No more manual verification via Google+ Local support

[Priya Chandra]

Google have just advised over at the Google and Your Business Help forum that they will no longer be supporting manual verifications via their support teams.

Manual Verification Process Update

The Google My Business support teams will be declining requests for manual verification starting next week. Operators will redirect and educate users towards the official validation methods and will no longer have the mandate to manually validate businesses, except in extreme cases.

Above is just a snippet, so head over to read the rest and make sure you know when you can contact Google+ support or not.

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[Scott Rawlins]

Well that's disappointing. I'm wondering if that will mean in the case of ownership issues as well. It happens all the time where clients either created or had an agency create a listing and neither have access to the login info any longer. Support usually releases the listing, then allows you to claim and verify while on the phone. Of course, that's after they call the business. I sure hope that aspect will stay the same.

Thanks for sharing Priya.

 

[Linda Buquet]

We knew that was coming. I just had not seen the post at the forum yet.

So thanks so much for covering and letting everyone her know Priya.

Really appreciate it!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Well that's disappointing. I'm wondering if that will mean in the case of ownership issues as well. It happens all the time where clients either created or had an agency create a listing and neither have access to the login info any longer. Support usually releases the listing, then allows you to claim and verify while on the phone. Of course, that's after they call the business. I sure hope that aspect will stay the same.

Once again the spammers make it harder for the honest businesses.

BUT this effort to reduce spam and fake listings I think will help us all in the long run.

 

[Jim Froling]

No more phone verification support? That isn't G blocking spammers, it is more likely G is saving time (money) on time intensive issues. As we all know, resolving page ownership issues and merging multiple pages cannot be done from our desktop. We need Google's support reps to access their secret dashboards.

Just two weeks ago I finally cleared a verification, listing ownership issue and page merge for a client that had been ongoing for weeks. I had multiple conversations with GMB support in Ann Arbor and New Delhi. Short story, it was a mess and a migraine.

Finally, a support rep in New Delhi had the patience to untangle the web. He called client's office only to have staff hang up on him. Then he called the owner of the business directly on his cellphone. After nearly two hours of phone calls and emails we were able to resolve all issues.

Certainly provided faith in New Delhi support which had been lacking beforehand. Guess I shouldn't hope for similar diligence in the future. Too bad. I was just starting to like these guys in India.

 

[cdawg2610]

Well that's disappointing. I'm wondering if that will mean in the case of ownership issues as well. It happens all the time where clients either created or had an agency create a listing and neither have access to the login info any longer. Support usually releases the listing, then allows you to claim and verify while on the phone. Of course, that's after they call the business. I sure hope that aspect will stay the same.

Thanks for sharing Priya.

Scott - I received an ownership/manager request from Google Local Support yesterday afternoon so for the moment, that seems to be happening.

For my own issue, when I called yesterday for a still pending review a week later, Google said I had to wait 14 days before they would manually look at it.

 

[Gerry.Foster]

This is frustrating at best. How exactly does this mitigate spam? Shouldn't operators be following certain protocol from the google side to ensure spam isn't happening on the phone as well as the web?

 

[Linda Buquet]

My assumptions Gerry:

1) Black hat scammers have been doing courses about how to get 100s of fake locations verified. Support phone verification is one of the loopholes some of them teach.

You can imagine the flood of calls. And then verification depends on how well trained and/or thorough the person is answering the phone.

AND most importantly all those phone verifications take precious support time away from those of you who really need it for fixing serious issues.

2) Verification through the system means instead of relying on support reps, it relies on what I assume are a variety of automated checks that screen out a lot of bogus ones right upfront, without any drain on resources. Then only the ones that are borderline or questionable get flagged for review by a human.

A couple thoughts anyway and again not gospel - just some assumptions and pretty good gut feel about how things likely work.

 

[Linda Buquet]

In an attempt to circle the wagons, there is a pretty interesting discussion going over at our Local Search Pros G+ Community:
<a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/101037504613481726969/posts/7NfrV7rkmDY">No More Manual Verification via Google My Business Support</a>

 

[mborgelt]

I wonder what they deem as an "extreme case." Usually Google will provide examples of these scenarios.