Problems with multiple profiles today

[jlw]

Can anyone help with this please. I'm just 6 months in to my business and really worried that I've caused lots of problems for my clients by them being on my account. I was supposed to be optimising a profile today for a new client but have postponed this until I can get the problems sorted out.

I really felt like I'd found my 'thing' with Google Business Profiles but the imposter syndrome is strong today!

I didn't set up my account as an agency to begin, should I have done that and is there a way to change it over to an agency account (if the problems get sorted out by Google).

How do you handle these issues with client accounts if something happens to your account. This is the sort of thing that I'll lose sleep over if I'm affecting peoples businesses. At least with websites I have more control over what's going on.

Does anyone have any advice anything that might help with motivation to keep moving forward on this please?

 

[jlw]

Is anyone else having problems with updating information on profiles today? I have some suggested services that I want to remove and when I try to save this it just says 'something went wrong.' This issue is on more than 1 account and also on an account that I did manage which got suspended last week (they are now removed from my account).

I have a different account that I use for another profile and theirs updates without any problems.

Please can anyone help.

 

[jlw]

@JoyHawkins can you help please or at least give me some hope that this is not going to be an ongoing problem? Another of my clients is now finding she is unable to post photos and her new reviews are not showing up.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Hey @jlw there are a lot of people on vacation right now so the forum is a little quieter than usual. I try to get on here a few times a week but definitely not daily so please be patient if you don't get a response instantly.

I have not had any of the issues you're describing that I know of at my agency.

I would definitely suggest utilizing the agency dashboard if you have an agency. Instructions on how to set it up are here: Register your agency for Business Profiles - Google Business Profile Help

 

[jlw]

Hey @jlw there are a lot of people on vacation right now so the forum is a little quieter than usual. I try to get on here a few times a week but definitely not daily so please be patient if you don't get a response instantly.

I have not had any of the issues you're describing that I know of at my agency.

I would definitely suggest utilizing the agency dashboard if you have an agency. Instructions on how to set it up are here: Register your agency for Business Profiles - Google Business Profile Help

Thanks so much @JoyHawkins, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with it all yesterday and then again this morning with the new problems on another account.
As my account is already tied to my domain email address I found I couldn't set up an agency account. Does it matter if I set it up from another domain (as it will be the same ip address?). Does the domain have to have a live website on it?

Do you have any tips for helping my clients get the problems with their accounts sorted out? Have you ever had a problem with one account affecting others like this?

Thanks again Joy. I really appreciate your help.

 

[JS Girard]

Being able to see a screenshot of the services would help. The one time I've run into services that I couldn't do anything with (outside of temporary bugs of some sort) was because the description contained some sort of forbidden invisible character that inexplicably caused any editing attempt to choke.

Also worth remembering that you typically cannot change services while a change to categories is pending. This is why I prefer to add categories through the services section: it allows me to add services alongside the new category.

 

[jlw]

These are the suggested services. There are different ones when I actually click in to edit them. If I look at it on mobile the services aren't shown in orange and there is no option to do anything with it.

 

[JS Girard]

Okay, at first blush this is typical google adding services.

There are different ones when I actually click in to edit them.

The order is not the same when you look at them and when you click to edit them, the newly added services are show first in the "preview", but they will be at the end of the list when you click to actually edit them.

If I look at it on mobile the services aren't shown in orange and there is no option to do anything with it.

I assume you mean looking as a user? Or do you mean loading the business.google.com dashboard directly on mobile?

In the first case, that would because you're, well, looking at what the list looks like for general Google Maps users (and yes, orange changes are usually already live), not the changes view

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Sadly, Google provides no informative message when "something goes wrong" with services. I know a few things that can trigger them (for example trying to enter a service already there, or that can be selected amongst those Google sets by default), but I have to admit that I'm not seeing anything obvious with these services that would do it.

Given how many ways this could be triggered (not to mention the possibility of an inexplicable bug), I would probably ask for Google Support help (not forum, but an actual ticket). In fact we did recently did so for this issue affecting one of our profiles with no apparent explanations, though we're still waiting on an answer.

 

[jlw]

Thanks @JS Girard. Yes on mobile its looking at the profile as a user.

Some of the suggested services are already on the list so maybe that's part of the problem. I have been through the chat and have an inprogress ticket now so will see what happens with that.

Do you know whether I need to have an active website on my other domain to use that to set up an agency account using that and whether the IP address would make a difference?

 

[JS Girard]

I really wouldn't know. My SEO agency already had the account when I was onboarded and I have never had to look into it.

 

[JoyHawkins]

So to set up the agency account I'd suggest using a different email to register it with (another email belonging to your domain), then once it's set up, you can transfer the listings in and then remove them from your current email, then add that email to the agency account.

 

[jlw]

So to set up the agency account I'd suggest using a different email to register it with (another email belonging to your domain), then once it's set up, you can transfer the listings in and then remove them from your current email, then add that email to the agency account.

I tried to do that and got this error message when I accepted the invitation to manage

It says
You can't accept invites to manage locations or location groups because your account is part of an organisation or user group. Members of an organisation or user group can only manage locations associated with an organisation.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Yes, with agency accounts you can no longer send invites to an email. This article explains it all: Everything You Need to Know About the Google Business Profile Manager Agency Dashboard - Sterling Sky Inc

 

[jlw]

Yes, with agency accounts you can no longer send invites to an email. This article explains it all: Everything You Need to Know About the Google Business Profile Manager Agency Dashboard - Sterling Sky Inc

Thanks Joy

 

[jlw]

Yes, with agency accounts you can no longer send invites to an email. This article explains it all: Everything You Need to Know About the Google Business Profile Manager Agency Dashboard - Sterling Sky Inc

This was so helpful Joy and I never would have figured this out on my own. Thanks so much. Now I just need to work out my profile won't allow me to update my services and remove the suggested edits. Hopefully, Google will come back with an answer next week. Thanks again