Log into your Google account and visit google.com/business. If you don’t already, you will need to set up a Google My Business account.

If you have never used Google My Business, you will see a welcome screen that looks something like this:


Click ‘Start Now’ and search for the name of the business you want to verify in the search box.


If your business pops up then you know the Google listing for this business already exists and you will need to request access from the account that claimed it. If it doesn’t pop up, then you can set up your new page by submitting the current business information.

If you already have a Google My Business account then click ‘Log In‘ in the upper right. This will bring you to the ‘Business Accounts’ which shows all of the pages you currently manage.

To add add your new business to be verified, click the plus sign in the lower right hand corner of the screen. This will bring you to the same listing map page where you can search for the name of the business to be verified. Note: If you have duplicate listings for the same business, you will need to add each listing in order to request access for them separately. If the business listing already exists, it will pop up. Click the business and it will populate the fields with the current business info. Click continue.

Next, you will see an alert that the page has already been verified with options for requesting access to the page. The partially hidden email address is a clue. Sometimes that’s all it takes to remember which email it is verified under. Click ‘Request Ownership‘.


You will then see the form ‘Someone else manages this business on Google.’. Here you will submit basic info regarding your relationship with the business, your name, email and phone should you want them to contact you. Click ‘Submit‘.



Check old emails addresses and those of past employees that may have created the page. I often find that the notice gets sent to the same person who sent it to an old email that they no longer use or forgot they had. If there is no response, you may have to contact Google to track down the listing.

Make sure you are signed into the google account that you want the business listing to be under before proceeding to the next step.

Step 2: Set Up Google My Business

Navigate to google.com/business while logged into your Google account and click ‘Start Now’.


From there you can claim your business listing by entering the name of the business. Current business listings matching the query will display automatically, and it will give you the option of creating a new listing if nothing is found.

John Podesta recently fell victim to a phishing attack and even had confirmation from his IT staff that his Gmail account was in fact hacked and that he needed to change his password immediately. They now say it was a typo, but the reality is that phishing attacks can fool even the most experienced technical users.

The Attack

The popular WordPress security plugin Wordfence recently put out a great article about the technical aspects of the attack and how it is fooling users at all experience levels. This attack targets Gmail users specifically and uses image attachments and subject lines from trusted email addresses you already recognize that may have been compromised using the same technique.

What you can do to prevent these types of attacks

As a matter of habit, you should always check the address bar especially when singing into anything to make sure it is in fact a legitimate site. In this case, the url does contain the URL ‘accounts.google.com’, but a closer look reveals additional code.

From the WordFence article:

This phishing technique uses something called a ‘data URI’ to include a complete file in the browser location bar. When you glance up at the browser location bar and see ‘data:text/html…..’ that is actually a very long string of text. If you widen out the location bar it looks like this:

There is a lot of whitespace which I have removed. But on the far right you can see the beginning of what is a very large chunk of text. This is actually a file that opens in a new tab and creates a completely functional fake Gmail login page which sends your credentials to the attacker.

As you can see on the far left of the browser location bar, instead of ‘https’ you have ‘data:text/html,’ followed by the usual ‘https://accounts.google.com….’. If you aren’t paying close attention you will ignore the ‘data:text/html’ preamble and assume the URL is safe.

Tom Scott recently tweeted about this same attack that he recieved in his email:

From the WordFence article:

When you sign in to any service, check the browser location bar and verify the protocol, then verify the hostname. It should look like this in Chrome when signing into Gmail or Google:

Make sure there is nothing before the hostname ‘accounts.google.com’ other than ‘https://’ and the lock symbol. You should also take special note of the green color and lock symbol that appears on the left. If you can’t verify the protocol and verify the hostname, stop and consider what you just clicked on to get to that sign-in page.

Enable two factor authentication if it is available on every service that you use. GMail calls this “2- step verification” and you can find out how to enable it on this page.

Enabling two factor authentication makes it much more difficult for an attacker to sign into a service that you use, even if they manage to steal your password using this technique. I would like to note that there is some discussion that indicates even two factor authentication may not protect against this attack. However I have not seen a proof of concept, so I can not confirm this.

How will I know if my account is already hacked?

