‘We don’t have phone books anymore’: Google listed business as permanently closed when it wasn’t

HUDSON, N.C. — The Yellow Submarine Restaurant in Hudson is open for business. In fact, there are open signs posted in at least three places on the property.

But it didn’t say so in one place owner Kathy Norwood says really mattered: Google.

Norwood says she found out Google had changed the status of her restaurant recently from “open” to “permanently closed.”

Two other business owners recently told Action 9′s Jason Stoogenke the same thing.

Norwood says once she found out, she was able to change it back herself, but she thinks she lost business in the meantime. “Within an eight-day span, I had 15 people say that they saw that I was permanently closed and they hadn’t been in here because of that,” she said.

She says she complained to Google, or at least tried, but that she never got through to a real person.

Stoogenke was able to contact Google. It emailed him: “To ensure that Google Maps reflects the real world, we enable people to contribute their local knowledge to millions of points of interest by submitting reviews, adding photos, updating business hours and more.”

Google went on to say, “In this case, the business was incorrectly marked as closed by a user but was later confirmed to be open and updated in Maps.”

“It’s not fair either because we don’t have phone books anymore. It’s Google. People Google everything. They can’t take you out of the phonebook because you’re there. But they can take you offline,” she said. “It frustrates me because, like I said, it’s not fair. They should not have the power to … say that you’re closed when you’re not.”

Norwood wants accountability, not money for any business she lost.

Stoogenke suggests that if you own a business, make sure you Google it on a regular basis and make sure the information is correct. That way, you can catch mistakes early.

A lesson for consumers too: Google listings are usually right, but it doesn’t hurt to double-check.

For more on how Google gathers information for listings, click here.

Stoogenke says business owners may want to verify their business profile on Google so they can update their information, add photos, and be notified when a change occurs.

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