Q&A section not letting me reply as the business (when logged into agency account)

[tessamh]

Hey everyone I'm noticing what I think is a bug: I can't post or reply to Q&A for clients because it shows my name (instead of the default mode that lets you reply as the business) anyone else seen this or know what to do? I have triple-checked that I'm logged into the right account etc..It's not happening 100% of the time, just most of the time.

 

[Phil Rozek]

@tessamh, I haven't run into that issue, and would hazard a guess that it's a bug.

One possible other explanation: is there a difference in your level of GMB access? To be more specific: are you an "owner" of the GMB page in the first screenshot, but a "manager" of the page in the second screenshot?

 

[Lluc]

We have the same issue since last Friday... I was wondering why we couldn't post as the business. I don' think the access level has changed but I will double-check with the owners.

 

[tessamh]

@tessamh, I haven't run into that issue, and would hazard a guess that it's a bug.

One possible other explanation: is there a difference in your level of GMB access? To be more specific: are you an "owner" of the GMB page in the first screenshot, but a "manager" of the page in the second screenshot?

Nope same level of access for both! Good point though, I hadn't checked that initially.

 

[Lluc]

Me too, same level access.

 

[Phil Rozek]

@tessamh, it appears that is what's going on. Now I see the same thing you see, when comparing a couple of my clients' GMB pages. The difference between them is that in the one where I can post as the business, I'm a "manager." In the one where I can only post as Phil, I'm a "site manager." I'd be interested to hear whether the level of access you've got is "site manager" in both of those pages/accounts, or is a higher level of access.

 

[tessamh]

I'm a "manager" on all my clients so in this case, I don't think that's what's causing it

 

[Lluc]

I checked with our client and they are able to post "questions" as the business. We still can't, from the same account we were publishing last week. There haven't been any changes with respect to the account level and for this client in particular we are set as owners. They are set as primary owners. We are no longer able to post as the business from that account for any of our clients...

 

[Allie Margeson]

This is an issue affecting about a third of the clients managed in our agency account with manager access. Users with owner and manager access on the same listing (not using an agency account) can post as the business.

It seems to be a bug affecting only agency accounts and it's a complete disassociation with the business outside the dashboard. Here are three listings I manage from the same account on Search view:

I escalated this to Google Support, they told me Q&A is available and functioning as expected on the listings.... and disabled one of my listings when I asked for clarification.

 

[Lluc]

@Allie Margeson Thank you for sharing this info! I am also waiting to hear from Google Support...

 

[Lluc]

Finally, I got an email back from GMB support saying it is a technical issue and that they are working on it.

 

[tessamh]

Finally, I got an email back from GMB support saying it is a technical issue and that they are working on it.

Wow, ok glad they admitted it Thanks for this update!

 

[Jeffrey]

Is this problem still happening for you guys? I don't have an agency account, but am running into the same issues posted here. Can't post an answer as a business owner anymore.

 

[tessamh]

Is this problem still happening for you guys? I don't have an agency account, but am running into the same issues posted here. Can't post an answer as a business owner anymore.

Yes it's still happening for us too, unfortunately

 

[Jeffrey]

Got an update on this! After reaching back out to Google at the beginning of January, they have just let me know what they think is going on.

"We have received a response from our specialist team that this is working as intended, and due to your business model and number of businesses, your business name will not show up in Q&A."

I tested this out by adding my personal Google account as an owner to this GBP (which has access to only a handful of GBPs), and was able to successfully post answers as the business owner under that account!

 

[Allie Margeson]

Thanks for sharing Google's response to you, Jeffrey! It doesn't make sense to me that Google would block posting Q&A as the business for multi-location business models or agency accounts.

@JoyHawkins - I thought Google confirmed this was a bug. Do you think the Support team is ill-informed in their response to Jeffrey or does Google intend for multi-location businesses or accounts with profiles above a certain threshold to lose this ability (albeit sporadically based on our experience)?

It seems inconsistent with what Google has told PEs and what I'm seeing (I have an agency account and this ability is disabled for about 30% of our listings, including mixed results for some multi-location businesses - see example above).

Greg Gifford shared a tip recently that you can force Q&A as the business owner through the API. This fix seems inconsistent with this explanation from Google, since people using the API will likely have a business model managing multiple profiles.

 

[JoyHawkins]

I actually can't recall if they confirmed it was a bug or not. @BenFisher do you remember?