Who Should Own Your Google Business Profile? (Hint: Not Your Marketing Agency)

The $150K Mistake Contractors Make With Their Google Business Profile

Last week I spent four hours tracking down a Google Business Profile for a contractor client.

Their friend set it up years ago. Except the friend didn’t actually set it up—his business partner did. Then that partnership dissolved. Badly. Like “we’re not speaking to each other anymore” badly.

When I requested access to transfer ownership, nothing happened. No response. No approval. Just silence.

I asked the contractor. He sent me to his friend. Friend couldn’t remember which email they used. We finally tracked it down—it was under the dissolved business partner’s account.

The contractor didn’t want to contact him. I got the phone number. Called the guy. Thankfully he was friendly, but here’s the problem: he didn’t have access to that email account anymore. The business had been closed for years. The domain was dead.

We had to get access to the old domain. Reset the email. Jump through verification hoops with Google. Back and forth for days. We eventually got access, but it was a nightmare that could have been avoided with ten minutes of proper setup.

This wasn’t a sophisticated attack or a malicious agency. This was a favor between friends that turned into a multi-day treasure hunt years later.

TL;DR: Most contractors have no idea who actually owns their Google Business Profile. When that person becomes unavailable—they leave the company, a business relationship ends, they forget the email—you lose access to the hub that controls your local search presence, reviews, ads, and rankings. Here’s how to protect yourself and set up access properly.

Why Your Google Business Profile Is the Center of Everything

Your Google Business Profile isn’t just where people find your phone number.

It’s the central hub that affects:

Your local SEO rankings and map pack visibility
Your Google Ads and Local Service Ads performance
Your review visibility and reputation management
How Google displays your business across all their products
Your website’s local search authority
Whether Google even shows you to potential customers

When you lose access to this profile, you don’t just lose a listing. You lose the integration point for your entire online presence.

Here’s the truth about Google: they love their own products. Google Business Profiles show up prominently in local search because Google controls the algorithm. YouTube videos (owned by Google) rank well. Everything in the Google ecosystem works better when it’s all properly connected.

The more data you feed Google through your profile—reviews, posts, photos, service updates—the better everything performs. Not because of keyword tricks, but because Google’s algorithm rewards active, legitimate businesses with intent-based content that matches what searchers actually want.

And none of that matters if you can’t access your profile when you need to.

The 5-Minute Audit You Can Do Right Now

Before we talk about fixing this, you need to know where you stand.

Go to business.google.com right now. Sign in. Look at the Users section.

Who’s listed as the owner?

If it’s you—great. You’re ahead of 60% of contractors we work with.

If it’s your marketing agency—you have a problem. Not because your agency is bad, but because you don’t control the single most important piece of your local marketing.

If it’s a former employee, a friend who helped you set it up, or an email account you don’t recognize—you have a bigger problem.

Here’s what to check:

1. Who has Owner access? There should be one clear owner—ideally you or someone in your company who isn’t going anywhere. Not your nephew. Not a helpful friend. Not your agency.

2. Who has Manager access? These are people who can do almost everything an owner can do except delete the profile or change ownership. Your agency should be here if they’re handling your Google Business Profile management.

3. Who has Communications Manager access? These people can only respond to reviews and messages. Limited access for team members who don’t need full control.

4. Do you recognize everyone on this list? If there are people with access you don’t recognize or former employees who left years ago, remove them immediately.

If you can’t access your Google Business Profile at all, or if you don’t know the email address it’s tied to, stop reading and figure that out first. Everything else we’re about to discuss doesn’t matter if you can’t get into your own account.

Want to see what else might be leaking leads? Download the Ultimate Online Marketing Checklist—it’s the same 50+ points we check when auditing contractor marketing systems.

What Most Agencies Get Wrong About Profile Ownership

Here’s the standard approach most marketing agencies take:

They set up your Google Business Profile under their company account. They make themselves the owner. You get added as a manager if you’re lucky. Sometimes you’re not added at all.

This isn’t usually malicious. It’s just easier for them. When you manage dozens of client profiles, it’s simpler to have everything in one master account you control.

But “easier for the agency” and “better for the contractor” aren’t the same thing.

The Problem With Agency Ownership:

When the agency owns your profile, you’re renting your online presence from them. Everything works fine until:

You decide to switch agencies
The agency goes out of business
The person managing your account leaves and nobody knows the login
You have a dispute about payment or performance
The agency sells to a larger company and your account gets lost in transition

We’ve taken over Google Business Profile management for dozens of contractors who couldn’t get their profiles back from previous agencies. Not because those agencies were evil—most of them transferred access when asked. But some didn’t respond. Some said they’d do it “eventually.” Some wanted to negotiate terms first.

Your business shouldn’t be held hostage because of an account ownership decision nobody explained to you five years ago.

The “Just Set Up a New One” Trap:

We hear this constantly: “I can’t remember which email owns my profile. Can’t we just set up a new one?”

No. You can’t. Or rather, you can, but here’s what you lose:

Your reviews. All of them. Every five-star review you’ve earned over years of good work. Gone. Google won’t transfer reviews to a new profile.

Your ranking history. Google doesn’t just give you back the map pack position you had. You start over as a new business with zero authority.

Your photo library, your post history, your Q&A responses—everything that built trust and visibility. Gone.

Starting over sounds easier than tracking down an old email account. It never is. The lost reviews alone can cost you thousands in conversions.

We always get access eventually. Sometimes it’s smooth because everything was documented properly. Sometimes it’s a multi-day nightmare. But we never give up because starting over is always worse.

The Rebel Ape Method: Manager Access Only

When we take over a contractor’s Google Business Profile, here’s exactly what we do—and what we don’t do.

