What Is Google My Business?
It is called Google Business Profile now. The difference between the two names is that there is none. This page settles the naming question, explains what the listing actually is and points you at whichever part of it you came here for.
It Is Called Something Else Now
If you searched for Google My Business you are in the right place. Google announced on 4 November 2021 that the product was being renamed Google Business Profile. Nothing about your listing changed. Only the name did, plus where you go to manage it.
What actually happened. A rename and a relocation.
Google retired the old name and directed businesses to manage their listings inside Search and Maps rather than in a separate place. Both of those were announced together, which is why the two changes get muddled up.
What carried over. Everything.
The same listing, the same address and hours, the same categories and the same reviews. No account was replaced and nothing needed moving, which is worth knowing if anybody has offered to migrate you.
Why the old name persists. Search demand does not follow rebrands.
Years on, plenty of people still type the old name. A good deal of the advice they find was written before the change. That mismatch is the single biggest source of confusion in this whole subject.
Which name this site uses. The current one, from here on.
Every other page in this section says Google Business Profile, because that is what you will see on screen when you go looking for the controls.
There Is No Difference Between The Names
Plenty of articles compare Google My Business against Google Business Profile as though they were two products with different features. They are not. One is the former name of the other. That is the entire answer to the comparison, so here is the part that genuinely did change.
The separate app went. Withdrawn during 2022.
Google said in the rename announcement that the app would be retired so businesses could manage their profiles in Search and Maps instead. It disappeared from the app stores the following year. There is nothing to download.
Where the controls live now. Where you already are.
Sign in with the account that owns the listing, search for your own business name and the editing controls appear with the listing. It feels odd the first time and it removes a step permanently.
What multi-location businesses use. A web interface.
The old dashboard became a tool for managing several locations at once, which is where agencies and larger businesses work. A single site business does not need it.
Why this matters more than a name change should. Old guidance sends you nowhere.
A guide telling you to open the app or log into the dashboard is describing something that no longer exists, so you spend twenty minutes hunting for a screen nobody can find. If the instructions you are following mention an app, they are out of date rather than wrong about you.
What It Actually Is
A Google Business Profile is the free listing that puts a business on the map and into local results. It is the panel that appears beside or above the ordinary results when somebody searches for what you do near where they are.
What it holds. The information a customer needs to act.
Business name, address or service area, phone number, website, opening hours, categories, the services you offer, photographs, reviews and the questions people have asked about you.
What it is separate from. Your website.
The two are connected and they are different things. The profile lives on Google's platform. The website lives on yours. A business can have either without the other. Most trades need both.
Where it appears. More places than people realise.
In search results, in Maps, in results on a phone with location switched on and increasingly inside the summarised answers Google assembles. It is the same underlying listing in every case.
The part that surprises people. You may already have one.
Google generates listings from other sources, so most established businesses have a profile nobody there created. It can accumulate reviews for years with nobody watching, which is why claiming an existing listing is a more common starting point than creating a new one.
Why It Matters More Than People Expect
For a local business the profile is frequently the first thing a customer sees and sometimes the only thing. Somebody can read your hours, look at your rating, glance at a photograph and ring you without ever reaching your website.
Where it sits on the screen. Above the results.
For a search with local intent, the business listings occupy the position everything else is competing for. A site ranking respectably in the ordinary results can still sit below all of that.
Why the trades feel this hardest. Urgency.
Somebody with a leak or a broken boiler is not reading three websites. They are ringing the first plausible business in front of them. The profile is what makes a business look plausible in that moment.
What it does that a website cannot. Removes steps.
A phone number to tap, directions, hours and other people's opinions, all in one panel with nothing to load. That convenience is exactly why it gets chosen.
What that means practically. An unattended profile costs money.
A half filled listing with old hours and no photographs still appears. It simply loses to the business next to it that took an afternoon over theirs. Nobody ever reports that loss to you.
What It Is Not
Three things get assumed about this listing that are not true. Each one leads a business somewhere expensive. Worth stating plainly before you spend any time on it.
It is not a website. It is a listing on somebody else's platform.
It cannot hold your prices, your case studies, your accreditations or a page about each town you cover. It answers the question of whether you exist and are open, not why you are worth choosing.
It is not something you own outright. You control it under conditions.
Google can suspend a listing, the public can suggest edits to it and a competitor can report it. That is the arrangement rather than a fault. It is also why a business built entirely on a profile is exposed.
It is not a substitute for your own site. The geography argument.
Local listings favour businesses near the person searching, so a profile cannot reach the towns you travel to. That is what a website with proper location pages is for. Our material on the trades makes the same case in commercial terms: the asset you own is the one nobody can suspend.
What follows from all three. Do both, in the right order.
Get the profile complete because it is free and it works. Then put the effort into the site, because that is where the reach and the ownership sit.
Where To Go Next
This page exists to answer the naming question and point you onwards. Four situations cover almost everybody arriving here, so find yours and carry on there rather than reading the whole section in order.
No listing at all. Start by checking that is true.
Search for your business first, because a listing generated from other sources counts as one already existing. Adding your business to Google covers that check and the decisions that constrain everything afterwards.
A listing exists and you cannot get into it. That is claiming.
Common where a former employee or a previous agency set it up. Our guide to claiming a profile covers each situation, including what to do when a request goes unanswered. Get ownership rather than access, which is a distinction worth insisting on.
It exists, you control it and it does nothing. That is optimisation.
Most listings underperform because they are half completed rather than because of anything sophisticated. Optimising your Google Business Profile puts the work in order of what actually makes a difference.
It should appear and it does not. That is diagnosis.
Usually the explanation is mundane and frequently it is where you happen to be standing when you search. Our guide to a business not showing up runs the checks in order of likelihood. The full series sits on the Google Business Profile guide.
Complete beats
clever. And
it costs
nothing.
Most listings underperform for dull reasons. Wrong hours, one category, two services listed, no photographs and a question somebody else answered incorrectly two years ago. None of that needs a specialist to spot and all of it costs enquiries every week.
What we look at first on a profile:
And whether the business name carries anything that could get the listing suspended.
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.
