How to Claim Your Google Business Profile
The listing almost certainly exists already, so the real question is who controls it. This guide covers each situation, what to do when a former agency will not let go and why ownership matters more than access.
It Probably Already Exists
Claiming means taking control of a listing that is already there. Google generates listings from other sources, so most businesses trading for a few years have one that nobody at the business ever created. If you are starting from genuinely nothing, adding your business to Google is the page you want.
Where these listings come from. Other records.
Directories, aggregated business data and in some cases customers adding a place themselves. None of it involves anybody asking your permission first.
What that means practically. It has been working without you.
An unclaimed listing still appears, still shows an address and still collects reviews. Businesses regularly discover a listing with years of reviews on it that nobody has ever replied to.
Why claiming beats starting again. You keep what is there.
Reviews, photographs and whatever standing the listing has built stay attached to it. Starting a new profile leaves all of that on the old one, permanently.
What claiming does not do. Skip verification.
Taking control and proving the business is real are two separate stages. Verification follows either way.
Who Currently Controls It
Five situations cover almost everybody. Work out which one you are in before you submit anything, because the route and the timescale differ enormously between them.
Nobody. The straightforward case.
The listing is unclaimed, which means you can take it and verify it as the business. This is the version that resolves in an afternoon.
A previous owner of the business. Common in a sale.
Where a business changed hands and the listing did not. The previous owner usually has no interest in keeping it, so a request and a phone call sorts it.
A former employee. Commoner still.
Somebody set it up on a personal account years ago and has since left, sometimes on poor terms. If you are on speaking terms this is easy. If not, it becomes the same route as the next case.
A past agency or web designer. The one we deal with most.
Frequently accidental rather than malicious. Block three covers it properly, because it is the situation with the most at stake.
Somebody who should not have it. Rare and real.
Occasionally a listing is held by a party with no legitimate connection to the business. Google has a route for that. It needs evidence that you are who you say you are rather than persistence.
When A Previous Agency Holds It
A business ends an arrangement with a supplier and discovers the listing that brings in half its enquiries sits on somebody else's account. Sometimes that is deliberate leverage. More often nobody thought about it when the work started.
What to do first. Ask properly.
A direct request naming the listing and asking for ownership transfer resolves a good proportion of these, particularly where the parting was civil. Put it in writing so there is a record.
What to do if that fails. Request access through Google.
Submitting a request notifies whoever holds the listing and gives them a chance to respond. Google acts as the route rather than as an adjudicator, so this is a process rather than a ruling.
What it costs you. Time rather than money.
These take longer than anybody wants. Meanwhile the listing carries on as it is. That is the real damage, because nobody is answering reviews or correcting hours during it.
What this should change about your next contract. Ownership sits with you.
The business holds primary ownership of its own listing and the supplier is added as a manager. Our material on hiring an agency covers the questions worth asking before you sign. This is one of them.
How we work. The same way we advise.
Our clients own their listings and we are added as managers. If we part company, nothing needs unpicking and nothing is held hostage.
When Nobody Responds
The commonest outcome of a request is nothing at all, because the account holding the listing belongs to somebody who left the industry, changed email address or simply does not check it. That is not a dead end.
What happens after a request. The holder gets a chance.
They are notified and given a stated window to respond. We are deliberately not quoting a number of days here, because that window has changed before and any figure would date.
What happens when they do not. You can usually proceed.
An unanswered request generally allows the claim to move forward, which is the whole point of the mechanism. Silence works in your favour rather than against you.
What can go wrong. A refusal.
A holder who actively declines leaves you needing to escalate with evidence that the business is yours. Trading documents, utility accounts and anything showing the business at that address all help.
What not to do while waiting. Anything hasty.
Do not start a second listing, do not submit the same request repeatedly and do not edit anything through a manager account in a way you would not want explained. Patience is genuinely the strategy here.
Do Not Create A Second One
Halfway through a slow claim, creating a fresh listing looks like the obvious way round the problem. It is the single worst move available and it turns a waiting problem into a permanent one.
What you end up with. Two listings for one business.
Both appear, both are incomplete versions of the truth and they divide everything between them. Google may suppress one. You do not choose which.
What you do not get. The reviews.
Reviews stay where they were left. A new listing starts at nothing, which is exactly the asset you were trying to recover.
What it costs to undo. More than the wait.
Duplicates resolve slowly and repeated submissions do not speed that up. Removing a duplicate or closed listing covers the work, including why merging beats deleting.
The one exception. There is not really one.
If your business genuinely has a second physical location, that is a separate listing rather than a duplicate. Anything else is one business, so it is one listing.
Get Ownership, Not Just Access
There is a difference between being able to edit a listing and controlling it. Businesses accept the first, assume it is the second and find out otherwise at the worst possible moment.
What an owner can do. Everything.
Edit the listing and control who else has access, including removing people. There is a primary owner, which is the account that ultimately holds the listing.
What a manager can do. Edit it.
Useful, sufficient for day to day work and no protection at all if the relationship ends badly. A manager cannot remove an owner.
How it should be arranged. Business owns, supplier manages.
The business holds primary ownership on an account it controls, ideally not a personal address belonging to one member of staff. Everybody else is a manager, added and removed as needed.
What to check today. Which one you are.
Look at whether your account is listed as owner or manager. Plenty of businesses discover they are managers on their own listing. Finding that out now is considerably better than finding out during a dispute.
Where to go next. Verification.
Once control is settled, the listing needs verifying before most of it works. The full series sits on the Google Business Profile guide.
Your listing
stays yours,
including when
we part company.
Our clients hold primary ownership of their own profile and we are added as a manager. Nothing sits on an account we control, so if the arrangement ends there is nothing to unpick and nothing to hand back. That is worth asking any supplier before you sign anything.
What to insist on with anybody:
If you are locked out of your own profile right now, that is a solvable problem rather than a lost one.
Every guide.
One profile.
Getting set up, claiming and verifying, optimising the listing properly, suspensions and reinstatement, reviews, reading the performance data and appearing in the local pack and in Maps.
