> You can report an issue, and “claim” a business. Google will literally send a postcard with a unique ID to the registered physical address, and whoever gets that postcard can take ownership.
When you say "registered address", do you mean the actual business registered address (as in on Companies House in the UK, for example) or the address which was used to register the business with Google? Because if it's the latter, I think I see a problem ...
The "address" in question here is the location on Google Maps. I managed a few locations for a business and verified them this way. Google would frequently ignore our own posted opening/closing hours and phone numbers in favour of whatever some random user provided under "Suggest an Edit". Horrible system, and support requests just ended up at some Google contractor's inbox in India, where they request to have video calls at 3AM ET to verify our identity (again).
> Because if it's the latter, I think I see a problem ...
Believe it or not, someone spent at least a few hours thinking about this.
The address is physical address that a customer would go to when they look up the business on the map. If it's a restaurant, it's the address that has the tables and food and drinks.
When you say "registered address", do you mean the actual business registered address (as in on Companies House in the UK, for example) or the address which was used to register the business with Google? Because if it's the latter, I think I see a problem ...