GMB for Agencies - Locations

[drongo]

What am I not getting? We are struggling with GMB for Agencies.

We created a new Google account to set up a GMB for Agencies account because at the time, our GMB account which was managing all our clients' locations could not be used because you could not convert it to an Agency account. So annoying.

So we deleted all our locations (except ourselves) from the original account and starting re-requesting access through our new Agency account.

Should I expect these clients to appear in our account as Locations? If clients have multiple Locations, is this where Location Groups come in?

I notice that some locations are giving access to multiple clients - it seems Client A can access Client B's GMB account. How can this happen?

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hi @drongo it's challenging to tell exactly what is going on without looking under the hood but I can tell you about our experience.

Signing Up (which it sounds like you already did)

• To sign up, you need a domain email (not gmail) for your organization that has zero listings in it currently. To set up my company, I had to completely clear out my GMB account and then get an employee to add me back to all the listings.
• To add any employees to the agency dashboard, they also need to have zero listings in their account or it will give them an error and won’t let them join.
• Google has instructions for migrating accounts. These only work if you have the new GMB dashboard (not the Classic one) and if you are an owner on all the listings.

Migrating Existing Accounts


On the Overview tab of your agency account, you should see an option that says “Migrate your locations to one account” (new as of October 2018).


When you click the “Get Started” button it allows you to login to another Google My Business account and transfer all the locations from that account to your agency account in one step.

When we were doing this we ran into an issue because my employees all have their own Google accounts and I don’t want to know their passwords to login myself. If you’re in that situation, this is what you can do as a workaround.

1. Create a new Gmail that everyone on your team will have access to.
2. Add that Gmail as a member of your organization in the agency dashboard.
3. Have everyone login to that Gmail and click the migration tool that appears on the Overview tab and migrate their own accounts.
4. Once this is done, they will all transfer to the agency dashboard since the Gmail is a member.
5. Once you confirm the listings are all in the agency dashboard you can remove the Gmail as a user.

Let me know if any of that helps. If your issue is specific to requesting access to listings let me know and I can share some more insight.

Thanks

 

[drongo]

Hi Colan

Thanks for the detailed response.

I guess my main question still remains (my fault for wording it badly): what exactly are "Locations"?

Are they supposed to map onto separate clients - one location or location group per client with it's own separate security settings, or are they considered multiple physical locations of the same business?

Thanks, Gordon

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hey Gordon,

In case you haven't checked it out here is Google's definition of a location group:

"A location group is a select group of business listings that's collectively managed by an organization or user group. Sorting your locations into groups makes it easier to manage multiple locations and keep them organized. You can apply changes and share access to multiple listings at once. "

That's essentially how we utilize location groups. We use it as an organizational tool for the GMB listings we manage.