Google Places is an awesome tool to get maximum exposure for your business online. You can claim it after verifying you’re the owner (either by phone call or postcard) and create relevant information to drive business. However, if you claim it using a personal Google account (like I did), you’ll soon realize its better to keep it under a business Google account.
There’s no official or un-official way to share or swap the email address controlling your Google Places page. Although Google doesn’t make it intuitive, you can give control to another Google account instantly. It includes deleting the original account association and reclaiming the listing by phone.
WARNING: Following these steps will remove all images, videos, coupons, descriptions, etc… from your listing and you will have to republish them. Make backups or screenshots.
Step 1 – Verify your primary phone number details
Go to http://google.com/places and click the blue “Get Started” button on the right. Edit your listing to make sure the primary phone number listed is correct. This is the number Google is going to call to verify your listing instantly.
Step 2 – Remove listing from Google Places account
Click the delete button below the Google Places listing on your dashboard.
Make sure to choose “Remove this listing from my Google Places account”. Do NOT choose the second option.
Step 3 – Re-claim your listing
Log out of your Google account in the top right and sign in using the account you want to link your Google Places listing to. Go back to http://google.com/places and click the blue “Get Started” button again. If you don’t already have at least one Google Places listing associated with this new Google account, it will take you to a screen to search listings by phone number. Otherwise you’ll have to access this page by clicking “Add another business” on your Google Places dashboard.
After you search by the phone number, you can edit the listing and the last step will ask you to verify either by phone or postcard. Hopefully you have the phone number already entered from Step 1 if it was incorrect or missing. Now you just need to re-enter all your listing info from your previous listing.
That’s it. You have just switched over your Google Places listing to another Google account instantly!
If you have any questions just leave them in the comments and I’ll see if I can help.
That stinks. What Google really needs is the ability to associate admins with a place once it’s registered, so that two or more people can share editing rights without sharing Google accounts.
I did all that was mentioned above in transferring places info to google+, up until the reclaiming part. I can’t find me business profile in google maps, as its status was pending review for some reason. I now understand that this would keep the site from showing in google maps, but am HOPEFUL that I will be able to reclaim the content of the profile for future transfer or reintroduction to google. Could someone please help me with what to do to get this information that was released from google places? Thanks for your help.
Kurt
I did exactly as described above but couldn’t manage to find my previous listing. I put all the information in again but Google said it can’t be verified. What do I do know? I have a listing on Google maps but no way to access it?
A while ago I wanted to add another business and also had trouble to verify it. When I contacted Google I got a very rude reply!
Yeah, don’t try this. Our listing is now in limbo as we can’t reclaim.