Dual Owner Reclaiming Lockout on Google+ Local Begins

[Linda Buquet]

I've mentioned with the advent of the new Google Places dashboard another change is coming. You will no longer be able to simply reclaim a listing that has been claimed in another dashboard. Even if the owner claimed it and can't remember the log in, or a ex-employee claimed it OR the previous SEO won't turn it over. We were told there would be 'options' to recover a listing and take over ownership, but those options were not clear.

Kerry Fagan one of our members just gave me a head's up on an experience their company had that sheds a dim, unpleasant light on the problem many of you are going to start butting heads with. Josh Volk gave a nice overview at their blog explaining the issues.

I'll name this new problem you are going to have to deal with "Reclaim Hell", based on the following post - if this Google support reply is representative of the hoops you may need to jump through.

Google Maps Listings Are Being Locked Out [UPDATE]

I just got off the phone with Google support about this little issue and they told me that yes, this verified owner listing stuff started to roll out within the last two weeks. The best course of action to take would be to find the owner and, just as before, have them give me the login or delete the listing from the account in order to re-verify. How long it takes for that check mark to disappear and me to be able to take over the listing after it has been deleted isn’t yet known (and I don’t think it will be in this case).

Support did give helpful info in telling me that it was an @gmail.com account and the last edit was made to the account on March 14th, which was adding the website. Then Support presented two options in figuring out how to proceed: The first was reclaiming the listing after it had been idle for AN ENTIRE YEAR and the second was calling Support back to tell them that the business owner still has no clue, at which point they will call the business owner to truly verify everything I am saying and can then remove the claim from the other account.

Now, the problem with the first solution is that waiting a year is extremely problematic, especially when Support tells me the last edit was made less than a month ago, and there’s no way to prevent the account holder from making another edit in 364 days to reset the clock. If this is the case, I feel the listing is a lost cause and it’s the end of the line.

Now that was only a snippet in fairness to Local SEO Update. So you need to go there to read the full post to understand the full ramifications and everything that was said/explained.

You may have read the post where I explain numerous problems that dual claimed listings pose:
WARNING: Dual Claimed Ranking Penalty - Drop like a Rock or Get Suspended.

So I'm glad the dual claimed listing problem is going away. It just seems that the support reply and options they offered are going to be too difficult to deal with in certain situations. However it may be less time consuming than dealing with the subtle, hard to identify problems that a hidden merged dupe
AKA dual claimed listing, that you didn't even know existed can cause.

What do you think???

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I had the feeling that this would only apply to listings that have been verified as in upgraded to Local G+ Business page with the bells and whistles.

But that certainly doesn't seem to be the case here....

 

[Linda Buquet]

Josh posted a 2nd update to this issue.

SECOND UPDATE:

As Matthew points out in his comment below, and something I didn?t originally try, was to click on the ?Request Ownership? button. I just tried it and, as he says, it opens up a new tab for the Google Help page? which is totally unhelpful. Whether or not any email is sent to the owner (as it says it will do right on the page) isn?t displayed or showed.

So again, when I requested ownership, all that happened was a new tab opened for the unhelpful Help page, and the dialog box remained on the other page with no message about any email being sent. I?m not sure if Google Support wants to be completely inundated by phone calls about this from people trying to manage listings, but that?s about to happen.

 

[Eric Rohrback]

The idea is good - no more dual ownership problems - but the execution from Google is absolutely terrible (nothing new there...). I'm pretty ticked off that there isn't an easy way to remove a listing from the new dashboard. Do you guys know of an easy way or at least a more direct link to the proper help menu? I'm really not 100% sure what the most appropriate help category is for removal of a listing from a dashboard.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Eric try contact us > data problems > other, then scroll down a little below the grouped options and it's there. (Or something close to that. That's from memory. Don't have time to log out and login to my test acct right now.) But let me know if you can't find it and I'll do it.

Here is the specific page but I can't figure out how to nav there. This page only works if you are logged into an acct that has new dash.

Last option: https://support.google.com/business/contact/local_pages_editing_help

 

[Linda Buquet]

Kerry posted an update. The problem in post #3 seems to be fixed.

One Claimant on Google Places ? Request Ownership Button Fixed?

Thanks for the update Kerry!

