Yesterday I broke one of the cardinal rules of business, don’t throw good money after bad. It wasn’t in the traditional way of the sunk cost fallacy or maybe it was. I got a message from one of Google’s ad platforms and knowing it had likely cost me $30 for that message I plunged into a bad fit mismatch of someone asking for same day booking.
All the issues lately from high gas prices and travel delays suppressing midweek travel and Spring Break feeling lighter than it should and my ongoing issues with Google. All of this led me to chase this lead I had no business chasing. This highlights once more why the biggest goal for this year is to hit a revenue floor backed by recurring midday dog walking rather than vacation surge.
I have accomplished some of that. We have added several high level dog walking clients this year, but years of the wrong assumptions and actions have put us behind. My outsourcing of SEO a couple years ago to an ineffective and dishonest company is to showing up in harm to the business and SEO is a long trail game. It is going to be another six to nine months until gains from my actions in January start showing up.
It is frustrating, and probably why the ten reviews that went missing hurt. It was a strategy that was working, is still working, and a force beyond my control pulled the rug out from under me. I will continue the fight and I am going to take it to higher channels, because Google isn’t just inconsistent in that. There are other patterns.
I do not feel that Google is singling me out, even if it feels that way, I believe Google doesn’t know what Google is doing. Especially on a small local level in a niche industry. The fact that my main competitor lists a shared office space as their location and has a map pin is directly against Google’s stated policy for service area businesses. It frustrates me and it is only a matter of time until one of Google’s bots finds it, but that doesn’t mean anything.
The Google bots have already shown an inconsistent enforcement of Google’s rules. The only thing I can do is first try and correct the missing reviews and once those are back file a complaint to the FTC. Businesses losing reviews is a topic all over reddit and Google’s own support forum. There is a pattern of behavior here and that is what the FTC complaint is designed to notice and hopefully correct. We will eventually find out.
David Huzzard Writes 