Unable to Verify GBP Listings via SMS When Using CallRail Numbers

In February 2025, when Google completed the merge between LSA and GBP listings, many business profiles went under re-verification. Businesses that couldn’t complete this process were suspended. The option to appeal created even more frustration (canned replies, vague answers, months of waiting... if you know, you know), only for us to later find out that Google had marked CallRail’s tracking number as violating Google GBP guidelines. I cannot say for sure why, and it may not be specific to CallRail, but that revealed a bigger problem: any listing where we use a CallRail primary number can not be verified via SMS because these numbers do not support short-code numbers (those short, strange phone numbers you get SMS from the bank, etc.). See another thread from someone discussing this around the same time: http://bit.ly/47r1rAS

As an agency, we obviously see great value in tracking, but it has zero value if the implementation causes the marketing channel it’s used with to stop serving. That’s exactly what happened- a flatline from both map-organic traffic and LSA paid ads because the profile did not get verified.

Per the advice of a senior manager costumer support at CallRail, our next step was to publish this to the community. We’ve been trying to solve this for five months now, with no success. If someone has an elegant solution that proofed working, it would be amazing if you share it here.

We already asked Callrail to allow from the UI a temporary lift of this restriction to allow verification codes  as is widely used by many companies. This would solve the problem. I’m not sure if this is in the works, but unfortunately, no additional updates or timelines from CallRail regarding this.