New: Google My Business Provider

Google has launched a new local Google My Business initiative named My Business Provider. This essentially lets other companies or organizations help verify businesses and organizations they work with in Google My Business. In short, it is a way to allow others to add existing verified businesses to Google My Business.

Mike Blumenthal covered it saying "The Business Provider program is designed to let organizations like Chambers of Commerce or banks with small business clients facilitate a Google My Business Verification for their members or clients." He thinks this can go terribly wrong and cause lots of problems.

Google wrote "My Business Provider is a program where groups or organizations handling large amounts of business data can partner with Google to help businesses claim their online presence on Google Maps and Search through Google My Business."

Here is more:

Google My Business is a free service offered to businesses to manage their online listing on Google Maps and Search. Google My Business requires businesses to verify themselves to be able to manage their online presence. Groups or organizations share business data with Google to generate verification codes on behalf of businesses. My Business Providers distribute these codes to the businesses, who then use the codes to quickly verify their listing on Google My Business. The code generated for a business is usable by that particular business only.

Various providers, such as banks, auto-dealers, delivery and distribution companies, telephone companies, tourism and governmental organizations, malls, airports, etc. that offer real-world services are eligible to apply for the My Business Provider program.

To become a My Business Provider reach out to your Google account manager.

Some important FAQs on this:

What are the benefits of this program?

With My Business Provider, you can help local merchants have an online presence on Google Maps and Search. Their businesses will grow and flourish through your support. If you are helping local merchants succeed through a strong online presence, this partnership with Google can help you distinguish yourself from other competitors.

You can access the dashboard at https://partnerdash.google.com/mybusinessprovider if you are approved. You can get these metrics there:

1. Creator email address: The user that generated the token.
2. Expire time: The specific date the verification token expires.
3. Location: The address and other details that describe how a business would look like on Google Maps.
4. Label: The batch label given to the CSV file that the token was generated from.
5. Create time: The time a specific verification token was created.
6. Name: Unique name of the verification token.
7. Claim status: Describes whether a verification token was claimed.

Here is a screen shot of the dashboard:

What could possibly go wrong? https://t.co/oGSmtIJnto

— Mike Blumenthal (@mblumenthal) January 12, 2020

Forum discussion at Twitter.