What to do when a GMB "page owner" has "left the building"

[jrobbins]

Does anyone know an efficient solution to a problem that must be an issue as I have encountered it big time lately. Simply put, I have 100 chain locations (company B) that are being acquired by an existing customer (company A). We have a GMB account for company A. What can you do when the company B owner of the 100 (or in many cases less than 100 as the pages are now dormant) pages has moved on to some other company taking their UN/PW et al with them? To my knowledge, the usual GMB protocol has NO workaround for this problem.

Thanx in advance for ANY helpful feedback!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Oh dear that's a tricky one James!

Not that you won't get answers here eventually because we have lots of pros... But the majority of our bigger agencies that tend to deal with large multi-location clients are at our Pro Community.

Also there are so many great posts here that sometimes your post will get buried.
Lots of Pros have notifications turned on there so will see your post right away and respond.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Have you read through the GMBL Help Center for a solution?

This is probably a good start - https://support.google.com/business/answer/4646651

 

[jrobbins]

Thanks for the follow up Linda/Colan. I have followed that Google help link before and it is the ONLY protocol GMB has in place to deal with "ownership conflicts". The problem is the "request" Google sends on your behalf to the "other owner" unfortunately is sent to an address of someone who has "left the building"......so begins the never-ending loop GMB provides to deal with this problem...

 

[Dillon Brickhouse]

Hi,

Google doesn't necessarily have to "send" anything to each location. It is possible for them to call the locations to verify your association with them. I've had luck dealing with these conflicts before, but I've never tried it for multiple locations. Here's what I'd try:

1. Notify whoever will answer the phone at each location that they may be receiving a call from Google on your behalf. Make sure they know your name (or at least the name of your company).

2. Get a full list together of the GMB url's in question.

3. Time to call Google support. You'll definitely want to use your Adwords account for this if you have one. The support is FAR superior and you can use your agency account, regardless of the client.

4. Explain your situation and ask the rep to send you an email for your general info (It'll ask for your name -- I'd put your company name in parenthesis afterward -- The email address you want to use to access the GMB's, and your company email address). And I'd see if you can just send them the list of url's.

5. If they're willing to give this level of support, they'll call each location to verify your association to the business, and unverify the GMB's so you can claim them.

No guarantees that this will work for multiple locations, but it's worth a try.

 

[cdawg2610]

Thanks for the follow up Linda/Colan. I have followed that Google help link before and it is the ONLY protocol GMB has in place to deal with "ownership conflicts". The problem is the "request" Google sends on your behalf to the "other owner" unfortunately is sent to an address of someone who has "left the building"......so begins the never-ending loop GMB provides to deal with this problem...

First off Josh I vote chocolate or some other sort of coping mechanism as it will make long process easier.

Have you tried to reach out to that person who left the company (linkedin or otherwise) to first see if you can get that info?

If that doesn't work, I'd reach out to the bulk support person or the bulk email might still work (I haven't had to use to recently.) local-bulk@google.com

If none of that can help transfer the accounts at once, you can go about the unverified and re-verfiyng. Let the GMB support know it's someone who has left the company and you need to regain access before they do something. That tends to trigger the GMB support to be more helpful.

 

[Colan Nielsen]

The problem is the "request" Google sends on your behalf to the "other owner" unfortunately is sent to an address of someone who has "left the building".......

That is ok. This indicates to Google that the account is inactive. This is the ideal time to use GMB Phone Support and they will help you get control of the page(s).