Google Accounts

[TonyIsSocial]

Hey everyone, I'm trying to define a clear process to baseline new clients on. One of the setup steps is the Google account conundrum. I'm not even sure how to best ask the question, so here goes:

Clients sometimes have personal Gmail (Google) accounts. Sometimes they have business Gmail (Google) accounts. Sometimes they have both. Sometimes they have an old business Gmail account before they upgraded to email on their domain. Sometimes they have none of the above.

A Google account is needed for; claiming local listing, upgrading to social local listing with new dashboard, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, Tag Manager, Authorship, YouTube, G+, etc.

Right now, the steps I set up are:

• Does the business owner have an existing personal Google Account?
  • Yes; Do they use it outside of Gmail? (other Google products; other connected sites, apps, services)
    • Yes; Use it to claim listing and ownership of SEO Google Products
    • No; ↓
  • No; ↓
• Do they have an existing business Gmail Account?
  • Yes; Use it
  • No;
• Create an email " accounts@clientsite.tld " or " clientsite@gmail.com "
• Create Google Account from created email using Business Owner personal details
• Use it for Google SEO Accounts
• Assign Manager roles to Consultant

Please give any and all inputs. If this is valuable to anyone besides me, I'll share the LucidChart process flow diagram when I'm done.

Thanks,
Tony

 

[TonyIsSocial]

To add to this... and bump it.. and keep all my questions in 1 place for my sanity:

How does the community here claim and/or manage all of these accounts on behalf of a client if all of the accounts are under their personal account? Or would it be recommended to cancel out the option of using personal and just jump straight to only using a business account.

e.g. a current client agreed to change his business google account password so I could use it to go through these steps. However, we've had a working relationship for some time now and he knows me well. I'm not sure how open a complete stranger would be to that.

Then, when authorship markup or similar is involved, it is the business' image, not the actual owner. I imagine there'll be less cases where the actual owner, as a person, will want to be exposed as the content creator; perhaps artists and writers of sorts.

 

[TonyIsSocial]

Continuing on:

If I have only a business Google Account for the client, I will need for it to have a G+ Personal Profile in order for it to be a manager of the future Local What the F* Page.

If I do that, they're going to have the same display name in G+, and cause confusion to the average G+ user (which, granted, is a small user base).

If someone could come in here and burp or sneeze, so I don't feel like I'm talking to myself, I'd appreciate it...

 

[Linda Buquet]

Sorry Tony, getting ready for big webinar with 800 people so no time to explain. But everything is in process of changing. Thats why answers are hard. If I told you one thing today I'd have to change it tomorrow.

You should not upgrade or merge with G+ now anyway. Google says wait.

Please see these threads if you missed them:

Google Begins Auto-Upgrade of G+ Local Listings to Google+ Business Pages

If you just wait for Google to do the auto upgrade then you don't even need a personal profile.

Plus this is brand new too:

Multiple Managers & Transfer Ownership Added to Local Google+ Business Pages

 

[TonyIsSocial]

Thanks! For now I'll avoid G+ unless absolutely necessary and focus just on creating a consolidated Google account for clients, and maintaining their listing info via the old or (hopefully) new dashboard.

I've just subscribed to the mentioned google product forum to stay abreast.

Good luck on the InsideLocal webinar! I watch the recorded versions, sometimes multiple times!

 

[iwebresults]

The google login page changed for me about a week ago and now displays all the accounts I have used from clients to login. At some point I am concerned that my IP address will get flagged by google and I won't be able to login to their accounts to check analytics, upload to youtube etc. I am lost as to best practice for this, what if I need to login to over 10 or more google accounts a week? Anyone have some advice or experience to share?