Since transferring its Places for Business to Nokia Prime Places, Bing has run wild with its verification process. After years of frustration, Canadian business owners can finally submit their free business listings to Bing Canada, thanks to Nokia’s recent partnership with Microsoft.
But the frustration has not gone away.
The struggles of many business owners to verify business listings with Bing Places Canada have been well documented. Simply put, businesses are not being verified. After you have gone through the process of creating an account, adding relevant business information, and accepting the terms and conditions, you are brought to the Bing Places verification page.
Your Bing Places Verification Options
You are given a number of options (as shown below): Phone, Document, Social Network and Postcard.
The Social Network option provides immediate verification. We have tested this on our own company account amongst others and this in fact, is true.
Bing says that the Postcard verification can take 2 to 6 weeks. They also give you the option of uploading a document with your business name and address on it such as a utility bill, tax document or business license. That could take around 2 to 3 days to verify.
There are two little cruxes here:
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How many options there are to verify your listing
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How long this verification process will ACTUALLY take.
How Many Options Does Bing Places Give You To Verify Your Business?
In the above picture, you see 4 options.
Below are the verification options for another account:
You can see that there are 5 options to verify. The additional option is by email.
Here are the verification options for another account:
There are just 3 total options this time. We found this last one to be a common theme throughout most of the businesses we had to verify.
It is entirely possible that the number of options Bing offers you to verify depend on the information you submit when creating your listing. However, we filled in the same number of fields each time submitting business information for a different account.
How Long Does The Bing Places Verification Process Take?
How long the process for the email and postcard options to verify your listing is up in the air. One week ago, we requested Bing to submit email verifications to 3 of our clients. Those 3 clients have yet to hear from Bing Places. Both the Phone and Social Network options provide immediate verification. In addition, some requested postcards failed to show even after 6 weeks.
With time being so important to Internet marketers and business owners alike, processes like these should be made as simple as possible. The question that marketers will ask is: If Google can get it right with Places, why can’t Bing?
Have you tried getting your business verified with Bing? How long has it taken? Vent with a comment and don't forget to subscribe!
About the Author:
Ramesh Ranjan is the Inbound Marketing Specialist at LocalTrifecta Internet Marketing, where he helps businesses across Metro Vancouver increase sales and revenue through Inbound Marketing. His marketing heroes are Marcus Sheridan, John Caples and John Carlton. In his off time, he can be found playing roller hockey in Richmond, blogging on his personal website, and at the top of the office hockey pool. You can follow and connect with Ramesh over Twitter and Google+
