Creating and managing a Google My Business Organization account

YouTube videos that could help you do this task :

Google My Business tutorial :

How to set up Google My Business Listing :

Goal: Create a Google My Business organization account for your agency.

Ideal Outcome: You’re able to easily manage access to all of your clients’ Google My Business listings through a centralized account.

Prerequisites or requirements: N/A.

Why this is important: Agencies that work on Local SEO for clients, typically need to access dozens of different Google My Business accounts. Moreover, each of these businesses is typically managed by different team members. An organization account simplifies the process of managing access to clients’ Google My Business accounts for your agency and team.

Where this is done: In a Google My Business Organization account.

When this is done: The creation of the organization will only happen once. However, you’ll typically follow specific processes described in this SOP to request access to new Google My Business accounts, as well as to manage access to those accounts for your employees.

Who does this: The agency owner or manager.

• Creating an organization account for Google My Business

1. Go to business.google.com/agencysignup
2. Enter your agency’s website URL.

3. Next you will need to make sure you’re logged into an email account that matches the domain of the website you entered previously.

4. Fill in the address and phone number for your agency.

5. To proceed, you need to add at least one additional account owner.
1. For this user to accept the invitation, they can’t be an owner or manager of another Google My Business listing (if that’s the case, they will need to remove those locations before accepting)

6. You’ll need to review the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, click “Finish”, and you’ll see a success message.

• Creating location groups

A location group contains a group of Google My Business listings (your clients’) that are managed by your organization or agency.

Depending on the size of your agency, you might want to create just one or multiple location groups.

• 1 location group: if you run a small agency in which your entire team needs access to all of your clients’ Google My Business listings
• 2+ location groups: if you run a medium-large agency in which different teams have access to different groups of clients’ Google My Business listings (e.g. “agency team A” has access to manage “client A” and “client B”; “agency team B” has access to manage “client C”)

Whatever the case, any Google My Business account your agency will have access to, needs to be added to a location group first.

1. On the left-hand side menu, click on “Businesses” and then on “Create group”

2. Provide a name that clearly describes this group

3. Before adding businesses, make sure the right location group is selected from the dropdown

4. To add businesses to this group, click “Add business” and then “Add single business”

5. If your client doesn’t have a Google My Business listing yet, you can follow :

6. If your client’s business already has Google My Business listing, type its name in the search field and select the right location from the results

7. If this business profile has already been verified (most likely case), you can request access to it from the business owner (your client)

8. Under level of access, select “Management”; fill out your Agency’s contact information so your client can easily identify your request for access; and hit submit.

9. You’ll see a success message. This is a good time to contact your client via email or phone to let them know you’ve requested access to their listing. They need to reply to it within 3 days.

10. Once your request has been approved, you’ll see the listing inside the location group and will be able to access its Google My Business dashboard

11. Repeat steps 4-8 for each of the business listings you want to add to this group.

• Creating user groups

You can use user groups to allow entire teams within your agency to manage access to specific location groups.

Instead of individually adding/removing each team member to a location group, you can create a user group and just add/remove this user group to the location group.

User groups also allow you to have control over permission levels that certain team members have over location groups.

1. On the left-hand side menu, click on “Manage users” and then on “Create user group”

2. Give the user group a descriptive name and save it

3. Add all the people belonging to this team


**Important**: for a user to be added to a user group, their account must not directly own or manage any locations or location groups.

1. In most cases, you’ll add users under the “member” role

2. If you want a specific user to have permissions to add/remove other members to this user group, as well as delete the user group, you will need to add them as an “owner”

4. Finally, to allow this user group to manage a location group, click on “Businesses” on the left-hand side menu

5. Select the appropriate location group from the dropdown and click “Group settings”

6. Under “Managers”, click on “Manage users”

7. Click on “Add user group”

8. Select the user group from the dropdown

1. In most cases, you’ll add the user group under the “manager” role

2. If you want members of a user group to have permissions to add and remove location group/business account managers, delete location group/business account, transfer location group/business account ownership, you will need to add them as an “owner”

9. That’s it! This user group now has access to manage all of the Google My Business listings under this location group.