may suspend or disable Business Profiles that don’t follow its guidelines, and businesses can appeal that decision.