Why did my agency disappear from Google Maps?
The buses are still running, but riders opening Google Maps, Apple Maps, or the Transit app can no longer find them. When that happens, the service did not stop; the data did. Trip planners read your published GTFS feed on their own schedule, and they drop service silently when the feed goes stale, breaks, or moves. These are the causes, in the order worth checking.
1. The feed expired
The most common cause. Every GTFS feed carries service calendars, and many carry an explicit end date in feed_info.txt. The day the last calendar runs out, planners stop showing your trips, without warning riders first. The fix is usually a same-day re-export; the durable fix is publishing on a schedule so expiry never gets close.
Start with the feed has already expired, and the early warnings for a feed expiring within 7 days or within 30 days.
2. The feed URL stopped working
Planners fetch your feed from a fixed URL. A website redesign that moves the zip file, a lapsed TLS certificate, or a host outage all look the same from the outside: the fetch fails, and after enough failed fetches your service ages out of the apps. This is easy to miss because the website itself may look fine to a person.
Your agency's scorecard page shows when this site last fetched your feed successfully; a long-failing fetch there usually means the planners are failing too. (Details on how this site fetches feeds are on the fetcher page.)
3. The calendar has a gap or lives too far in the future
A feed can be current and still describe no service for the next few weeks, for example when an export carries next quarter's calendars but drops the current one. Riders see nothing during the gap. See a big gap in service and expired service calendars.
4. The feed moved and the aggregators were not told
Publishing a feed at a new URL is not enough; the places planners discover feeds have to learn the new address too. That usually means updating your entry in the Mobility Database, your listing with any state or regional data program, and your feed configuration in Google's transit partner tools if your agency manages one. If this site tracks your feed at an old address, tell us the new one.
5. An export change broke the feed
Less common, but a scheduling-software upgrade or a settings change can produce a feed with errors severe enough that a planner rejects the whole file. The free pre-publish check runs the canonical validator in your browser before the feed goes out the door, so a broken export never reaches riders.
Check your feed right now
Find your agency on the agency list for its current grade, refresh status, and expiry outlook, or run an instant score on any feed URL. If you maintain a feed, subscribe to feed-health alerts and the expiration warning arrives before the silence does.
Each trip planner ingests feeds on its own rules and timetable, so this page describes the common causes, not any planner's official policy. The durable protection is the same in every case: publish on a schedule, and watch the feed the way riders depend on it.