Two meanings of Google Business Profile Manager
The first meaning is the dashboard. If you look after one location, you edit it from Google Search or Google Maps while signed in. If you look after several, Google gives you a separate Business Profile Manager view that lists every profile your account can reach, so you can open each one, check its status and see who has access.
The second meaning is the role. On every profile, each person with access is either the primary owner, an owner or a manager. That role decides what they can change, and above all whether they can add or remove other people. When someone asks for help with google my business because they are locked out, the cause is almost always a role nobody wrote down, which we covered alongside eight other problems in fixing the 9 most common Google My Business problems.
The three roles and what each one can do
- Primary owner: one per profile. Full control, including adding and removing owners and managers, transferring primary ownership and removing the profile.
- Owner: as many as you need. Almost the same rights as the primary owner. Can add and remove people and edit everything on the profile.
- Manager: the working role. Can edit details, reply to reviews, add photos and publish posts, but cannot change who has access or remove the profile.
The useful rule is simple: ownership is about control, the manager role is about work. Almost everything a profile needs week to week, from replying to reviews to updating holiday hours, can be done by a Google Business Profile manager. Ownership only matters when access itself changes.
Who should hold which role
A sensible default for a single business looks like this:
- Primary owner: the business owner, on a Google account they control and will still control in five years. Not a personal account belonging to an employee, and not the agency's account.
- Second owner: a partner, director or a shared company account, so the business is never one forgotten password away from losing the profile.
- Managers: the agency, the office manager who answers reviews, and anyone else doing day-to-day work.
If you are still working out how to set up a business profile from scratch, create it on the owner's account from day one. Moving ownership later is possible, but it is slower than getting it right at the start.
Adding and removing people
Owners add people from the profile's settings, under the section for people and access. Enter the person's email address, choose owner or manager, and send the invite. The person has to accept it from their own Google account before they appear on the list.
- Invite with the email address the person actually signs in with.
- Choose manager unless there is a clear reason to give ownership.
- Ask them to accept the invite, then check they appear with the right role.
- Write the change in your access log with the date and the reason.
Removing someone is the same screen in reverse. Do it on the day a person leaves, not when you next remember. A former employee with owner rights can remove everyone else, and that is far harder to undo than to prevent.
Managing several locations
Roles matter more once you run several profiles. In multi-location local SEO, the risk is not one wrong setting but drift: each location ends up with a different set of owners and managers, added by different people at different times, and nobody can say who has access to what.
The Business Profile Manager view lets you group locations so the same people can be given access to a whole group at once, rather than profile by profile. Use that, and keep a single access sheet for every location with these columns:
- Location: name and the link to the profile on Google Maps.
- Primary owner: the account and the person behind it.
- Other owners: each account and person.
- Managers: each account, person and the reason they have access.
- Last checked: the date someone last compared the sheet with the live profile.
Agencies: manager access, not ownership
An agency should ask for the manager role, not ownership. It covers the work, and it keeps the client in control: they can remove the agency in a minute and nothing has to be returned when the contract ends. Agencies that hold ownership of client profiles create the exact lockouts clients later need help to undo.
Most local SEO software for agencies then works through the agency's own Google account. NearPinn, for example, connects through Google's own sign-in with only the permissions needed to manage listings, and keeps the access tokens encrypted. You can connect several Google accounts to one workspace, invite team members to share it, and work on every location's reviews, posts and rank grids from one login. The full list is under features, and how many locations each plan covers is in the pricing section.
Handing a profile over without losing anything
Handover is where profiles get lost. Whether an employee is leaving, an agency contract is ending or a business is being sold, follow the same order:
- Add the new person first. Invite them, wait until they accept, and check they can open the profile.
- Transfer primary ownership if it needs to move. The current primary owner does this from the same people and access screen. Google may require the new person to have been an owner for a short while before they can take over.
- Remove the departing person last. Only once the new owner is in place and can make changes.
- Disconnect their tools. If the departing person's Google account was connected to any software, remove that connection too.
- Record the handover. Update the access sheet and keep a dated note of what changed.
Reviews, photos and history belong to the profile, not to any person, so a handover done in this order loses nothing.
A quarterly access check
Once a quarter, open every profile and compare the people listed with your access sheet. Remove anyone who no longer needs access, confirm each profile still has at least two owners, and note the date. It takes a few minutes per location and prevents nearly every lockout described above.
While you are in each profile, check it is still doing its job. A clean access list does not help if the profile has slipped on the map, so run a grid scan for its main keyword using the method in the Google Maps rank checker guide, and compare it with last quarter's. If it has slipped, the how to rank higher on Google Maps guide covers what to fix first.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the difference between an owner and a manager on Google Business Profile?
- Owners can do everything a manager can, and can also add or remove people and remove the profile. Managers can edit the business details, reply to reviews, add photos and publish posts, but cannot change who has access. Give the business owner ownership and give agencies and staff the manager role.
- Can a Google Business Profile have more than one owner?
- Yes. There is one primary owner and there can be several owners alongside them. Add at least one extra owner from a different Google account, so the business never loses control of the profile because one login is forgotten or one person leaves.
- Should an agency be an owner of a client's profile?
- Usually not. The manager role covers all the day-to-day work an agency does. Keeping the business as primary owner and the agency as manager means the client can remove the agency at any time and nothing has to be handed back when the contract ends.
- Does connecting a tool give it ownership of my profile?
- No. A tool like NearPinn connects through Google's own sign-in and acts with the access of the Google account you connect. It does not appear as an owner on the profile, and you can remove its access from your Google account settings.