How We Collect and Publish GBP Intelligence

Data Sources

Everything published in the GBP Fixers Intelligence section originates from one source: active case work. We are a Google Partner agency that works on GBP suspension recovery, reinstatement, ownership disputes, verification failures, and related issues daily.

The cases we handle span the US and UK across dozens of business categories — HVAC, locksmith, plumbing, roofing, legal, dental, real estate, auto repair, and many others. They include both small independent businesses and multi-location operations. The suspension types range from soft suspensions to hard removals, from automated enforcement to manual policy review.

Our observations are drawn from what happens in these cases: what triggers suspensions, what approaches resolve them, what documentation Google requires, how long processes take across different case types, and what patterns repeat across businesses that have nothing in common except the type of problem they're dealing with.

We do not use:

• Data purchased from third-party providers
• Survey data collected from businesses we don't represent
• Web-scraped Google data
• Extrapolations from public forum posts or community reports
• Commissioned research or paid analysis

What we publish is limited to what we've actually observed in cases we've handled directly. When we say "we've seen this pattern," that means we have seen it — not that we've read about it or heard about it from someone else.

Review Process

Before a pattern observation becomes published intelligence, it goes through an internal review that asks three questions:

1. Is this pattern genuinely repeating? A single unusual case is worth noting internally but doesn't warrant publication. We look for patterns that have appeared across multiple cases, in multiple categories or markets, before treating them as something worth publishing.
2. Can we describe it accurately without misrepresenting the evidence? We distinguish between what we've observed directly and what we infer from those observations. We don't publish specific numbers if we can't back them with documented case evidence. We don't describe a pattern as definitive if what we've seen suggests a tendency, not a rule.
3. Does publishing this help business owners understand what's happening? This is the governing criterion. We publish intelligence that helps business owners understand the landscape and make better decisions about their own situations. We don't publish for the sake of volume or to appear more comprehensive than our actual evidence supports.

Pushpender Sodlan reviews all intelligence content before publication. Field observations are reviewed against the case record they originated from. Intelligence reports are reviewed for accuracy of characterization before and after drafting.

Limitations

The intelligence we publish has real limitations that readers should understand before using it to make decisions.

Selection bias

Our cases are not a random sample of GBP suspensions. They are businesses that sought professional help with a GBP problem. This means the population we observe is skewed toward:

• Businesses that had enough revenue at stake to pay for recovery help
• Suspension types that are hard enough to resolve that self-service wasn't sufficient
• Businesses with the awareness to find and engage a recovery service

The self-service success rate for simple suspensions is not something we can observe — those businesses don't come to us. The patterns we describe are patterns among businesses with complicated or difficult GBP problems, not the full distribution of all GBP issues.

Observational limits

We observe outcomes and we observe what we do within cases, but we don't have visibility into Google's internal systems, decision criteria, or enforcement algorithms. When we characterize why something happened or why a particular approach succeeded, we are reasoning backward from outcomes — not reading from a specification.

This means our pattern characterizations are interpretations, not facts. We believe they're well-grounded interpretations — the patterns are consistent enough that we build case approaches around them — but they remain interpretations. Someone else working the same cases might characterize some patterns differently.

Temporal scope

Google updates its GBP enforcement systems, verification requirements, and policy documentation continuously. Intelligence that was accurate as of our publication date may not fully reflect how the system behaves after subsequent Google changes. We note update dates on all intelligence content and refresh it when our ongoing case work reveals material changes. Intelligence that hasn't been updated recently should be read with the understanding that details may have changed.

Geographic and category scope

Our cases are concentrated in the US and UK, with a disproportionate share from high-fraud-risk categories (locksmith, HVAC, plumbing, roofing, legal) because those categories face higher suspension rates and are therefore overrepresented in the population of businesses that seek professional help. Patterns described in our intelligence may apply differently or not at all in categories or markets we work in less frequently.

Correction Policy

If we identify an error in published intelligence — a characterization that was inaccurate, a pattern that the evidence doesn't support, or a description that misrepresents what we actually observed — we correct it.

Corrections are documented in the update log that appears at the bottom of each intelligence report. The update log is append-only: we note what changed and when, rather than silently editing content. If a correction materially changes the substance of a claim, we note both the original characterization and the correction.

We do not correct intelligence to make it more favorable to our business interests. If a pattern turns out to be less common than we initially described, we update it to reflect that accurately, including any implications for the recovery approaches we've recommended based on it.

To report a potential error in published intelligence, contact us directly. We review all substantive corrections.

Update Policy

Intelligence published in our reports and field observations is reviewed for currency as we continue to work cases. Updates are triggered by one of three things:

• Material pattern change: We observe, across multiple cases, that a pattern we've described has changed materially — that a trigger we described is no longer triggering, that an approach we described no longer works, or that a new pattern has emerged that significantly qualifies what we've written.
• Google policy change: Google publishes a documented change to its GBP policies or verification requirements that directly affects the accuracy of something we've published.
• Identified error: We identify or receive a credible report of an error in published content.

We aim to review all published intelligence at least quarterly. Field observations, which reflect more time-sensitive patterns, are reviewed more frequently. Statistics are only published after they've been validated and reviewed; when a dataset is in progress, we say so rather than publishing preliminary numbers.

All updates are documented in the update log of the relevant content. The last reviewed date is visible on each piece of intelligence content.