Darren Brown has been running a pub for 18 months but according to Google it didn’t exist until Monday.

The owner said he did “everything in his power” to prove to the tech giant he owned the King William Hotel, formerly the Ambassadors Hotel in Adelaide’s CBD, before contacting ABC Radio Adelaide.

“People can’t find us on Google,” Mr Brown told ABC Radio Adelaide on Monday morning.

“Consumers at large rely on the platform, and if we’re not there and we’re not able to stand out, we’re basically invisible.”

He said a search of the Ambassadors Hotel showed the business was “permanently closed”, while a search of the King William Hotel revealed several other locations.

“As a business owner, you need to ask yourself whether it’s worth investing more money in a marketing approach if a consumer’s first touchpoint is to try to Google you and then having trouble finding you,” Mr. Brown said.

“The impact on businesses is immeasurable, because how can you put a number on the fact that people haven’t been able to find you or, the worst thing in the world, they don’t know why when they try to search for you .”

The pub owner said he had tried to communicate with Google through its online platform since December but “their responses were automated”.

He said he tried many ways to resolve the problem, including uploading photos and videos to Google to prove the business existed.

“Videos to the extent that I walked from the corner of Waymouth (street) to King William, capturing street signs, capturing neighboring businesses, walking down the stairs to the venue, connecting to a checkout and opening a case to prove that this place is in fact our business,” he said.

“If there was a person on the other end of the phone doing this, it would be obvious that this building is here and the business is up and running.”

Tilda Ricourt, digital marketing director for Purpose, which counts Mr. Brown among its clients, said it was not the first time she had had difficulty helping a business create a Google profile.

“Out of our 40 or so customers, three of them have had this problem, including Darren. This one is definitely by far the most problematic,” she said.

Ricourt said not having a visible Google profile could be detrimental to businesses, as consumers and services like Uber rely on listings to find and book places, read menus and view photos.

“It’s very possible that he lost a lot of money just by not existing on Google,” she said.

She said the automated processes used by services like Google could be problematic for small businesses if something goes wrong.

“I think (Google) definitely needs a better process … to speed up the process, or at least tidy up its layers of form submission and its layers of legal links and help,” she said.

Mr Brown said he had filed a dispute with the Australian Small and Family Business Ombudsman but was “flabbergasted” when the ombudsman told him it was difficult to get a response from Google.

He had also considered legal action or the costly exercise of changing the hotel’s name to Ambassadors.

After ABC News’ investigation, the King William Hotel could be found on Google as of 4 p.m. Monday, while the Ambassadors Hotel’s listing was no longer visible.

Mr. Brown said the finer details of the new list were still being finalized with Google as of Monday evening.

In a statement, a Google spokesperson said the search engine was “aware of this matter and we are investigating.”

If you’re not on Google, you don’t exist

Adelaide woman Janice Duffy, who has twice won defamation cases against Google, said she also had difficulty making contact with the tech company when she filed a complaint.

The former SA Health researcher said she spent 13 years battling the tech giant, which knowingly posted derogatory comments about her online, an ordeal she described as “hell” .

She said the only way to hold Google accountable was to “involve the media.”

“I absolutely believe that the only way to hold Google accountable is for the media to own these stories,” she said.

“Google has the ultimate power, absolute power, businesses live and die by Google.

“If someone isn’t on Google, then they don’t exist.”