Agency question: Google verification and SMS

[amflores]

Hey guys,

I appreciate your help in advance.

I have an agency and we are running out of cell phone numbers to verify new gmail accounts for clients. Do you guys know of a workaround so we can accomplish this in scale?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi and welcome!

Great question. I've seen it discussed but don't remember what the solution was.

Just wanted to pop in to let you know that not many consultants or especially our big agency peeps are around on the weekends. Esp on a Holiday weekend.

So if you don't get answers, please add to the question or post a little more on Monday just to bump this up for more eyeballs during the work week.

 

[joetroyer]

Twilio. We use it for each and every new google account. Gmail and GMB.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hey Joe,

Welcome, so glad you joined us.

Thanks for weighing in!

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Most of our clients already gave a claimed GMB listing. In that case we always have them invite us as a page manager. We use a couple master manager accounts to manage most of our clients.

If we need to help a client claim and verify a listing we will walk them through the process using their own email.

This works well for us.

There is really no need to create new accounts these days unless your client doesn't have an existing email that they can use.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Twilio. We use it for each and every new google account. Gmail and GMB.

Joe, have you used this recently? It's been my current experience (in the last 2-3 weeks) that Google won't let you verify through VOIP anymore. It seems to have to be real sim cards.

Could you shed a little more light on this?

 

[Eric Rohrback]

I know it's kind of a pain, but asking for a @clientdomain email address would really be better than a gmail address for this sort of thing. It adds to trust that the person claiming actually has authority to do so, which makes it easier to deal with support if you run into issues.

If the client doesn't already have a page claimed, won't give you an email address, or some other weird scenario then twillio will work but there are some issues to know about. Many of those numbers are recycled numbers which get treated as "burner" numbers for the same thing you're trying to do. That being the case, many of the numbers won't work because they've already been used too many times (I've done the twillio route before, so I know).

An alternative work around is to have a mobile hotspot available the IPv6 and refresh the IP address once you hit a limit. It works, but it will add cost to the operation. The best thing to push is to have a client provide an email address for you to use.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

An alternative work around is to have a mobile hotspot available the IPv6 and refresh the IP address once you hit a limit. It works, but it will add cost to the operation. The best thing to push is to have a client provide an email address for you to use.

Do you mind explaining this more? If I'm understanding you correctly, you can refresh the IP of your mobile hotspot? Any directions?

 

[Eric Rohrback]

I think it depends on which one you buy. I can't remember off hand which one we used when I was still working agency (that was about 6 months ago), but we had a hotspot that we rebooted each time we needed a new email address which created a different IP address we could connect to. It worked well and saved a lot of time, since twillio numbers were hit or miss because of the situation I mentioned above.

Editing this to show one example (possibly affordable solution):
https://support.t-mobile.com/thread/87294?start=0&tstart=0
http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans/mobile-internet.html

Most hotspots don't provide static IP's, so it really comes down to cost. T-Mobile is typically cheaper than the bigger guys (Verizon, Sprint), so it might be a viable option for you

 

[JoshuaMackens]

I think it depends on which one you buy. I can't remember off hand which one we used when I was still working agency (that was about 6 months ago), but we had a hotspot that we rebooted each time we needed a new email address which created a different IP address we could connect to. It worked well and saved a lot of time, since twillio numbers were hit or miss because of the situation I mentioned above.

Editing this to show one example (possibly affordable solution):
https://support.t-mobile.com/thread/87294?start=0&tstart=0
Mobile Broadband Unlimited Data Plans w/ No Annual Contract | T-Mobile

Most hotspots don't provide static IP's, so it really comes down to cost. T-Mobile is typically cheaper than the bigger guys (Verizon, Sprint), so it might be a viable option for you

My phone I use for business already has a hotspot so I'd love to just piggy back off of that (unless we're talking about something different here). I wonder how I can reset the IP when I hit my gmail limit? Or does it reset each time I connect to the hotspot?

 

[Eric Rohrback]

Your phone might have a static IP, but i'm not sure (you'd need to dig into that and check). Basically that's one of the main roadblocks you need to overcome is IP address. There are actually a handful of other things that get logged when you create a gmail account, which are no different than creating an account on a forum or w/e.

• IP Address
• Computer hardware
• OS
• Browser
• User-Agent

If you're getting blocked from creating gmail accounts, then you need to find a way to solve all of these. It's not too hard to do, but takes a little work. Like I mentioned before, it could be easier to have the client create the email account to use.

 

[JoyHawkins]

I had someone ask this on the GMB forum recently. Here was my answer:

I would never suggest an agency use their own phone numbers to verify listings for a business. The business should always be set up as the owner and you should use their office number as the verification if needed. The agency I work for has done this for thousands of businesses with no issues. It's not an inconvenience for the business owner to get alerts about their own business. Plus, if you don't set the listing up in an account with their email and info, they would lose it if they ever decided not to work with you in the future.

Keep in mind if you use a random Gmail as the owner, the business owner will never get any type of alert when they get a new review either. Email alerts only get sent to the owner, not managers.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks Joy, that's what Colan said too. Good advice!