Hey, Vikings. Checking in. We made significant progress this week, and a lot of our users are now established with their private instances. There are still some users who’ve got some hurdles to clear before they’re in the same boat, so we’re going to go over some recurring pitfalls we’ve seen people encounter and what you can do to overcome them.
Before we get into that, let’s take a moment to let everyone know what’s going on for people who were either denied API access or who didn’t qualify for it in the first place because they’re business owners or just otherwise not working as or for an agency.
We’ve been working with some industry colleagues to situate you. We will be piggybacking on some of their existing infrastructure, and we have a platform that has been tested through and through. In order to get the new platform on its feet, we required new API access, just like everyone who needed it to set their private instance up. The software is ready, working, and waiting. Everyone will be able to hit the ground running. We were hoping to move everyone there on Monday of last week.
To our chagrin, Google My Business put up a notice, telling the public that they would not accept more API applications until August 2, or Monday of this week. We don’t get any special treatment from Google. We put our application in on Monday and are awaiting an email, letting us know we’ve been approved. We will be in touch as soon as we receive it.
All of your account information has been preserved. Your login and password will work. You will have the same number of GeoGrid and keyword credits. Your previous GeoGrid searches have been saved, and you will be able to review them. The settings for your reports will be the same, because all of that information is saved as well, along with your post history and posts that are scheduled for the future. Essentially, you will have the same experience you had on Local Viking, with a nearly identical layout.
This should not be an option you’re holding out for. If you’re eligible for a private instance, that should indeed be your goal. There are all kinds of benefits that come along with it, but the main one is that you will never be subject to a blackout like the one we just experienced because of the actions of someone else. You’ll also have a page with your own logos on your own domain.
Let’s take a look at some of the issues that people setting their private instances up are encountering most frequently. The first thing to be aware of is that you will need to do things in the right order. The first thing you need to do is choose a subdomain that you’d like to have your private instance on. After setting a CNAME record for it (which you can read instructions for here: https://help.localviking.com/en/articles/3406491-configuring-your-white-label-domain), you’ll need to sign out of localviking.com and sign into your account from your white label domain. After that, you’ll need to reconnect your Google account.
A number of users have had issues reconnecting their Google accounts. This is most likely due to a faulty connection with the Google My Business API. Despite the fact that they’ve received an email from Google, confirming that they’ve been granted access, a number of users have found that this is in fact not the case. We do not know why this is a recurring issue, but luckily, there’s a reasonably simple solution.
There is a support form for the Google My Business API that you can find here: https://support.google.com/business/contact/api_default
It’s important to put things in your own words, but for the issue summary, which will effectively show up as an email subject line when it reaches the Google My Business team, should say something like “trouble connecting to the API.”
For the issue summary, you’ll essentially just need to say the same thing, just fleshed out a little bit. You’ll want to say something along these lines:
“I received a confirmation email from Google that approved my access to the GMB API, I set a project up, and created OAuth keys for my application. Unfortunately, when I try to interact with the GMB API and receive data from my Google Account, I encounter an error. In effect, it seems like I do not have API access. Please help me sort this out.”
We’ve had somewhere in the neighborhood of a 100% success rate for people who have gotten in touch with the Google My Business team, stated that they were granted access to the API, but are now encountering a 404 or 403 error.
We hope this information is helpful. As always, please get in touch with Local Viking support if you run into a snag anywhere. We are glad to do what we can to help you move forward in the white labeling process.