My Review of the Google+ Local Phone Support System. Hint: It’s Awesome!
How many of you have heard about the new (well sort of new) Google+ Phone Support system? Well, technically speaking, it’s only supposed to work in the United States, but thank the lord we use the same pre-fixes for phone numbers up in Canada so it’s been working like a gem. Our team has already used it on several occasions to save us a butt load of time verifying and/or correcting issues with clients Google Places accounts, however don’t bother asking them how to get your clients ranked higher in Local – they’re still playing that one pretty tight to the vest haha!
Living on Easy Street!
A pretty cool work around I found (which I like to call the Google+ game-genie hack) while using Google’s phone support, was for clients of ours who upgraded their Places page into the new Google+ platform (and what a nightmare that has been – I reccomend NOT doing this), if your clients haven’t received their shiny post cards yet, they can route you to a specialist who can possibly expedite the process as long as you’ve already requested PIN verification and it’s been over 14 days. In many circumstances, requesting a PIN verification within Google+ works, however when we tried back in October of 2012 with some of our clients, the PIN’s never came and the clients accounts were stuck in a ‘pending status’.
Anyway, after my support call with Matt from Google I asked to be CC’ed on any updates to my client’s accounts and here’s what happened:
Hi Andrew,
This is Matt again with the Google+ Local Team following up on our earlier phone conversation regarding client X’s listing. Just to summarize, your Google+ page will be verified when your Google+ page and Google+ Local listing is merged.
I’m routing your query to a specialist on another team who is best equipped handle the merge. You should hear from either them or myself soon.
If you need any additional assistance, please feel free to contact us.
Regards,
Matt
The Google+ Local Team
…and a short 2 days later …
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for your interest in upgrading your page early. I’ve checked the details of your page and verified you as the owner of client X’s listing.
Please make sure the information on your page is up-to-date and meets our quality guidelines to ensure that your page remains verified. You can update your page using the editing tool in your Google+ Account. For more information on how to edit your +page, check out this article: http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1727176&topic=1710599&ctx=topic
Thanks for your patience.
Best,
Nathan
The Google Team
There’s been a lot of speculation in the local search community about data being synchronized and pulled from Map Maker and Google Places and once merged into Google+, where are we supposed to make edits? According to Google all edits should be done in Google+ but I thought I would ask him the question anyway, specifically regarding category synchronization:
Hi Nathan,
Thanks for taking care of this. Question for you – will the categories selected in Google Places carry over into the merged Google+ Local Page or will I have to reselect the categories using the new Google+ Dashboard?
Let me know, thanks!
Andrew
Adster Creative
and their response….
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the reply. Because both accounts are linked to this same page, essentially all data will be sent to the same live listing. If you need to update or change any details, it is best to make those edits from the Google+ dashboard.
Best,
Nathan
The Google Team
Mystery solved …. ? Not quite. From what I understand, Google is SAYING that any and all data will be ported over from Google Places, even though when you merge into Google+ Local the categories are blank and need to be selected. Either way, this new Google+ phone support system is awesome, has saved me countless hours and the turnaround time is great. Maybe Facebook’s graph search scared some sense into them … either way – I love it! Let me know your experiences below!