Unable to Add Manager to Google My Business

The Issue

A Google account, in good standing, is not receiving the invitation email when being assigned as a Manager by a Google My Business Page Owner.

The Workaround

Add “/posts?ppaa=true” to the URL  of the Plus Page when signed in as the invited Manager (e.g. https://plus.google.com/110450935647868031062/posts?ppaa=true)

The Steps to the Workaround Discovery

All of these steps are not necessary. It’s how I discovered the workaround.

When I discovered the issue, I hurried over to the Local Search Forum to find out if I was the only one. After finding I wasn’t, I called Google Local support. It was a quick phone call as they checked to see my account was in good standing. When no obvious solution was in place, the technician recommended I just create another Google Account to send the invitation to and perform that role as Manager. While this is probably not against Terms of Service, it is definitely against good practice, as there should be only ONE GOOGLE ACCOUNT TO RULE THEM ALL.

But as you can see in the image above, I complied. I created a new Google account by first creating an email address at my domain (google@cartomark.com). Now, as I’m going through this process, I’m seeing all that’s wrong with it. I had to name the account, so naturally First, Last was Cartography, Marketing. I get prompted that this is not wise, and I should create a business page instead. Of course. However, I’m forced into this workaround, so I pressed ahead against warning.

Next step was to invite this new Google Account. So, I did that through the Owner of the page as you can see above, next to my personal account (leaving it there, hoping it would work itself out).

Now, with all email accounts I create, I setup a forwarder in cPanel to forward to my personal Gmail account so I can manage it all in one inbox. So, once that invitation to the FALSE Cartography Marketing Google Account went through, it went to my personal social tab in Gmail as seen here ↓

As you can see, it was sent to “google@cartomark.com” but I’m logged into Gmail as my personal account and in Google Chrome. So when I clicked “Become a Manager”, another tab opened, and to my surprise, it was inviting “Tony Leary” as the Manager, instead of the FALSE Cartography Marketing Google Account. The next 2 images show that click process.

So, needless to say, I was extremely relieved and deleted the Manager role from the FALSE account. Now my real account is active as the Manager.

Google Account Manager Invitation Workaround

That’s a mouthful.

So, as I discovered earlier, I wasn’t the only one having this problem. Georgia Jackson posted about it in the Google+ Google My Business community.

Therefore, I felt obligated to spend an hour assembling screenshots and typing this up so that I may serve the community that serves me.

If you’re experiencing the same issue, just add that extension to the URL of the page you were invited to when you’re logged into your account and the invitation will come through! I tried it on another page that was stuck and it worked, as you see here:

And just out of curiosity, I tried to hack a local business page with that URL extension. Didn’t work.

Good luck and please spread the word!