Why Is This Closed Listing Not Like Other Closed Listings?

Because the listing isn’t closed…

Okay, so that makes no sense right?

Let me start from the beginning. We have a client that has a Ford dealership. When doing searches for Ford + geo, we were seeing the above “permanently closed” business showing up in the Knowledge Graph panel.

So we had a team member investigate the issue by calling GMB support and asking why a closed listing was showing in the KG. Apparently the listing was showing up because “it wasn’t marked as closed”.

I will say that again in case you think you misread:

The permanently closed listing was showing up in the Knowledge Graph because it wasn’t marked as closed.

Google My Business ladies and gentlemen, where up is down, left is right and cats and dogs play together.

In all seriousness, I think the problem may be related to the recent issues with Google MapMaker. Specifically, the GMB data for a business, which shows it as closed, was in conflict with the business’ MapMaker data, which showed it as open. And since the MapMaker database has been locked down, that conflict is resolving in this really weird edge case. A few reasons why I am leaning towards this explanation:

1) We have seen an increase in these types of issues in the last couple of weeks, so the timing kinda works out.

2) The GMB support rep made a comment about closing the listing in MapMaker. While it’s is sometimes hard to take GMB support reps comments about the product at face value the issue seemed to resolve itself after the GMB support rep worked their MapMaker voodoo to close the listing.

So what this means is, if you see something like this affecting a client of yours the only real solution is to call into GMB support.

And wouldn’t you know it, right as I was about to hit “Publish” on this post I decided to see how this SERP was looking now. Lo and behold the rogue closed listing is back in the KG. Coincidentally the MapMaker entry also has a pending change to re-open it:

Also, we heard from a particularly helpful GMB rep who told us that the Knowledge Graph is going away because “it’s too confusing”. We can only hope!

Have any of you seen anything like this? Any other theories as to why this is going on?