How to Add a User to Your Google Business Profile

What a Marketing Company Needs on Your Google Business Profile

When an agency or a new employee asks for access to the listing, the right answer is manager access granted to their own Google account. Your password stays out of it, and that distinction matters more than it sounds like it does.

Your Google password opens the whole account: Gmail, Drive, Photos, YouTube, any advertising account attached to it, and the recovery options for all of them. Handing it to a vendor gives them everything, and it tends to backfire mechanically as well as conceptually. Google notices a sign-in from an unfamiliar device in an unfamiliar place and asks for verification, which lands on your phone at an inconvenient moment. Two people working the same login trip that check repeatedly, and accounts get locked at the worst possible time.

Manager access avoids all of it. It's a permission attached to their account, scoped to the listing, visible to you in a list, and revocable in about four taps. If a vendor asks for the password instead of an invite, that's worth a follow-up question. Account access is one of the things choosing an SEO company should turn on, and the position we hold is that the profile access, the website files, and the directory logins go with the client whenever the client goes.

How to Add a User to a Google Business Profile, Step by Step

1. Sign in with the account that owns the listing. If you're unsure which one that is, the account that completed verification is usually it.
2. Bring up the management panel. Search your business name in Google, or open the Google Maps app, tap your account picture, and tap Your Business Profiles.
3. Open the profile settings, then People and access. The current list of everyone with access shows up here, which is worth reading on its own.
4. Press Add. Enter the Google account email address of the person or company you're granting access to. It has to be an address tied to a Google account, so a work address that runs on Google Workspace is fine and an address with no Google account behind it will fail.
5. Choose the role. Manager is the correct choice for an agency or an employee. Owner is for someone who needs full control, including the ability to add and remove other people.
6. Send the invitation. They get an email and accept from there. Until they accept, the invitation sits pending, and you can cancel it from the same screen.

Businesses with several locations do the same thing inside Business Profile Manager, where access can be granted at the group level so one invitation covers every location in it.

Owner and Manager: What Each Google Business Profile Role Can Do

Two roles cover nearly every real situation, plus the primary owner sitting above both.

• Primary owner. Full control, including transferring primary ownership and removing the listing itself. One account holds this, and it should be an account the business controls permanently.
• Owner. Nearly everything the primary owner can do, including adding and removing other users.
• Manager. Edits the business information, replies to reviews, publishes updates, uploads photos, and reads the performance data. A manager can't add or remove users and can't remove the profile.

That last line is the reason manager is the right role for a vendor. They get everything required to do the work and nothing required to lock you out of your own listing. Keep primary ownership on an account the business itself controls, which means a business account rather than the personal Gmail of whoever happened to set it up. When that person leaves, a personal account holding primary ownership turns into a slow and avoidable problem.

One timing detail catches people mid-handoff. A newly added owner has to wait a short period before they can transfer primary ownership or remove other owners, so an ownership change planned for the same afternoon as the invitation will stall. Plan the sequence with a few days in it.

How to Remove Someone From Your Google Business Profile

Pulling access back takes the same path as granting it. Open the profile settings, then People and access, tap the person, and remove them. It takes effect immediately, and they lose the ability to edit the listing from that moment.

Three things are worth doing at the same time:

• Read the whole access list. Old vendors, former employees, and a cousin who helped out years ago tend to still be sitting on it.
• Check the recovery details on the owner account. If a departing employee had a phone number or backup email attached to it, that is a second door.
• Confirm who holds primary ownership. Manager access can be revoked in seconds. Primary ownership held by somebody outside the business is a negotiation.

If a vendor holds primary ownership and won't release it, Google's request access process is the route. It notifies the current owner and gives them a window to respond, and it moves forward if they let the window pass. Expect it to take longer than a phone call would have.

Once the access is sorted, somebody still has to do the work on the listing. That's the part a client hires us for. Month to month we follow what your towns are searching for, keep the category set and the service areas pointed at where it went, add photos and updates to the listing, and send back the position it holds in each town you serve. The full version of that job sits on our Google Business Profile management page, and the free audit is where it starts.