GMB "Agency Dashboard" Problems or Confusion

[Eric Rohrback]

Based on this thread and the discussion i'm seeing on Twitter... definitely do not want to try this yet.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Also, I sent all this feedback to Google so I'll try to update this thread when I hear back on if they fix anything (or plan to).

 

[JoyHawkins]

The latest issue discovered today (someone tweeted this to me). There appears to be no way to link any listings inside the new dashboard to AdWords. Tons of location extensions disappeared. *sigh*

 

[aputtock]

A new issue!

Under Requests sent, we currently show 23 listings. However, we have requested (through different member accounts) access to over 200 listings since we migrated our accounts. No matter how many more requests we send, the number remains 23.

Currently trying to contact Google Support regarding the same, however they have been absolutely useless as normal.

Hoping to add to the list of issues and, potentially, solutions!

Thanks all!

 

[JoyHawkins]

I sent that to Google to add to the list. Thanks for letting me know. There is a way you can get in touch with GMB specifically for issues with the new dashboard. Use this link.

 

[Jim Froling]

You're lucky, I guess. Most of our accounts were setup with an old Gmail account, like yours. Most of those have us listed as "Owner", (not Primary Owner, ALWAYS reserved for the business owner). Still, a brick wall.

This is SO frustrating! For so long, Google said that a local business owner did not need us.

Now they admit, it may not be a bad idea.

And consultants/agencies that have worked this space for years hit a "brick wall" when trying to connect.

S**t! When does YEARS of Local SEO work, 5 Star Reviews and regurgitating all of Google's "best practices" actually pay off?

Start a new account?

Does Google have ANY idea how much time, effort, energy has gone into establishing these existing accounts.? All by THEIR GUIDELINES?

Pretty Pissed!

 

[Jim Froling]

Joy, you are such a blessing!

Not just for Local SEO consultants/agencies, but our clients as well.

Keep up the good work!

 

[aputtock]

Hey Jim,

I see where you are hitting the difficulty. Maybe these are some possible solutions?

If you have multiple listings in the same account, even if you are the owner you should still be able to transfer those locations into a location group (we were able to). Then, invite the organization ID to manage that location group.

If they are all in single accounts, you can try to invite the Location Group ID of a Group you have created in your organizational account, which should work.

If all else fails, you can temporarily 'switch' your Ownership status to Primary Ownership and revert it back to the client, although that is probably quite time consuming.

Maybe this will help your situation, not sure...

 

[JoyHawkins]

Something else I just realized. My agency dashboard currently has less than 30 listings in it. I'm no longer getting notifications for any of them. No Q&A, edit changes, reviews etc. This usually only happens when you hit 100 listings. I'll ask Google if this is intended but I have a feeling it is. Ugh.

 

[Jim Froling]

Thanks, I really appreciate the input. However, I've decided not to touch this thing until the bugs are resolved. Just too much time and effort to potentially screw up my client listings permanently.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hey guys... we have had Google read all the comments here, plus we've been giving them an earful - and they ARE listening!

See if anything in this post helps: Feedback on Organization Accounts and FAQs - The Google Advertiser Community - 1744861

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Thanks for sharing feedback on our new Organization accounts! While we actively work on it, check out some quick FAQs for clarification <a href="https://t.co/JQ4sLtNl33">https://t.co/JQ4sLtNl33</a></p>— Google My Business (@GoogleMyBiz) <a href="https://twitter.com/GoogleMyBiz/status/1012011423348809728?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 27, 2018</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

 

[Chaddow]

Hello Everyone

Having read through this thread thanks for the insights everyone I was looking for some help on the following :-

So far all I have done is set up the new email account for the agency dashboard and it is currently sitting empty almost it was hard enough getting it to this point

Within client accounts , with main locations and subsidiaries me and my team are managing over 2000+ listings they are currently all working without issue in there stand alone accounts, the fact that if they are migrated means the location extensions / Adwords connection will stop working this will cause issues in my agency long with the clients.
I am of the same view as Jim that I want to wait for the problems to shake out before starting to move them across in great numbers.

In relation to the help doc that Linda just shared I am not getting the functionality to add a location group ID to a listing is the best thing to raise it using the help form Joy shared on the 20th?

 

[JoyHawkins]

Yes, I would contact Google using that form.

 

[Eddie Childs]

The inability to add locations to location groups without being the "primary owner" of the listing is our biggest pain point as an agency. Even if we wanted to have primary ownership (which we don't) and even if the clients wanted to award us with that level of access (they don't), it's next to impossible to get them to actually do it.

Most SMBs don't even know who set up their GMB listing or where their credentials are to award us access, let alone how to go in there and change the permissions on the account or (even worse) how to plug in my new agency account as an owner on their end. Pretty much stops the whole process in its tracks.

