Worth the risk of an agency account?

[Den]

Thinking about the risk of getting all listings under the agency account suspended out of nowhere for something silly.

What caused me to think about that is this thread: Entire GMB account suspended

And obviously there's been other incidents in the past where people who have all the listings under one account, albeit not an agency account, get all their listings suspended because one of the listings violated ToS..

Makes me a little hesitant to go with an agency account even though it has some clear benefits..

I wish it was as easy as "just don't do anything stupid with the listings" but sometimes Google tends to do something silly which is out of my control.. and then there's always the risk if one employee in one of the companies decides to edit something

 

[Chris Barnard]

I share your concerns, my persisting thought is Google will do silly stuff either way.

 

[brettmandoes]

Thinking about the risk of getting all listings under the agency account suspended out of nowhere for something silly.

What caused me to think about that is this thread: Entire GMB account suspended

And obviously there's been other incidents in the past where people who have all the listings under one account, albeit not an agency account, get all their listings suspended because one of the listings violated ToS..

Makes me a little hesitant to go with an agency account even though it has some clear benefits..

I wish it was as easy as "just don't do anything stupid with the listings" but sometimes Google tends to do something silly which is out of my control.. and then there's always the risk if one employee in one of the companies decides to edit something

We're trying to get an agency account setup right now - its been buggy and their system isn't working as intended. So maybe it's for the best. As you say it seems risky, but if you have hundreds of locations that you manage like we do I don't think there's a good alternative solution here. We've avoided it for the risk factor as well but management of GMBs through a bunch of different gmails has gotten out of hand.

I do have a client who I would never allow into an agency account. I think if you know that a client is high risk because they do crazy stuff (like verifying warehouses, empty offices, loading bays and storage units) you just keep them away from your account entirely.

 

[Joey Abna]

Reading this thread and the linked thread by the OP has me wondering about the risks between a regular GMB account with multiple listings versus an GMB Agency account. I started an Agency account setup a few weeks ago but became frustrated with the process as well.

 

[Den]

Perhaps a stupid question but if one is simply just a manager over all the listings instead of being an owner, would you still be susceptible to getting all listings under one account suspended?

 

[rgblocal]

Perhaps a stupid question but if one is simply just a manager over all the listings instead of being an owner, would you still be susceptible to getting all listings under one account suspended?

I want to *think* so.... Google's commentary on this:

If we remove:

The owner’s Google Account​

• We remove all the locations owned by that user.
• If we reinstate the owner’s Google Account, we'll also reinstate the owned locations.

A manager’s Google Account​

• We suspend the manager on the accounts they manage. The locations aren’t affected.
• If we reinstate a manager’s Google Account, they regain access to the locations.

Source: Fix suspended Business Profiles - Google My Business Help