Do you guys use GBP Agency Accounts?

[Dennis]

There's definitely some nice perks that go along with it but I'm wondering if it's a bit like putting all your eggs (precious client profiles) in the same basket?

If one profile gets suspended over something and Google for some reason makes the judgment that it's best to suspend everything in the agency account is what worries me the most


Maybe I'm just overly neurotic about the whole thing?

Do you guys use the agency accounts? What are your experiences with it?

Or should you do something else like, have a gang of different normal Gmail accounts and only manage at most 4-5 GBP Profiles on each one? Seems like a hassle though

 

[ElizabethRule]

We use an agency account at Sterling Sky because it's just easier to manage. See this article here Everything You Need to Know About the Google Business Profile Manager Agency Dashboard - Sterling Sky Inc

I wouldn't be too worried about Google suspending everything in the agency account, especially if you keep the users to JUST those you trust and don't have too many with access. Also, make sure your employees don't do any "suggest an edits" to GBP profiles using the email attached to your agency account in case Google decided to flag an account because of too many bad edits.

 

[garrettkite]

@ElizabethRule I'm also curious about this. On Google's overview for agencies, one of the listed benefits is:

"Access customer support that’s specialized for third party agencies."

Does having an agency account actually give you better access to GBP support in any way that you've noticed?

I work for an agency that currently manages over 200 GBP listings and one of our & our clients' biggest frustrations is that we simply have to go through the standard support communication channels that any individual business would go through. This is particularly frustrating when we're dealing with suspended listings and waiting weeks for reinstatements. It seems that agencies should have a primary point of contact or at least expedited support of some sort, so I'm really curious if this changes anything in that regard.

 

[keyserholiday]

@ElizabethRule I'm also curious about this. On Google's overview for agencies, one of the listed benefits is:

"Access customer support that’s specialized for third party agencies."

Does having an agency account actually give you better access to GBP support in any way that you've noticed?

I work for an agency that currently manages over 200 GBP listings and one of our & our clients' biggest frustrations is that we simply have to go through the standard support communication channels that any individual business would go through. This is particularly frustrating when we're dealing with suspended listings and waiting weeks for reinstatements. It seems that agencies should have a primary point of contact or at least expedited support of some sort, so I'm really curious if this changes anything in that regard.

There is no advantage being an agency account to speed up the reinstatement process. There is an agency reinstatement form but I didn’t find that it help to speed up the process.

 

[garrettkite]

There's definitely some nice perks that go along with it but I'm wondering if it's a bit like putting all your eggs (precious client profiles) in the same basket?

If one profile gets suspended over something and Google for some reason makes the judgment that it's best to suspend everything in the agency account is what worries me the most


Maybe I'm just overly neurotic about the whole thing?

Do you guys use the agency accounts? What are your experiences with it?

Or should you do something else like, have a gang of different normal Gmail accounts and only manage at most 4-5 GBP Profiles on each one? Seems like a hassle though

We're in the exact same boat. I have the same concern about putting all of our eggs in one basket & getting hit with an account-wide suspension. We are going to start creating a Gmail for each client, add that account as an owner, add the client as the primary owner, and remove any of our company accounts from the GBPs. Definitely more of a pain to manage, but I think worth avoiding the risk of mass suspensions. Google clearly looks at the account connected to the GBPs so I think diversifying is the safest bet here. We work with multi-location franchise companies that have been ravaged by suspensions over the last year so anything we can do to eliminate those is worth it in my opinion.

 

[garrettkite]

There is no advantage being an agency account to speed up the reinstatement process. There is an agency reinstatement form but I didn’t find that it help to speed up the process.

Does the agency reinstatement form give you any added functionality vs the standard form? For example, the ability to request reinstatements in bulk.

 

[zacpfitzner]

We have started using the agency dashboard to manage client profiles in the last couple of months. This was to consolidate hundreds of client-specific gmail accounts we were trying to manage. We actually found there seems to be MORE risk in google unreasonably shutting down free gmail accounts, so we'd rather have a tightly held agency profile with a few agency users who are all on paid google workspace accounts. It feels less risky

Moving on...
Has anyone noticed that you don’t get email notifictions for new reviews left on the gbp’s any more? Even with notification settings turned on for reviews, I don’t get ANY. Has anyone observed the same? any ideas if you want to receive those reviews notifications if I wanted to monitor reviews on behalf of clients?

 

[keyserholiday]

We have started using the agency dashboard to manage client profiles in the last couple of months. This was to consolidate hundreds of client-specific gmail accounts we were trying to manage. We actually found there seems to be MORE risk in google unreasonably shutting down free gmail accounts, so we'd rather have a tightly held agency profile with a few agency users who are all on paid google workspace accounts. It feels less risky

Moving on...
Has anyone noticed that you don’t get email notifictions for new reviews left on the gbp’s any more? Even with notification settings turned on for reviews, I don’t get ANY. Has anyone observed the same? any ideas if you want to receive those reviews notifications if I wanted to monitor reviews on behalf of clients?

If you manage more than 100 GBPs, Google doesn't email you when you receive a new review.

 

[garrettkite]

We have started using the agency dashboard to manage client profiles in the last couple of months. This was to consolidate hundreds of client-specific gmail accounts we were trying to manage. We actually found there seems to be MORE risk in google unreasonably shutting down free gmail accounts, so we'd rather have a tightly held agency profile with a few agency users who are all on paid google workspace accounts. It feels less risky

Moving on...
Has anyone noticed that you don’t get email notifictions for new reviews left on the gbp’s any more? Even with notification settings turned on for reviews, I don’t get ANY. Has anyone observed the same? any ideas if you want to receive those reviews notifications if I wanted to monitor reviews on behalf of clients?

That's good to know. How do you handle giving clients access to their listings? Many of the suspension issues we've dealt with have been due to the individual client doing stupid things - either inadvertently creating a duplicate listing or jumping into their account & changing things without our knowledge, and the suspension soon follows. Ideally, we would like to remove clients from the accounts for that reason but if I'm not mistaken, Google's guidelines state that the business owner should have access to the listing in order to respond to customer reviews.

 

[keyserholiday]

That's good to know. How do you handle giving clients access to their listings? Many of the suspension issues we've dealt with have been due to the individual client doing stupid things - either inadvertently creating a duplicate listing or jumping into their account & changing things without our knowledge, and the suspension soon follows. Ideally, we would like to remove clients from the accounts for that reason but if I'm not mistaken, Google's guidelines state that the business owner should have access to the listing in order to respond to customer reviews.

You can't remove the business owner's access. That violates Google's TOS and could cause your entire account to be suspended.

 

[Marcin Karwowski]

I confirm that the agency accounts do not have any priority or separate support, even though google mentions it.
Certainly, the big advantage of such an account is the fact that it is easy to manage users and create teams and groups of users. Such groups can even be joined between the organization's accounts (by granting permissions) - it makes the work much easier.