When setting up an account on Google Places, Yahoo! Local, Bing Local, or any of the other similar pages, keep in mind that there is no way to transfer the accounts to someone else. Should you sell the business or have any other reason to want to transfer control of the account to another person, you will need to shut down the listing and and they will have to create a new one. This means losing all of your reviews and other information which can be a huge loss if you have built up a good reputation with your customers.
Two things to remember:
- Don’t create the listing with your personal account. (i.e using your personal Gmail account for Google Places) Create a new account which can be transferred.
- Don’t let a Consultant or Agency create one for you. The account needs to be independent of their accounts since they won’t be able to transfer it back to you should you want to make changes to your listing.
If you own multiple companies, create multiple accounts to service each of the companies. While this is more work, it will make things much easier in the long run.
-Patrick