Gaining Access to Listing as a Site Manager

[KevinLam]

Back in February, we started to work with a local mortgage lender on their Google My Business issue. The issue was that whenever someone would search for their business, an agent's (practitioner) listing would be the listing to populate. The business wanted to have their business listing populate not an agent's.

Early on we were able to get ownership access to both the business listing and the agent's listing with no problem. We also gained access to quite a few other agent's listing that were out there but didn't have the high rankings of the first one.

After communications with Google My Business support, they suggested to permanently close all the listings we did not want to populate for. So we closed down all the agent listings.

A couple of weeks after we started to see the agent listings again. We claimed them again and after consulting with the Google My Business support staff, it was recommended that we permanently close them again and that even though the listing is closed, the listing will still exist but shouldn't populate.

A couple of more weeks went by and the same issue arises, the agent's listing was showing up for the business's brand name search. We reached out to GMB again and they suggested that we claim the listing and that "there can be one page for the business and one with the name of the agent. If the agent is not working with the business anymore you can get the business marked as closed, however it can not be removed from Google maps."

We decided to claim the agent's listing again to change the name on the business listing to their head agent. While claiming this listing, we were only allowed to have access as a site manager. The owner of the account is now under an account with the business name however, no one in the business knows who might have access to the email that owns this listing. We've tried numerous times to claim the listing and no luck. We've contacted GMB to help us claim ownership access through a different mean but no luck there as the communications from GMB have been very poor since the start of COVID.

Does anyone have an idea of what to do here?

 

[Cherie Dickey]

Hi there!

Personally, I would start the ownership request process over again using a different Google account. Once you request ownership, someone will receive an email that you are requesting ownership (and you will then know who owns the listing), or you will be able to can claim the listing after three days.

Once you have ownership, you can provide access to the account you are currently trying to use.

As for the agent listings that are outranking the business listing, there isn't much you can do to remove the listings. They are probably being reopened because the agents are still there. Marking them closed isn't correct since they are, in fact, open. You could try merging them with the business listing, but if there are multiple agents at the location, this won't be possible.

The only thing you can do that will have permanent results is to deoptimize the agent listings as much as possible, and optimize the business listing as much as possible - then make sure all activity is through that listing (reviews, Google posts, review responses, etc). You need to make the business listing the one that is the most relevant and the most helpful to the searcher. This will take time.

Good luck!

 

[KevinLam]

Hi Cherrie,

Thank you so much for your response.

I've actually tried with a different Google account to try and claim ownership of the agent listing. The listing owner's email is unknown and has been accepting our requests. Even after 14 days, the listing is still not able to be claimed as an owner.

Would you have any advice on what we can do here to claim ownership? Any advice would be appreciated!

Deoptimizing the agent listing as much as possible makes sense.

 

[Cherie Dickey]

Hi!

It looks like you requested to manage, not own the listing. Since the owner didn't reply, you weren't granted access. Try removing the listing, and then resending the request with Ownership instead of management.

 

[Chris CCMM-STM]

Hi Cherrie,

We (agency) have the same problem of trying to re-gain ownership of a GMB listing since we are only given a "Site manager" access when trying to re-claim the listing after suspension, the thing is that the original creator of the GMB listing doesn't have the access to the creator's email anymore. Do you have any advice or workaround with this situation?

Also, we tried the request ownership and choose the "Ownership" in one of the tick choices and not the "manage" but we are also seeing the "you requested to manage" notification.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Cherie Dickey]

Hi @STM

So sorry for the delayed reply! I've been so slammed with work lately, and haven't had time to log in... but it's a good kind of busy

I would try requesting ownership using a different Google account (that is not linked to the GMB Agency account) for the sake of time. Once that account gains ownership access to the listing, you can then provide access (with the preferred level) to whichever account(s) you've been trying to access the listing with. The access can be removed from the account that you used to troubleshoot.

 

[Chris CCMM-STM]

Hi Cherie,

Thanks for the response.

So both we as agency and the owner tried to request ownership from a completely different Google account today but it shows the warning "No more ways to verify", see image below or the attached file:

Thanks in advance!

 

[michaelrosa640]

I am so glad to see I am not the only one experiencing this issue!

I now have two different client accounts that we cannot find any way to request ownership from listings any longer...On one listing we received acknowledgement of an Ownership request from GMB for a listing and right after verifying the listing on the phone, was only provided site manager access....We have tried all other avenues to request access from old and new emails alike, but nothing, and I mean nothing has worked.

I was recently told we should create "new" version of the listing in a new email address and then once the listing is verified and gets marked as as Duplicate in the dashboard we "should" be able to request ownership there.

However when we do this we also just get the Verify to Manage page no option to actually request Ownership.

Super frustrating....