Long asked for but not yet made public, a number of large Adwords resellers and IYPS seemingly now have the ability to auto-verify local listings via an API.

I have spoken with a number of European and North American resellers that claim to have the functionality.  Although I have not yet seen it, its existence has been confirmed from multiple sources.

I do not know the processes involved, how Google vets the quality of the listings or if there are additional steps but the flow sounds expedited.

Obviously for anyone doing any amount of verification work, this would be a huge time saver.

And for spammers it could be a new vector. If you have details about how the product works, I would love to hear. Email me mike@blumenthals.com.

And apparently when I was not looking (traveling and speaking in Spain and California) Google has started offering up additional SMB verification options and an easier sign up flow.