How do we work around this primary ownership delay issue?

[Annika Neudecker]

Hi all. Google recently changed things so that we're not able to take primary ownership of a location until seven days have passed. I can understand why they did this but it's unfortunately creating some real problems for us and I'm trying to find a way to work around it.

We take over locations which we'll be rebranding and running on a near-weekly basis. When we accept the ownership invitation that the current owner sends us, the location lands in the Ungrouped locations folder in our GBP account. We then transfer it over to our main location folder which is connected to our local listings management provider and SEO team, which syncs up with the provider's API feed. However, since we're no longer able to take over as Primary Owner immediately, we can't transfer the location to the correct group and the API can't reach it. We're being forced to wait seven days to even connect a location to our API. This represents a significant problem for our owners, who want to see a store up and running with the right data immediately.

Is there a way that we can change the default location group that a location falls into when we accept an ownership invite, or some other way to get the store into the right group? Are there any exemptions to this seven day delay? The owners sending us stores are not tech savvy and if we ask them to make us primary owners, it's unlikely they'll be able to do it on any kind of consistent basis.

 

[JoyHawkins]

I would reach out to Google support about it but my hunch is that there isn't anything they're going to be able to do.

 

[Annika Neudecker]

I would reach out to Google support about it but my hunch is that there isn't anything they're going to be able to do.

I had a feeling that might be the case. I've emailed them about the situation, fingers crossed there might actually be something they can do.

 

[dgrunited]

since we're no longer able to take over as Primary Owner immediately, we can't transfer the location to the correct group

That's strange. Even as an Owner, I can transfer the listing to any group of my choice. Therefore, I don't need to be a Primary Owner to do this...

 

[keyserholiday]

Google made a change that you can't do any changes for 7 days once you are added to a business profile. This is includes transferring ownership.

 

[Annika Neudecker]

Google made a change that you can't do any changes for 7 days once you are added to a business profile. This is includes transferring ownership.

So I can't even opt to make someone else a primary owner when I'm already the existing primary owner? That would explain the issue I'm running into now with trying to transfer ownership of a recently disposed listing to a new person.

Where's the best place to complain to Google about how bad of an inconvenience this change is? I can understand why they'd make this change but it's incredibly poorly executed if they're not even allowing me to transfer ownership to someone else.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Correct, you can't if they were added in the last 7 days. You can tweet to Google @googlemybiz

 

[keyserholiday]

So I can't even opt to make someone else a primary owner when I'm already the existing primary owner? That would explain the issue I'm running into now with trying to transfer ownership of a recently disposed listing to a new person.

Where's the best place to complain to Google about how bad of an inconvenience this change is? I can understand why they'd make this change but it's incredibly poorly executed if they're not even allowing me to transfer ownership to someone else.

Can you explain to me how this update is having a negative impact on you or the business profile? I get that it's a mild inconvenience but I am not sure that it's the end of the world.

 

[Annika Neudecker]

Can you explain to me how this update is having a negative impact on you or the business profile? I get that it's a mild inconvenience but I am not sure that it's the end of the world.

My initial post spells it out but I'll elaborate a little further. We're in the self storage industry. Properties in this field change management companies on a regular basis. Same building, same staff, same everything, just a new name on the sign and a new website to rent through. Owners get different cost splits depending on who they go with so they can change management if they're promised better rentals or lower fees. All your major self storage companies offer management services.

To give you an idea of the volume of these changes, 5 to 10 onboardings or dispositions to a new company is the norm for a single week. That's 5 to 10 individual GBP locations which need to be totally updated. When we acquire a whole existing company, we can need to rebrand 50+ locations at once. Being able to quickly rebrand the locations and get them connected to our GBP API is key to keeping the owner happy and the customers from being confused. I've quite literally had owners email me within the hour of a store being announced asking why the GBP isn't 100% updated. That's the turn-around time they expect. Seven days to get everything connected and updated is an insanely long time for them.

 

[SaraGarrison]

My initial post spells it out but I'll elaborate a little further. We're in the self storage industry. Properties in this field change management companies on a regular basis. Same building, same staff, same everything, just a new name on the sign and a new website to rent through. Owners get different cost splits depending on who they go with so they can change management if they're promised better rentals or lower fees. All your major self storage companies offer management services.

To give you an idea of the volume of these changes, 5 to 10 onboardings or dispositions to a new company is the norm for a single week. That's 5 to 10 individual GBP locations which need to be totally updated. When we acquire a whole existing company, we can need to rebrand 50+ locations at once. Being able to quickly rebrand the locations and get them connected to our GBP API is key to keeping the owner happy and the customers from being confused. I've quite literally had owners email me within the hour of a store being announced asking why the GBP isn't 100% updated. That's the turn-around time they expect. Seven days to get everything connected and updated is an insanely long time for them.

There's no workaround that I've discovered. Not even for existing primary owner to transfer primary ownership to you straight away - the 7 day limit is still in effect there. In the past, transferring a listing you owned to the correct folder automatically made you the primary owner, so that is also off limits here.

The only "workaround" I've landed on is to manually update the listing in GBP immediately and then add the listing to our database/API sync after the 7 day wait period so at least the client sees the listing updated right away.