Intelligence Reports

What these reports are

Each report in this section is a structured analysis of a specific GBP suspension or reinstatement pattern we've tracked over time. They are not blog posts, opinion pieces, or rewrites of Google's policy documentation. They are accounts of what we've observed across case examples — with enough detail to be useful to business owners, local SEO practitioners, and anyone trying to understand why GBP suspensions happen and what documentation we see requested. Google decides outcomes.

Reports are longer and more structured than our field observations. Where a field observation captures a single recurring pattern promptly, a report examines a topic across multiple case types, geographies, and time periods. Reports include breakdowns by suspension category and the documents we see requested. We do not publish success rates. Google decides outcomes.

Methodology standards

Every report goes through internal review before publication. The review checks that observations are grounded in specific case outcomes — not inference, not extrapolation from a single case — and that any figures cited are derived from our own case records rather than third-party estimates we can't verify. We flag uncertainty explicitly where it exists rather than presenting contested observations as settled fact.

We do not publish a precise case count, a success rate, or a recovery-time average. Reports describe patterns in our intake. They do not publish caseload-share percentages or a median number of days.

Source notes

Our source notes are operational — they come from GBP recovery files, not surveys or scraped listings data. That makes it narrower than industry-wide estimates, but more specific on the questions it covers: what triggered a suspension, what the business tried before coming to us, what appeal approach we used, and what the outcome was.

We publish these observations because there is very little trustworthy primary-source information available about GBP suspension outcomes. Most published statistics in this space are anecdotal or vendor-generated without methodology disclosure. Ours aren't perfect — sample sizes are constrained by our own case volume — but we explain the limitations rather than hiding them.

These reports are in English. If you need the Spanish comparison of a restricted Google account and a suspended listing, read restricción de cuenta frente a suspensión de ficha.

Updates and corrections

Reports are reviewed when Google makes significant enforcement changes or when our accumulating case notes contradicts a previously published observation. Updated reports carry a "Last Updated" date alongside the original publication date. Corrections are noted inline with the date of change. We do not silently overwrite original content. See our full methodology for the complete corrections policy.