Prospect Genius

If you’re a local SEO practitioner or a small business owner managing your own Google account, you’ve almost certainly received this Google security alert at some point:

It looks like someone else might be trying to access your Google Account. For your protection, you can’t sign in right now.

Try again later or sign in from a different device.

That’s the exact message we receive when Google blocks us from logging into a client’s old Google business account when the account has been inactive for a few years.

To date, we’ve been unable to find a reliable workaround for this common roadblock. None of the suggested solutions we’ve found online have been helpful, either, because they tell you to sign in from the original device that the account was created on—the theory being that you can take advantage of the old session cookie to remember your credentials. However, when you no longer have access to a device or machine from several years ago—which most people don’t—this trick doesn’t work.

And somehow, this is still the prevailing solution floating around the internet. Until now.

After wasting countless afternoons over the years banging our heads against our desks, we finally had a breakthrough today. We figured out how to resolve this Google login problem ourselves. And we’re now going to share it with you.

How to Get Unblocked From a Google Business Account

The next time you see that dreaded security message when signing into an old Google account, here’s what to do:

• Go back to the login page.
• Enter the username or email address.
• Click “Forgot Password.”
• Go through the steps of account recovery:
  • Enter the last known password.
  • Wait for an email confirmation from Google.
  • Send the SMS code to a real cell phone number that hasn’t been used on any other accounts recently.

That last step is key.

If you’re a local SEO practitioner like us, you may be in the habit of using the same company phone when setting up your clients’ Google My Business accounts. It makes the job a lot faster and easier. However, it appears Google is detecting repeat phone numbers, and recovering an account with one of those numbers doesn’t work.

We were shocked and relieved to finally discover a workaround* for this problem that has been driving us crazy for years. That’s why we wasted no time in sharing it with you here on our blog. All of us SEO practitioners have to stick together if we want to keep pace with Google.

So, try out this trick and let us know if it works for you! Good luck!

*So far, we’ve only had one case where this workaround failed, generating this error message: “You’re trying to sign in on a device Google doesn’t recognize, and we don’t have enough information to verify that it’s you. For your protection, you can’t sign in here right now. Try again later or sign in from a different device.” With this message, we can’t get Google to do anything other than ask us for username and password. Even the usual account recovery steps are unavailable.