 

[freerunr]

Thanks Linda. Yet another update on the issue that Josh discoverd: it appears that the PIN's for verification postcards sent out prior to the one-claimant rule launch (sometime last week?), but input into the backend of listings after the launch, may not work. So even if a verification postcard was sent to claim an already-claimed listing before the rule went into effect, it's as if the rule is retroactively applied to them. I know this will only matter to those who have sent out postcards within the past week or so, but just wanted to report it, anyway.

Note: this is based on a sample size of only one, so if anyone else can verify that this is indeed the case, please do!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks again for keeping us updated on this issue Kerry!

 

[freerunr]

Let the updates continue.... Josh was talking to @GooglePlaces on Twitter, and it sounds like the implementation of this rule is still dependent upon which dashboard is used for which user in these instances. We're not sure if this means that a listing must be rolled over to the new Places dashboard before it's been locked out from another owner, or what. Keeping our ears to the ground...<iframe style="width: 1px; height: 1px; border: medium none; position: absolute;" allowtransparency="true" class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" id="twitter-widget-0" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe><script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><iframe style="display: none;" allowtransparency="true" id="rufous-sandbox" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Let the updates continue.... Josh was talking to @GooglePlaces on Twitter, and it sounds like the implementation of this rule is still dependent upon which dashboard is used for which user in these instances. We're not sure if this means that a listing must be rolled over to the new Places dashboard before it's been locked out from another owner, or what. Keeping our ears to the ground...<iframe style="width: 1px; height: 1px; border: medium none; position: absolute;" allowtransparency="true" class="twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered" id="twitter-widget-0" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe><script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><iframe style="display: none;" allowtransparency="true" id="rufous-sandbox" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Interesting, thanks Kerry.

 

[Matthew Newman]

Note: this is based on a sample size of only one, so if anyone else can verify that this is indeed the case, please do!

I can verify this now, it has come up a couple of times in the last two days for me.

I've actually been getting the Request Access stuff since the beginning of May, and have been getting quite a of them, due to the number of clients we have.

What I believe is happening for these is a PIN was sent out on the old dashboard, and then the account got updated to the new one, so that rule came into effect.

 

[Cleaner44]

This is an important thread and I though it could use a screen shot of the Request Ownership dialog box.



If we could add an image of the email the the previous listing owner gets in response to this request, I think that would be helpful too.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Yes! Perfect addition to the thread. Thanks!

 

[Cleaner44]

Today was a great day! I had a listing that was previously claimed by a customer with a known email. We wanted to change the email address that would be the verified owner of the listing.

I called Google and they manually released the listing from the 1st email in about 5-10 minutes and we were able to reclaim the listing with the 2nd email address.

Claiming a listing with a new email, from a previously claimed listing was accomplished and the whole thing took less than 1 hour! This was a huge win to me.

Is this news or has everyone else already done this?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Great to hear! Yes, Google has been great in this regard since they started phone support. If they identify "stale" accounts they will certainly unverify them.

Thanks for sharing, glad to know this is indeed becoming the new normal.

 

[freerunr]

Today was a great day!...

...I called Google and they manually released the listing from the 1st email in about 5-10 minutes ...

Just out of curiosity, how long did you have to wait from the time you placed the call until you actually spoke with someone? My team has experienced being on hold for 25 minutes or more, and a couple cases of an hour or so. I'm just wondering if phone support is short-staffed right now, or if that many more people are utilizing it since it launched. Aggregately, we probably call more than most individuals, so we see the whole spectrum of wait times.

 

[Cleaner44]

Just out of curiosity, how long did you have to wait from the time you placed the call until you actually spoke with someone? My team has experienced being on hold for 25 minutes or more, and a couple cases of an hour or so. I'm just wondering if phone support is short-staffed right now, or if that many more people are utilizing it since it launched. Aggregately, we probably call more than most individuals, so we see the whole spectrum of wait times.

My wait time to speak with a person was probably about 10 minutes. I was a bit surprised it took that long. All in all though I am happy with the result.

Great to hear! Yes, Google has been great in this regard since they started phone support. If they identify "stale" accounts they will certainly unverify them.

Thanks for sharing, glad to know this is indeed becoming the new normal.

I don't know if they considered the account stale or if that was a factor in their decision to unverify. We did have to make a change that they could see, so they could verify that I was logged into the account in question.