Who Should Have Access to Your Google Business Profile?

A clinic owner in Andheri once told us she'd been trying to add a new photo to her Google listing for three months. Every attempt failed with a vague permissions error. When she finally dug into it, she found the listing had been set up in 2019 by a web developer she'd hired for a one-time website job. He'd used his own Gmail account to claim the profile, made himself the owner, and moved on to other clients years ago. He wasn't being malicious. He just never handed it back, and she never thought to ask.

This is a more common problem than most business owners realise, and it rarely announces itself. Your listing keeps showing up in search, customers keep finding you, everything looks fine, until the day you need to change something and can't.

The access levels on a Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile has two working access levels, sitting under a special designation called the Primary Owner.

Primary Owner. There is exactly one of these per listing. This person has full control, including the power to add or remove anyone else. Critically, a Primary Owner cannot simply delete themselves from a listing. They have to hand the role to someone else first.

Owner. A listing can have several Owners. Owners can do almost everything the Primary Owner can, edit business details, respond to reviews, manage posts and photos, and add or remove other people. The one thing they can't do is remove the Primary Owner or the listing itself.

Manager. Managers can handle the day-to-day work, updating hours, replying to reviews, publishing offers, but they cannot add or remove users, and they cannot delete the profile. This is the right role for staff or a marketing person who needs to work on the listing without holding the keys to it.

The distinction that matters most for a business owner is simple: only an Owner can control who else has access, and only the Primary Owner can truly hand the listing to someone new. If you are not at least an Owner on your own business's listing, you don't fully control it, no matter how long you've been running the business.

How business owners end up locked out of their own listing

It rarely happens on purpose. A few patterns show up again and again:

An agency claims the listing for you. Many local marketing agencies and freelancers set up a client's Google Business Profile as part of onboarding, using their own agency Gmail account as the Primary Owner "for convenience." When the contract ends, ownership often doesn't get transferred back. Sometimes the agency has moved on to other work and simply forgets. Sometimes they hold onto it deliberately, because it gives them leverage if you try to switch providers.

A former employee set it up. Someone on your team, maybe the one who was "good with computers", created the profile years ago under their personal email. They've since left the company. Their account still sits at the top of your access list, and you may not even have their number anymore.

A web developer or IT contractor used their own account. As in the clinic example above, a one-time technical hire sometimes claims the listing as part of a broader project and never mentions it again.

Nobody ever checked. Many businesses have simply never opened the People and Access section of their profile. It's entirely possible to run a business for a decade without knowing who else can see, or control, that listing.

None of these are catastrophic on their own. The listing still works, calls still come in, reviews still post. But if that access ever becomes adversarial, a falling-out with an agency, a contractor who won't respond, an employee who left on bad terms, you can find yourself unable to update your own hours or address.

How to check who currently has access

This takes about two minutes and every business owner should do it at least once.

Sign in to your Google Business Profile at business.google.com using whichever account you normally use to manage it.
Go to your Business Profile settings and open People and access (sometimes shown as Managers).
Look at the full list. Note who is listed as Primary Owner, who else is an Owner, and who is a Manager.
Ask yourself honestly whether you recognise every name and email address on that list, and whether you, personally, hold Owner access or higher.

If you see an agency's company email, a former employee's personal Gmail, or anyone you no longer have a working relationship with sitting as Primary Owner or Owner, that's worth addressing now rather than during an emergency.

Removing someone who shouldn't have access anymore

If you are already an Owner, this is straightforward. In People and Access, select the person you want to remove and choose to remove them. Only Owners can remove other Owners or Managers, and a Manager cannot remove anyone.

The one exception is the Primary Owner. That role can't simply be deleted. If you are the Primary Owner and want to hand the role to a trusted staff member or a new agency, you assign them as the new Primary Owner from the same screen. According to Google's own help documentation, this transfer comes with a seven-day holding period, during which the new Primary Owner has limited ability to make changes and cannot remove other Owners or Managers. This delay exists specifically to prevent a rushed or malicious handover, so don't be alarmed if the new owner's permissions feel restricted for the first week.

Recovering a listing someone else controls

This is the harder situation, and the one that causes the most stress: you need access, but the person who has it is unresponsive, uncooperative, or unreachable.

Google has a formal path for this. Go to business.google.com/add and search for your business by name and address. If the listing already exists and someone else manages it, Google will tell you directly with a message along the lines of "Someone else may manage this Business Profile", and give you an option to Request Access.

You'll be asked to fill out a short form explaining your relationship to the business. Google then notifies the current Primary Owner and gives them a window to respond, generally cited as around a week, though the exact timing has varied. If the owner grants the request, you're added as a Manager or Owner. If they don't respond in time, or if you can demonstrate a legitimate claim to the business (proof of ownership, business registration, a working phone line matching the listing), Google can grant you access through its verification process even without the current owner's cooperation.

Keep your evidence ready before you start: a GST certificate, shop licence, utility bill in the business name, or anything else that ties you to the address on the listing. Verification calls and document checks move faster when you're prepared for them.

Keeping this from happening again

Once you're back in control, a few habits keep it from repeating. Use a Google account that belongs to the business itself, not a personal or agency email, as the Primary Owner. If you bring on an agency or a freelance developer, add them as a Manager rather than an Owner, and remove that access the day the engagement ends. And put a reminder in your calendar, once or twice a year, to open People and Access and simply look at who's there.

It's the kind of check that takes two minutes and matters only on the one day you actually need it.

Once access is sorted, it's worth taking a proper look at what your listing actually shows customers right now, categories, photos, how you compare to nearby competitors. A free ListingLens audit will show you exactly where your profile stands today.