Google told Search Engine Land they are pushing out a fix for the issues around business listings not being visible soon. They said the rumors around the shortnames causing the issues were not exactly true, saying it "was not directly tied to the short name feature."
For the past few weeks or so, business listings started to appear to be suspended and reviews went missing as well - all around the same time of the shortnames release. So rumors spread that you should stay away from shortnames because maybe adding shortnames are causing these issues. The truth is, they are not.
Here is the statement Google sent Search Engine Land:
The recent concerns around the visibility of certain business listings are being corrected. The business listings were not suspended, but instead were not being shown as visible due to a technical issue. Business owners who experienced issues should be able to see their listings in Search soon. While some users may have experienced an improvement to the situation with the removal of their short name, the issue was not directly tied to the short name feature.
So hopefully things will come back to normal soon?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: Now all should be fixed:
@GoogleMyBiz now says that “all listings that were not visible have been restored” https://t.co/aIUna7qgct
— Greg Sterling (@gsterling) July 15, 2019