There is no sure way to know if your account has been hacked. When in doubt, change your password. This is a good practice in general anyway, but will rule out the possibility that someone has access to your account.

In addition, you can check your account activity and see if there has been any suspicious activity: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/45938?hl=en

I had a client recently receive a negative review from a customer on Yelp!. Their business listing was complete, verified and overall looked good but because there were no reviews, one negative rating became the primary influencer of the entire listing. It was the first thing people saw when they came to the page. I suggested they tap into their email list and simply ask people to review the business. They sent it in the form of an informal follow-up email asking for a Google plus review of their business along with a direct link to the review form. They also sent a separate email to the other half of their list with a link to their Yelp! page.

After sending the emails, about 90 percent of the people either ignored or replied saying they would review, but never followed through. As a result, the small number of reviews we did receive had a big impact. For the Yelp! listing, four 5 star reviews came in and pushed the negative review off the first page. Google plus received three reviews adding to the others that were already there – and a huge improvement of the overall credibility of the listing.

People are generally glad to review your business

In general, past and current clients are willing and often glad to review your business. One or several positive reviews can instantly increase the credibility and overall efficacy of a business listing. Of course, you want to be discretionary about who you ask. You don’t want to spam your entire email list asking for a review. You want to make sure they had a positive experience with your business and that they may leave a positive comment. Chances are once you start going through your list, names will start popping out.

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.”

― John Lydgate

It’s really not too difficult to ask people to review your business. You don’t need a big email list or any email list at all. Open your Outlook address book and get a small list of past clients who you think might be able and willing to give you a positive review. You might be surprised with the feedback you get.

Want to discuss further? Get in touch! We’d be glad to answer any questions.

This is much easier and less technical than it seems. This short blog post covers how to do it.

Step 1: Navigate to your Google Plus business page and copy the URL. It should look something like this:
https://plus.google.com/106985568135521918318/posts

Step 2: Add this to the URL right after ‘posts’ (without the quotes): “?hl=en&review=1”

Your new URL will look like this:
https://plus.google.com/106985568135521918318/posts?hl=en&review=1

This link will take the user to your Google Plus page and will pop open the review box. This link can be shortened and used in an email newsletter blast or shared privately with past clients.

This may seem simple, but the implications are big. When you ask your client to leave a review on your Google Plus page, you are getting real reviews from real people. While some people like to leave reviews on businesses they like, many do not. Sending them this targeted link will eliminate one step and send them directly to the review box.

This post is part of a Google Plus series and is intended to give you a quick step by step guide to disabling ALL notifications from reaching your inbox. So, let’s get to it.

Step 1: Log in to your Google account. This is the easy part. Log in and navigate to your Google Plus page.

Step 2: In the upper left hand corner of the page, click the ‘Home’ button. At the very bottom of the drop down menu, click ‘Settings’.

Step 3: Uncheck all of those darn boxes. By default, Google Plus notifies you about everything. Under ‘Manage Subscriptions’, uncheck ‘Occasional updates about Google+ activity and friend suggestions’ and ‘Occasional updates from people outside your circles’. This will prevent all administrative emails from reaching your inbox.

Under ‘Receive Notifications’, you can go down each field under ‘Get notified by email or phone when someone…’ and uncheck those boxes.

It’s a great feeling when you finally get to the bottom of that list after clicking every single one of those check marks with the knowledge that your inbox will be just a little bit quieter from now on.

Step 1: Locate the Google business listing
Navigate to Google and type in the business name which is to be changed. The listing will appear to the right of the Google search listing. Click the ‘Feedback’ link located to the bottom right of the listing.

Step 2: Change Your Google Listing and Submit to Google
Once on the page titled ‘Report a Problem’ business listing details can be changed publicly. Clicking on the corresponding field will allow it to be edited.

Click ‘Submit’ and the changes will go to Google to be reviewed. Google details it’s review process as follows:

“What happens to your report

If you report a problem on Google Maps, your changes are usually submitted to Google Map Maker. Using Map Maker, people submit reports and review reports made by other users about missing or wrong information on the map. Your change will be compared to a variety of sources to confirm it’s correct.

Note: Not all reports go to Map Maker. Some are sent directly to Google for review.”

In my experience, Google will review your request and will make your changes public within 24 hours.