Google Places- Keep YOUR Listing YOURS! New Google Account For Each Business.

 DON'T GIVE UP YOUR HARD EARNED GOOGLE PLACES REVIEWS AND CITATIONS!!

When setting up your Google Places account, remember that there is no way to transfer this account.  If you should sell the business or have any other reason to want to transfer control of the account to another person, you will need to delete the listing and start over.  This means losing all of your reviews and citations. Obviously this could be disastrous!

That being said, DO NOT allow your marketing consultant, advertising agency, or any other outside company to create your listing in their account.  They may wish to do this for convenience.  You need to create this listing in a NEW Google Account.

DO NOT use your personal Google Account or the Google Account of another business you own or control to create your listing. 

DO Create a brand new Google Account for each business that you own. This will allow you to control the account and enable you to transfer that control without losing any of the work you have done.

You should use this thinking with regard to all local search engine listings such as MerchantCircle, HotFrog, YellowPages.com, Yelp, Yahoo, Bing, and others.