Verify A Google Business Profile With A Photo

[Stefan Somborac]

In early September, @BenFisher posted on LinkedIn that he had been given the option to verify a Business Profile by phone, email and photo!

Google is pretty good about keeping the GBP Help Center documents current, but this new photo option still hasn’t appeared on “Verify your business on Google”, making me think it’s probably a test.

Just last week, I was given the option of GBP photo verification for the first time. Interestingly, photo verification was the only choice. Google didn’t even give me video verification, the go-to method for the last several years, as an option. So, if this is a test, they sure seem to be leaning into it!

Google must be confident that they’re going to be able to sort the AI images uploaded by Maps spammers from real photos uploaded by merchants with genuine businesses.

As an agency worker, I love the idea of being able to verify a profile for a client!

Questions:

• Has anyone else seen this?
• Did you try it? (I haven't had a chance to test it yet.)
• If so, did it work? Did it fail? Were you asked to follow up with a second type of verification?

 

[Giovanni Rosso]

Hi! First of all, apologies for jumping into your thread—yours was literally the very first post I saw upon opening the forum today!

I haven't personally encountered the photo verification option yet, but if it becomes standard, it would be a total game-changer.

I’ve been away from the forum for a few months, and coming back into it now, managing GBP verification as a third party feels practically impossible compared to how things used to be. As predicted, the whole process has turned into a massive administrative wall.

As a commercial photographer, I often help local clients set up their profiles when I shoot for them. In many cases, submitting verified photos would be so much simpler for everyone involved.

That’s why it’s so baffling that Tier-1 human support makes manual review so painfully complex—rejecting real-world photos, official utility bills, and legal acquisition documents, as I’ve experienced firsthand.

I actually just detailed my long, ongoing saga with support over at my thread here:

https://localsearchforum.com/thread...cquisition-missing-custom-domain-email.63443/

If Google is leaning into photo verification via AI detection, hopefully, it eventually translates into a smoother manual review process for real businesses too!