Per this blog post by Mike Blumenthal, Google’s Trusted Verifier program is now replaced by their Business Provider program.

What this means for LocalMN Interactive is that we’re no longer eligible to offer these services. We’re an agency. From their Business Provider FAQ page:

The proposed partner must not have access to the business listings they are verifying.

Agencies, SEOs, and resellers are not eligible for this program.

I’m not too surprised with this, given the apparent ease to be accepted. A good couple years ago, to apply I believe you needed to be invited to by a friend to take a somewhat-detailed 10-question test. In some forum, the link got leaked, I jumped on it, answered all 10 questions correctly, and bam! I was a Google Trusted Verifier.

No serious leads ever came from it, and it really seemed to be a program ripe for manipulation.

As of now, I proactively updated that marketing page and took out internal links to it. Eventually, I’ll 301 redirect the page to the closet appropriate one. I’m taking out the Trusted Verified icon for future images to it and replaced it with a Theta camera icon shown here and just partially at the top icon on this post.

Google Icons with Theta

If you have any questions, certainly let me know.

LocalMN Interactive provides local search marketing services with a specialization in Google 360 Photography.