Someone else may control your Google Business Profile

A new client sat down with us for their first setup session. We went to connect their Google Business Profile. That’s the listing on Google Maps with their phone number and reviews. The one they could see had five reviews. Then we found a second profile for the same business. Someone outside the company managed it.

A listing like that keeps bringing in calls, so nobody looks. It only gets in the way the day something has to change. In another session, the connection failed because the profile sat on the wrong email address. Google profile trouble came up in four of the ten setup sessions we looked back over. The profile may sit with an agency, a web designer or someone who has since left. You find out the day you need new hours posted. Or a bad review lands, and you can’t log in to answer it.

Who owns your Google Business Profile right now?

Google will show you in one screen. Open your profile and go to More, then Business Profile settings, then People and access. Every owner and manager is listed there. One of them is the primary owner. Owners can add and remove people. Managers can do almost all the rest, but not that. That’s from Google’s help page, Manage your Business Profile owners & managers.

Here’s the five-minute check:

• Find the primary owner. It should be an email the business controls. If it’s the agency, ask them to make you primary owner. Only the primary owner can hand it over.
• Read every name. Ask of each one: do they still work with us?
• Remove who shouldn’t be there. Select the person, then Remove person. Only an owner can do this.
• Give it a week. A new owner waits seven days before they can remove others or change the primary owner.
• Write it down. Note which email owns the profile, and who holds the password to that email.

Google explains the handover on its page Transfer primary ownership of a Business Profile. If you can’t see the profile at all, you can still ask for it. Google’s page Request ownership of a Business Profile walks through it. You search for your business, and Google says someone else may manage it. You send a request. The current owner gets an email and has three days to reply. If they don’t, you may be able to claim it by verifying the business. If they say no, you can appeal.

A listing nobody can log into is the same problem as a number nobody trusts. Each one is a fact about your business that nobody can change. That’s what we fix when nobody knows what’s true. Once the right person owns it, the reviews can be answered from one screen. That’s how the Google Business Profile connection works. It only connects if the person connecting it is an owner or manager. So when we connect it in an automation build, this check comes first.

The check itself is small. It’s a list of names and a remove button. What matters is looking before the day you need it.