Google+ Local Now Forcing G+ Business Merges?

[Mike Wilton]

We were early adopters of Google+ for our clients creating Pages for them as soon as they were available. That said, we have stayed away from the merger because of the number of issues we experienced when we merged our company listing and from the overall consensus from the local search industry.

Today we went to make an edit to one of our client Pages and it said that in order for any of the changes to appear we now have to verify our business information. To do that we had to tie it to an existing Google Places/+Local listing that we hadn't yet merged.

Anyone else seeing this? Looks like Google is finally forcing our hands with all these recent changes...

 

[Flash]

There is mention of it in the Google forums. The problem right now appears to be that SABs that are not allowed to verify are also getting that message.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks Mike, I saw concerns about that in the G forum too, but had not had time to comment there, escalate or bring it up here yet. (So many changes I can't even keep up with them all!)

So thanks for bringing it up.

Yes Gregg I saw the one post from a service business with address hidden
that was being forced to verify even though NOT ALLOWED to verify. Confusing for SMBs.

Here is the post at the G forum: message on Google+ business page (not merged and unverified): "Your edits won't show up on Google unless you verify that you are the business owner."

User replied: "Another way to throw service area businesses into the trenches of Google glitchdoom."

But at least now a G+ verification WON'T go through and they are messaged why.

Here is my announcement about that from yesterday in case anyone missed. It was kind of buried in another thread. SEE SCREEN SHOT.

http://localsearchforum.catalystema...ness-w-hidden-address-important.html#post8626

 

[Flash]

But if they are not verified, then Google+ has no way to know they are an SAB and will not let them update. But when they try to verify, it is discovered they are an SAB and don't qualify.

Sounds like a Catch 22 to me.

 

[Mike Wilton]

It's interesting because by the sounds of it no changes to business info will be made public without the verification. Another interesting thing to point out since we tried this today, was that if there is a Google+ Local listing and a Google+ Page and you do the verification it will first take you through the Google+ Local verification, which it will allow you to do by phone, but then still requires you to do the PIN mailer verification to verify the ownership of the Google+ Page.

 

[Linda Buquet]

But if they are not verified, then Google+ has no way to know they are an SAB and will not let them update. But when they try to verify, it is discovered they are an SAB and don't qualify.

Sounds like a Catch 22 to me.

Catch 22 is exactly what I called it earlier when I escalated the issue to Google Gregg.

Thanks for the additional verification details Mike!

Hang onto your seats - might be a bumpy ride.

 

[Nick Rink]

Glad you guys have raised the Google+ merge issue. We're currently trying to go through this with one of our clients at the moment ... I say trying as it's proving to be much trickier than last time we did it.

We've got a G+ Biz Page and a G+ Local Page under the same email account, went through the process of requesting a PIN. The PIN has now arrived but the big G is saying that there are no places waiting to be verified under the account. Not sure if we're stuck in a verification cycle or if there's a bug in the system. Am guessing we'll likely have to try requesting another PIN.

Just curious if anyone else has experienced anything similar.

 

[BCLocal]

Thanks for the great info!

All of the listings I manage are SAB's so I have purposefully waited to create a Business Google+ page for any of them. From the looks of things I'll just have to keep waiting. Until Google gets their act together with SAB's I'm just sticking to G+local (also because I really don't have any other choice! Ha!)

Brandon

 

[Linda Buquet]

FYI I've been helping Greg from AutoRevo with this issue at the Google forum and escalated to Jade. (He's a member here and the man that did my funny images for the branding confusion post yesterday.)

Jade is trying to get to the bottom of it.

Suddenly our listing is un-verified and not visible on Maps (and the "about" page shows that the page is disabled)

Jade said:

"I'm not entirely sure what happened with the verification/merge requests, but it does seem that the pages for your business are appearing" "Thanks for the screenshots and clarification. We'll look into why the verification process was initiated."

Linda said:

As far as the G+ page goes, I'm going to ask Google about this because lots of strange things have been happening I don't understand on the G+ side.

I think I told you that just recently they were forcing people to verify even if they didn't qualify or want to. Basically you could not edit the page at all unless you verified. And I guess that's also the 1st part of what you described as happening to you.

And now I'm seeing cases like yours where it's kinda like the back end is confused about non-merged G+ pages. I have a similar but different very odd case I'm working on and I don't understand any of it. It almost seems like they don't want to let service area business even have a G+ page at all. You can't merge/verify BUT if you don't it gets locked. So it's a weird catch 22.
I don't think Google understands what's been happening. Been trying to explain there's a problem.

I also just told Jade you are VERY savvy, so if it's simply a matter of poor messaging and you are confused then pity the poor SMB that's trying to get through this.
But I don't think it's just poor messaging. There seems to be some unintended script at play or an unforeseen consequence they did not anticipate.

Will keep you posted as I learn more...

 

[Linda Buquet]

Short on time and too convoluted to explain but I wanted to circle back around to this post. See new thread - post #2 - #5 which helps explain what's up.

http://localsearchforum.catalystema...e-plus-business-page-being-forced-verify.html