Editing and Managing Your Google Business Profile

Keeping your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) information accurate and up to date helps customers and Google alike.

Just like your website, you want to actively manage and optimize your business profile in order to keep your customers informed of any changes or updates to your business and to give you the best chance of converting potential customers into leads and ideally lifelong advocates of your business!

Ways to Edit and Manage Your Profile

Google currently offers several options for editing and managing your Google Business Profile.

Via bulk edit

You can access bulk editing functionality via the GBP dashboard (business.google.com). Read our guide to multi-location editing here.

Via the Google Maps app

If you’re using the Google Maps app, you simply click on your profile image in the top right of the screen, select ‘your business profiles’ and then select the business you want to update.

Via the Google Business Profile Dashboard

In some cases, the Google Business Profile Manager editing experience can be accessed by visiting business.google.com, which will take you to your business listing dashboard. (At the time of writing, August 2022, this is in the process of being phased out by Google, which prefers you to edit via Search or Google Maps.)

If you can edit your listing here, you’ll be able to click through on all of these labels to manage your business:

For some time now, visitors to Google Business Profile Manager have been urged by Google to ‘edit business info directly on Google Search’:

And this is where we find ourselves now – with most business listings now only editable via Search or Google Maps.

Via the ‘Direct Edit’ Experience

‘Direct edit’ refers to editing your listing directly within Google Search or Google Maps.

Although this will take a little bit of getting used to with regard to navigating around the sections, this editing and management experience is accessible straight from Search, without the need for businesses to navigate to a dashboard URL.

How to Access the Google Business Profile ‘Direct Edit’ Experience in Search

All you need to do is:

1. Log in to your Google Business Profile
2. Search your business name in Google and hit ‘Enter’
3. You should now see a block, only visible to you, containing various GBP editing and management functions.

Editing via Google Search has been around since Google announced it in 2017, but more recently it’s become the default way for small businesses to manage their Google Business Profiles.

This editing experience isn’t like-for-like with the Google Business Profile Manager dashboard, but it is evolving to allow small businesses to manage and edit the GBP features they use the most.

Editing Google Business Profile via Google Search

Whether you’re making your direct edit via the SERP or via Google Maps you’ll see your options organized under the same three labels:

• Edit profile
• Promote
• Customers

Plus you’ll find a number of options underneath the vertical ellipsis:

These additional settings are as follows:

• Business profile settings (managers, choose to accept Google Assistant calls, business profile ID, store codes, labels, mark business as closed / delete profile / transfer ownership, choose whether to show your phone number on your profile, Google Ads phone number for location extension ads)
• Notifications (choose which email address to use and which email notifications you’d like to receive from Google re GBP)
• Add a new business profile (links to https://business.google.com/create)
• Your business profiles (lists the GBP profiles to which you have access)
• Tutorial (quick carousel run through of the direct edit experience)
• Help and support (links to https://support.google.com/business/answer/7039811)
• Send feedback (opens a form where you can describe your issue or suggestion and attach a screenshot)
• Terms of Service (links to https://support.google.com/business/answer/9292476)

Under the three buttons and the ellipsis, you’ll find a carousel of related Google CTAs, such as:

• Complete your profile
• Add photos
• Get custom email
• Add update
• Get more reviews
• Create an offer
• Claim your credit

It’s worth keeping an eye on these notifications and CTAs from Google to give you an insight into which parts of your profile might need some attention, and also to gain an idea of which features of GBP and related Google services Google is looking to promote or increase uptake of.

This is what you’ll find in each of the most important 3 sections:

Edit Profile

This is the first button that appears in the direct edit experience, and takes you to the following settings:

Business Information

This is where you’ll update your:

• business name
• categories
• business description
• opening date
• phone number
• address
• opening hours
• website URL(s)
• attributes

Hours

The ‘Hours’ section allows you to update all of your hours as per the Google Business Profile Manager interface but with an easy-to-implement toggle to choose how you’d like your hours to show:

Products

This part of the direct edit experience hasn’t quite caught up with the rest, and currently opens the ‘products’ section in the Google Business Profile Manager dashboard.

N.b. You can also add products from your business knowledge panel here:

Services

This is where you get to update the nonsense that Google is probably scraping from somewhere and adding to your ‘services’ section:

Booking

If you’re using a third-party provider to take bookings straight from your Google Business Profile, like this…

…you’ll find the details of performance plus a field to add a link to your online booking page on your website.

Photo

Click on ‘photo’ to see the upload image functionality:

You can also upload photos by clicking ‘add photos’ in your Business Knowledge Panel:

Logo

This surfaces the same ‘upload public photos of…’ box as per the ‘photos’ tab shown above—but this populates the ‘logo’ for your business. Your logo is displayed here (see below) in your Business Knowledge Panel, and also in other parts of GBP, such as next to your review responses.

Cover Photo

Again, this surfaces the same ‘upload public photos of…’ box as per the ‘photos’ tab—but this populates the ‘cover photo’ for your business, which may (or may not—such are the whims of Google!) be shown as the primary photo in your Business Knowledge Panel.

Promote

This is the second button that appears in the direct edit experience, and includes the following functions:

Performance

This links to the new performance-style report (which was formerly known as ‘Insights’ in the Google Business Profile Manager dashboard). You’ll find most things you could access in Insights.

Advertise

You guessed it—this links to ads.google.com

Ask for Reviews

This option gives you a short link for your business that will trigger the ‘leave a review’ popup window when customers when they click on it. It also includes the option to share a short message plus the short link via email, Facebook and WhatsApp.

N.b. You’ll need to be logged into the relevant accounts on your device to share via these other platforms.

Here’s an example of what the email will say when you choose to share the link via email:

Add Update

This function allows you to add a ‘What’s New’ Google Post.

Add Offer

This lets you create an ‘Offer’ Google Post.

Add Event

You guessed it—this lets you create an ‘Event’ Google Post.

Customers

This is the third button that appears in the direct edit experience, and includes the following functions:

Reviews

This opens all of your reviews in a pop-up. You can reply directly to reviews from here:

Messages

This opens a pop-up containing your messages from customers. You can respond directly to messages from here.

Click on the vertical ellipsis to manage your messaging settings:

There are some really useful functions here:

You can toggle messaging on and off, choose whether to send read receipts, edit your welcome message, and the super-useful…

Manage Your Automated Responses to FAQs

This is where you can set up automated replies to your customers’ most frequently asked questions. So, if someone includes one of these questions in their message to you, they receive an automated message that you have written:

There’s a lot more to Google Business Profile’s messaging system, and it’s always evolving. Read our complete guide to Google Business Profile Messaging here.

Q&A

This is really handy: a quick and easy way to manage Google Business Profile Q&A. Click this option to open a pop-up that includes the questions people have asked about your business. This is where you can reply to questions, and, importantly for your business reputation, monitor what other users have written:

Roundup

Editing your business profile via Google Search and/or Google Maps looks set to replace the previous ‘Google Business Profile’ dashboard option of managing and editing your business for smaller businesses. This guide runs through the current direct edit interface and how businesses can use it to complete the most popular and common tasks for businesses.

It’s worth noting that many aspects of the Google Business Profile dashboard have not yet been duplicated via Search or the Google Maps app, including managing Google’s free business websites, for example. Only time will tell whether this will happen, but in the meantime, I hope you’ve now got a good understanding of how best to access various Google Business Profile edit and management functions.

Up next:

Editing Google Business Profiles for Multi-location Businesses

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