Just sit right back and I'll tell a tale... a tale of a silly broker...
This has been an interesting scenario over the last month that we've helped deal with but it shows that some brokers are willing to step over dollars to pick up pennies.
We've worked on and off with a client in Illinois that kills it with his Google Business Page. He thought ahead and signed up for a Google Business page years ago listing his name and his brokerage office. He's collected several dozen positive reviews. However, his broker recently got a complaint that he gets the call when someone looks up his brokerage instead of the office admin. He's one of the top producers in his office and his broker complained that he shows up instead of the office. She told him he needed to give her the business listing. He refused saying that all the reviews are for him, not her or the brokerage but him personally. She insisted that he give her the business listing or change his name. On top of it all, he was changing IDX solutions and she refused to sign the IDX approval until he gave her the business listing!
Now, he gets a lot of business just from his Google business page alone so changing it would mean not showing up for what he's been showing up for years and maybe dropping his ranking. However, after some research with us, we noticed that 4 agents in the office were using the same Google business name [Brokerage] [agent name] and because he has many more reviews than the others, he comes up first.
We have talked with this broker multiple times about how she can set up her own business listing and that we'd even help her and then she can work hard to get the reviews needed and such to compete with him but she seemed like she'd rather fight for his listing than create her own... (Seems like crazy politics if you ask me)
Our Client agreed to change the name and did, but as you probably know with Google, they may take a bit to change so she didn't believe him that he changed that name and was now yelling at US for controlling Google.... um, hello?? WE DON'T CONTROL GOOGLE - NO ONE DOES BUT GOOGLE, but she literally wouldn't believe us.
But - since this broker didn't get complaints on the other agents in the office, they are not changing their names (That is until someone else complains)
All in all - it's been a long go-around and he almost left for another office which would have lost this broker thousands of dollars in fees! That just seems counterproductive; to be willing to lose an agent because of another agent's complaint about who shows up first when Googled.
Will Google change the name? Eventually. But in the meantime, we both have to negotiate and convince her that we don't control Google and Google will eventually change it, however, I don't see her signing anything until she's satisfied. Ugh...
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