Last week I took over the Google Business Profile for my dad's carpentry business. It had been run for him by a marketing agency, and he was paying them every month for it.
When I looked at the listing, the website link was a directory page with tracking codes on the end, not his own site. The business category included a type of work he does not do. The details had not been touched in a long time. And he could not edit any of it, because the agency held the access and would not hand it over.
None of that was dramatic. It is just very common. A business pays for "someone to look after Google", the person is set up as the owner, and years later the real owner discovers they cannot change their own opening hours.
Why it matters
For a local business, the Google listing is often seen before the website. It is the phone number, the hours, the reviews and the photos that show up in the search results and on the map. If you cannot edit it, you cannot fix a wrong phone number, add a new service, reply to a review or post an update. And if the person who holds the access leaves, goes quiet or you part on bad terms, you are stuck.
It is also the reason I keep one rule on every client job: anything the business depends on, such as the domain, the analytics and the Google profile, sits under the business owner's own email. My tools can sit under mine. Yours should not.
How to check in two minutes
- Sign in to the Google account you think runs your listing and search for your own business name. If you see a bar with options such as Edit profile and Performance, you have access.
- Open the people and access settings for the profile. You will see a list of who has access and what role each person has: Owner, Manager or Site manager.
- Look at the email addresses. Is at least one Owner an email that belongs to you or someone inside your business, and that you can log into?
- If the only owner is an agency, a former employee or an address you do not recognise, you do not control your own listing.
What to do if it is not you
- Ask first, in writing. Ask whoever holds it to add your own email as an Owner. A decent provider does this without a fuss, and keeping a Manager role is a perfectly normal way for them to carry on helping.
- If they will not, use Google's own route. The listing has a way to request ownership. Google then asks you to prove you run the business, usually with a verification step, and the current owner gets a chance to respond.
- Check what the listing says while you are in there. Name, category, website link, hours, phone and service areas. Fix what is wrong.
The best setup is the simplest one: you are the Owner, and anyone helping you, whether that is me, an agency or a staff member, is a Manager. Managers can do the work. Only you can take it away.
Questions worth asking anyone who looks after your online presence
- Whose email is the Owner on my Google profile?
- Whose name is my domain registered under?
- Who owns the analytics and Search Console accounts?
- If we stopped working together tomorrow, what would I walk away with?
Ask these before you need the answers. A good provider will be glad you asked. If the answers are vague, that tells you something too.
If you want a second pair of eyes on your listing, book a free call and I will look at it with you. The post on whether Google can even see your site is a good companion read, and you can see the site I built for the same business.