And this is a shame because I want to do some RSS automation with Google Posts using Sendible and Google won't let Sendible call more than 100 locations from any of my current GMB accounts. I have one account with like 200+ locations in it too, so my plan for automating content to Google Posts just won't work until I can get all of those locations into the agency dashboard. Really short-sighted piece of software design here, Google. Did they even think to find out how agencies work at all? Did anybody over there bother to sit down and write a use case?

 

[JoyHawkins]

Hey Eddie,

If you request ownership-level access to the listing from your agency dashboard, the user should be able to approve it by just clicking a button on the email they get from Google. This feature has definitely made it easier (in my opinion) to get the owner to grant access.

 

[Eddie Childs]

Thanks, Joy. Good to know. That sounds easy enough in principle. In practice that's logistically daunting with 200+ locations in my dashboards and a majority of clients who don't even know where their credentials are, which gmail account the listings are attached to, who set it up in the first place, etc. Plus most of them would be very hesitant to give up full ownership of the listing, however briefly.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Update: Google fixed 2 of the bugs.

• I'm now getting email alerts for new reviews on listings.
• You can now link GMB listings to AdWords.

 

[aputtock]

Interesting!

We were excited to hear that we may be able to get review notifications, but nothing has come through yet.

I called GMB Support and the rep told me that we have too many listings to receive review notifications (we have around 4,000 published listings). Reference [8-4883000023262]. I am wondering if this is true or not.

I tried to escalate with the form, however everyone in our organization is receiving the same error message - "This field can contain only numbers". We quadruple checked and manually entered our Organizational ID - No spaces. Repeatedly get this error.

I will reach out to Facebook support as well, just to make sure we are getting the right information. It is a real hindrance to not get review notifications for such a large number of clients!

On other news, the issue with the invitations seems to have resolved. Thank you @JoyHawkins for your advice and assistance!

 

[JoyHawkins]

Hey aputtock,

That is correct. Dashboards with over 100 listings have never got email notifications so that is nothing new. That happens regardless if you have the new agency dashboard or the other version.

 

[aputtock]

Hey all,

First of all - Thank you for all the help that this thread and forum have provided! It has been truly invaluable, and extremely appreciated. You guys rock!

As we know, there are many issues with migrating listings to the Google My Business Agency account.

Primarily, we are concerned with the loss of review notifications as these are important for our clients.

To get around this, we have kept the original G Suite accounts as the Primary Owners of our Location Groups that are in the Organizational Account. They have shared access between the Organizational account (Owners) and the G Suite (Primary Owners) through the Location Group. This set up has been working well for the past few months.

We have a number of Location Groups (and the associated G Suite accounts) that have more than 100 listings. In order to re-activate the review notifications for these listings, we are in the process of moving listings out of the full accounts into empty G Suite accounts that we have.

The main issue that we were having is follows:

We are not able to transfer the contents of Location Groups to other Location Groups in the empty G Suite accounts.

The ‘Transfer Locations’ feature simply shares access between the first Location Group (Let’s call it Full) and the target Location Group (let’s call it Empty). It does not ‘transfer’ the listings. This result is the same even if the Owner of the Organization Account is doing the Transfer.

We are trying to move accounts in a similar way to how we would move accounts completely out of the G Suites and into the Organizational account – By creating a Location Group in the G Suite and inviting the Organizational Account as a User –

It does not appear that the Transfer Location function supports this when we are trying to transfer the contents of one Location Group to another Location Group.

We now have to go into listings manually and invite another G Suite account as an Owner, since we are not looking for shared access between accounts, we are looking to Transfer them completely. This is extremely time consuming.

This does raise a few questions -

Question 1: If the location groups/accounts have less than 100 listings, will we still receive notifications even if our Organizational Account is an Owner on the account? Would we need to downgrade their permission to Manager or can the Organization Account remain Owner?

Question 2: What is the relationship between Location Groups and non-Organizational accounts? If different, this would explain why we were unable to transfer listings from Location Group Full to Location Group Empty as the Account was different.

Question 3: For locations that we have created in the Organizational Account from scratch, what is the most effective way to transfer them into another Account en masse since transferring them to a Location Group and sharing access to that Location Group with a G Suite account does not seem to be working?

Question 4: Are we correct in assuming that the Location Group functionality only works for ‘normal’ Accounts to share Location Groups with Organizational Accounts, but not vice versa (for Organizational Accounts to serve as a medium to transfer listings between different accounts)? Perhaps we are doing something wrong?

Any help would be appreciated – There is a dearth of information online about this, none of which seems to explain the situation that is happening or the proper use of Location Groups.