Understanding Google My Business & Local Search
Google My Business Agency Dashboard & Upgrade to API Coming
At the LSA 18 Conference in Chicago (at friggin’ 8 am*) Anita Yuen, from the Google My Business team, announced new features focusing on the small(ish) and bigger agency market.
“GMB now delivers a tailored experience for agencies and platform partners”.
3 Key investments
Updated API – coming
- Messaging API
- Improved Search APIs across location
- Department hierarchies
Note: Messaging API is currently in trusted tester state.
New Agency Dashboard – Created with agency in mind and will be available generally in 2 to 3 weeks.
- Single organization account for all locations
- Users groups for teams
- Invitation Management
Note: it appears that the dashboard will only support certain high trust categories. It is not clear what an agency does with locksmiths or garage door companies.* All verified listings can be brought into the new agency account via the invitation management.
The invitation management allows the agency to easily send an alert to a new client and makes client opt-in much easier. Clients can request that they be included into an agency dashboard by entering the location group ID.
It will essentially be an organizational layer above the new GMB list view dashboard.
New Partner Program – .
- Agencies advanced access
- Dedicated forum and tailored support
- Partner directory
Notes: There is some minimum size agency that wasn’t detailed but it sounded like Google looking for larger agencies and or agencies with growth trajectories.
Sign up for the New Partner Program: bit.ly/gmb-partner
*this erroneous note was an answer given that was related to the white listing program which is distinct from the agency dashboard
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Comments
9 Comments
Thanks for the update Mike. I’ve submitted our request to check out the new dashboard.
Hi Mike,
Question for you. We manage listings for large franchise brands. Will the Google My Business Agency Dashboard allow for us to bring hundreds of locations under one brand and for us to have multiple brands within the dashboard? If this is the case, I will be over the moon thrilled as it is a total pain logging into each brand’s Google My Business account.
Ginger,
Unless things have drastically changed, you should be able to organize them by creating a Business Group for each brand and housing their listings in that Group. You should even be able to control which user group has access to to which Biz Group.
The only possible hiccup to reorganizing is if you are managing these listings on others behalf and only have Management of the listings and not Ownership. In that case you’re probably going to have to coordinate with the various owners.
In the new interface they are called “location groups”. And the easiest way to get them organized as such if you are not the owner is to get the client to create a location group (aka business account) by putting all of their locations into one and then giving you access to that group.
That seemed to work. For the clients who allowed you access to their owner’s login, you:
(1) Log in as the client
(2) Create a Location Group e.g. (Client – Your Agency LSEO)
(3) Highlight all the locations you want to manage, click Actions and Tranfer to the new location group
(4) Click the Settings gear on that new Location Group
(4) Go to Manage Users
(5) Click the add user icon, select manager, and add your GMB Agency’s Dashboard Organization ID number and click Done
(6) Sign back into your Agency Dashboard
(7) Go to Manage Invitations
(8) You should see those new locations
With multi-location bulk accounts, I didn’t see the option to add a location group. So I added my agency like a normal user by adding my organization ID number. Then I logged into my Agency Dashboard and repeated the same steps above.
You still have to deal with verifying listings. I was hoping you wouldn’t have to. I was hoping the agency account would act like a multi-location bulk account.
And it appears you still run into the same problems if someone else has already claimed the listing you were trying to claim.
Same old, same old but with more ways to organize.
I’ve been trying to find a developer who could build a reporting dashboard for our clients but my agency previously was turned down for the GMB API.
However, I now see the API available — at least it looks like it’s available…
Do you think I could now have a developer build out a reporting dashboard that could access our client’s GMB Insights via an API?
I cannot see a benefit for my agency at the first look, but it looks interesting. Thank you for keeping us up to date! (and that comment from John seems to be very helpful to! – so thanks John!)
Great to know that! Looking forward to these new offerings from Google and how they benefit small size agencies like mine.
Thanks for this, Mike – I’ve registered for the partner programme and will be very interested to see what’s in store!
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