Can anyone help with Google account login access?

[Mark Mitchell]

I wanted to reach out to anyone who has solved the Google account login challenge. Here's what is going on:

1. I always create Google accounts for my clients when I onboard them, a Gmail address for their business, analytics, GBP everything I needed to provide local services and do the verification and this has always worked well.
2. I have used these accounts for over a dozen years, have 2-factor enabled, and readily get verification codes for email and phone.
3. I recently moved states and now when I try to log in I can't get passed Google's security even after entering all the verification, they just throw their suspicious nonsense flag, thanks for verifying every piece of information but TOO BAD, NO SOUP FOR YOU.

Does anyone have a method of dealing with this, VPN's etc?

Thanks very much in advance.

Mark

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Hi Mark, I'm optimistic that one of the GBP gurus will chime in to provide guidance on how to overcome the specific problem of not being able to login after moving. Have you tried just logging into gmail portal using your Google Account? Have you tried a different browser such as Firefox or Edge? It could be some caching and/or old cookies causing the problem if you typically use Chrome.

While I know that you haven't had any issues for many years, I would suggest a couple changes going forward in your process.

Make sure to always have a secondary owner/admin on the account for GSC, GBP, Youtube, etc. that is a Google Account tied to the domain of the associated property. So, if the GSC is for AcmeWidgets.com, then have a Google Account of someone@AcmeWidgets.com setup as an alternate owner/admin. Two reasons for this, the first is having a 2nd login that can administer the account(s) if yours doesn't work and the 2nd reason is if/when you have communicate with Google regarding issues, they tend to prefer when you have a Google Account associated with the domain property.

FWIW, the typical free VPNs aren't anonymous, they provide security. Google uses alternate means besides IP addresses to identify location, such as cookies. If you were using a VPN endpoint with an IP address specifically in let's say Arizona, Google most likely knows that the IP address belongs to a pool of addresses of a VPN provider, so it is not going to add any legitimacy to your login request.

 

[Mark Mitchell]

Hi Mark, I'm optimistic that one of the GBP gurus will chime in to provide guidance on how to overcome the specific problem of not being able to login after moving. Have you tried just logging into gmail portal using your Google Account? Have you tried a different browser such as Firefox or Edge? It could be some caching and/or old cookies causing the problem if you typically use Chrome.

While I know that you haven't had any issues for many years, I would suggest a couple changes going forward in your process.

Make sure to always have a secondary owner/admin on the account for GSC, GBP, Youtube, etc. that is a Google Account tied to the domain of the associated property. So, if the GSC is for AcmeWidgets.com, then have a Google Account of someone@AcmeWidgets.com setup as an alternate owner/admin. Two reasons for this, the first is having a 2nd login that can administer the account(s) if yours doesn't work and the 2nd reason is if/when you have communicate with Google regarding issues, they tend to prefer when you have a Google Account associated with the domain property.

FWIW, the typical free VPNs aren't anonymous, they provide security. Google uses alternate means besides IP addresses to identify location, such as cookies. If you were using a VPN endpoint with an IP address specifically in let's say Arizona, Google most likely knows that the IP address belongs to a pool of addresses of a VPN provider, so it is not going to add any legitimacy to your login request.

Thank you Jeff for the response and suggestions. I've got a 2nd owner but they are not domain associated, unfortunately, I'm trying to avoid the delay and constant bombardment of spam and messaging that comes through the accounts.

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Most major business providers such as Microsoft 365 and Google Workplace, allow you to have a group email address at no additional cost. As an example, we'd suggest our clients to setup an group/distribution email of something like seo@customer.com, likewise we setup a corresponding email account on our side like seo.customername@ourdomain.com. We use those email addresses for setting up Google Accounts, Yelp, Bing and other things like citations. You can then setup rules to send any emails that come thru to those addresses to a folder which don't get dumped into your regular Inbox.

Any luck trying to sign in with another browser?

 

[Mark Mitchell]

Yes, I tried several different browsers, I appreciate the suggestions about the path you've taken, but I'll have to give that some consideration. I've had a system that worked well for 15 years doing this but I guess those days are over.