Take control of your Local Google Plus Business Page

Have you setup your Google Plus business page ages ago, forgotten all about it, and now you want to use it but can’t remember or don’t have access to the account anymore? You’re not the first one to find yourself in this situation. Having a verified Google Plus company page is important to local search engine results. Verified local listings show-up on Google’s first page search results along with customer reviews and a link to Google Maps which makes it an important asset to your marketing strategy. Sure, posting regularly, adding photos, following relevant pages are all important but if you can’t afford the time, you should, at the very least, setup your business page with consistent branding and complete business and contact information and get it verified.

This brings us back to the problem I mentioned at the top; you go to verify your page and Google shows you a business with your name, address and phone number and asks if this business is yours… This means you’ve already created one or someone else in your organization has but you no longer have access to the account. What you can do is contact Google (I find that a phone call for the Google My Business help line get the fastest results) and ask to get the listing not under your control unverified. They will usually check to make sure the business exists by calling the listed number and verifying that you are associated with it as a security precaution. Once that is done, you can claim that listing as yours.

Another situation I have come across is that of a client who has created a Google+ page and has been using it for some time before finding a duplicate Google Plus page. Google won’t merge the two but, if there are reviews, Google can move them from one page to the other, and once you have control of both pages, delete the duplicate page to make sure that all future client reviews are on one page.