google-my-business

Google MyBusiness Review Update

The Good News

I received an email from Google yesterday with regards to my reviews not appearing on my Google MyBusiness listing.  See below for details:

Hello,

Thanks for notifying us about your Google My Business listing or reviews not showing up on Search or Maps.

The issue has been resolved and your listing/reviews is now visible.

Your problem was investigated in detail, and the technical issue that caused it has been fixed. If you have any questions or continue to experience issues, reply to this email. Include your phone number to have a specialist to contact you by phone, or fill out this form.

Thank you for your patience, hope you have a great day ahead :)

And the Bad News

My Google MyBusiness for tangerinemoons has been blacklisted by Google. I submitted an appeal this past Friday, called Google on Tuesday, which was a very disappointing phone call. The only response I could get from the service rep was to review the MyBusiness guidelines and to edit my information. Even after I explained to her that I had done this, this was her only response. I asked if I would receive any correspondence from Google to let me know of an update, and her response … “Maybe”. Hmm. That’s interesting. Asked to speak to supervisor, and she stated she had no supervisor. I asked her for her name or a rep number, she stated she could not share that info. However, I received an email from the person a few minutes later with her name at the bottom. Hmm. That makes total sense.

I did have a client leave me a review on Friday, and their MyBusiness page was also suspended. However, I was able to submit an appeal and it was reinstated almost immediately.

I called again on Wednesday, April 14 and spoke to a service rep and he was a little more helpful. He explained that he understood the problem but he was unable to determine the actual problem that would have caused my page to be suspended. He immediately put me on hold while contacting his supervisor. (Hmmm. This rep has a supervisor.)

The supervisor came on and explained that my case would be escalated and for me to be patient and that Google would contact me to notify me of the issue. A much different conversation than I had had the day before. I apologized for the lack of information and the frustration for me and tangerinemoons. I explained that I just wanted to resolve the issue and if I had something that was out of compliance, that I wanted to correct it.

One item I might add. I do like the feature of being able to have Google call me for support. Both phone calls were immediately made to me after hitting the submit button.

So, I sit patiently. And we’ll see what happens.

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Tips: WordPress Total Cache with The Event Calendar

First, I need to state a disclaimer.

I have been using the Modern Tribes Event Calendar WordPress plugin, both the free and the Pro version, for many sites. I’ve also used the W3 Total Cache plugin on many sites, and it’s a great plugin for being able to enable and disable certain aspects of the performance.

However, I recently noticed an issue when hovering over an event on the calendar monthly view, instead of displaying the normal popup window for the details of the event, it would increase the font size of the event title and insert some code. (see below)

Event Calendar with Total Cache JS Minified disabled

Event Calendar with Total Cache JS Minified disabled

Modern Tribe with Total Cache JS Minified enabled

Modern Tribe with Total Cache JS Minified enabled

After several troubleshooting steps with WordPress plugin disables and enables, I discovered the issue was caused by a conflict with the W3 Total Cache WordPress plugin.

I continued troubleshooting and found the issue to be the enabling of the JS minification.

So, to save you some time, I’ll jump to how the settings should be set for W3 Total Cache in order for the two plugins to work with each other, if Minify is enabled from the General Settings tab:

  1. On the General tab > Minify section, select “Manual” instead of “Auto”
  2. On the Minify tab > HTML & XML section, uncheck the “Inline JS minification” checkbox.
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google-my-business

Google MyBusiness missing reviews

In trying to locate the “Write a Review” section of my Google MyBusiness page, I discovered that the option currently does not exist within my listing. After submitting a help request to Google, I received the following onscreen message:

google

 

Will continue to update this issue as more details evolve.

 

 

 

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Embedding Slideshow into WordPress Post

I recently had someone approach me with a small issue with trying to post a slideshow of photos within WordPress. The catch was that we needed to do it without using a plugin(as this is a multi-user installation and the user didn’t have access to install plug-ins.)  They also had maxed out there space on their Flickr account.

So, going through several different scenarios, I found the following to be the best solution – a Picasa Album Slideshow. The following embed code can be used:

You will need to edit the code to enter your specific userid and albumid which can be retrieved from the Picasa Album URL.

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