There is an announcement in the Google Business Help forums about a policy change happening with the Google My Business – Google Maps business verification process.

In short, you will no longer be able to call the Google Maps team and have them manually verify your business over the phone. That process will no longer be available starting next week. Google operators will decline those requests and send you to the normal verification methods.

Here is a copy of the announcement:

So this short cut is gone, for at least the time being.

Forum discussion at Google Business Help.

Update: A Google spokesperson told me this isn’t entirely true. They told me, “we aren’t removing manual verification.” “We just wanted to clarify to users that they should use the official channel to do this, rather than contact the support team,” Google added.