Nate Fischer

That is a huge issue.

There was a time, let's say 2020 and before, and it still happens today, but so many businesses figured out, hey, an extra Google business profile could really help me.

And what did they do?

They sent postcards to maybe a technician's house, maybe someone in leadership.

And then you had all these home service listings that are at an apartment, at a residential neighborhood.

And eventually what happens is you might get traction, you might get leads and those get suspended.

And now you can't get it back because it wasn't compliant with Google's terms of service.

And now you have issues where all of a sudden you've lost a huge percentage of your lead flow.

To your point, if you were driving organic leads, your total cost of marketing is going down across your paid channels.

Now that organic channel is gone and your cost of marketing goes straight up, your leads go down.

It was a horrible situation for a lot of companies that got themselves into problems with their location selection.

So in very simple terms, possum filter is when you have a Google listing at a location, and let's say your category is garage door company, and there is another business on Google Maps within, call it 200 yards, that is in the same category.

That is something you want to actively avoid.

So...

It happens in home services.

Think about dental offices.

You might have a dental practice with a bunch of different dentists.

They're all at the same location.

Tons of algorithmic issues there.

Used to work with a very large hospital, 1,500, 1,600 locations, all within two or three metros.