Step 1: Audit Current Access and Ownership

First, we figure out who actually owns the profile right now.

Not who the contractor thinks owns it. Not who “probably” set it up. Who Google says owns it.

We’ve found profiles owned by:

Marketing agencies that went out of business three years ago
Nephews who are now in college across the country
Former employees who were fired
Ex-spouses after a divorce
Dissolved business partnerships
Email accounts that no longer exist

One contractor we worked with had five different people with various levels of access accumulated over eight years. Nobody knew who the original owner was. Three of the five people no longer worked there. One had died.

That’s not an exaggeration. We had to go through Google’s account recovery process because the original owner had passed away and the family didn’t know the password.

The audit answers these questions:

Who owns the profile?
What email is it tied to?
Does that person still have access to that email?
Who else has manager access?
Are there any duplicate or competing profiles?

Step 2: Transfer Ownership to the Business Owner

This is non-negotiable: The business owner (or someone permanent in the company) should own the Google Business Profile.

Not the marketing agency. Not a helpful friend. Not whoever “knew how to do it” when you were getting started.

We help transfer ownership from whoever currently has it to your business email address. This sometimes takes days if the current owner is unresponsive or the email account is dead. But it’s always worth doing.

If you run the company, you should own the profile. If you have a trusted business partner or operations manager who isn’t going anywhere, they can be a secondary owner. But ownership should stay inside the business.

Step 3: Request Manager-Level Access (Never Ownership)

Here’s where we’re different from most agencies:

We never take ownership of your Google Business Profile. Ever.

We request Manager access through Google’s official access management system. That gives us everything we need:

Update business information
Post updates and offers
Add photos and videos
Respond to reviews
Access insights and analytics
Connect Google Ads and Local Service Ads
Manage everything except adding users or deleting the profile

The only things we can’t do as managers: add new users, remove the owner, or delete the profile. And we don’t need to do any of those things.

If you ever want to fire us, you just go into the Users section and remove our access. No negotiations. No hostage situations. No waiting for us to “process the request.” You click remove, and we’re gone.

Any agency that insists they need ownership to do their job is waving a red flag. They either don’t understand Google’s permission system, or they want leverage they shouldn’t have.

Step 4: Document Everything in Writing

We create a shared document that lists:

Who owns the profile (email address, person’s name, position)
Who has manager access (us, anyone else who needs it)
Date access was granted
What each person’s access is used for

This sounds bureaucratic. It’s not. It’s a two-minute investment that prevents future disasters.

When someone leaves your company or you switch agencies, you know exactly who to remove. When you need to transfer ownership because you’re selling the business, you have documentation. When Google locks you out and asks you to prove ownership, you can show a paper trail.

Most contractors treat their Google Business Profile like it just exists somewhere on the internet. It doesn’t. It’s tied to specific email addresses with specific permission levels. Write it down.

Step 5: Quarterly Access Reviews

Every three months, we review who has access to your profile and whether they still need it.

This catches:

Former employees who still have access
Agencies you stopped working with but never removed
Access you granted temporarily that became permanent
People who moved to different roles and don’t need access anymore

Think of it like changing the locks when an employee leaves. Except most contractors never change the locks on their Google Business Profile.

This is what we build for contractors who are serious about lead generation. See how we implement this complete system to protect your local presence and maximize conversions.

What We’ve Learned From Taking Over Contractor Profiles

We’ve transitioned management of dozens of Google Business Profiles from other agencies or DIY setups. Here’s what that experience taught us:

The Agency Hostage Situation Is More Common Than You Think

About 40% of the time, the previous agency transfers access immediately with no issues. They’re professional, they understand it’s the contractor’s business, and they make the transition smooth.

About 40% of the time, they eventually transfer access but it takes follow-ups. They’re not being malicious—they’re just disorganized or don’t prioritize it.

About 20% of the time, we hit problems. The agency doesn’t respond. Or they say “we need to discuss terms first.” Or they claim they need owner access to “properly transition” things. Or they just ignore the request entirely.

That 20% is why ownership matters. When the contractor owns the profile, we don’t need to ask permission or negotiate. We just request manager access and get to work.

Most Contractors Have No Idea What’s Connected

When we audit a Google Business Profile, we usually find it’s connected to things the contractor didn’t know about:

Old Google Ads accounts that are still running (and billing)
Review management software they stopped using years ago
Call tracking numbers from a previous campaign
Analytics accounts they can’t access
Location listings for addresses they don’t use anymore

All of this creates confusion and wasted spending. When you don’t control access, you can’t clean it up.

The Multiple Profile Problem Keeps Getting Worse

Google’s rules are clear: one profile per physical location. But we constantly find contractors with multiple profiles:

The original one from when they started
One the new agency created because they couldn’t access the old one
One for each city they want to rank in (which violates Google’s terms)
Duplicate profiles created by frustrated employees who thought the first one “wasn’t working”

Best case, Google merges them and you lose data. Worst case, Google sees it as manipulation and suspends everything.

We had a roofing contractor who came to us with five profiles. All for the same location. All trying to rank in different cities. All technically violations of Google’s terms.

Google caught on and shut down every single profile. Including the legitimate one.

Three weeks to get reinstated. Three weeks of zero visibility on Google Maps while competitors dominated. Three weeks of calls asking “Did you go out of business?” Conservative estimate: $150,000 in lost revenue during busy season.

When we finally got them reinstated, it took another month to rebuild their rankings. Google doesn’t just flip a switch and put you back where you were. You start over.

All of that happened because nobody knew who owned the profiles or what was being done with them. If the owner had been reviewing access quarterly, this wouldn’t have happened.

Early On, We Made This Same Mistake

Full transparency: when I started this agency, I set up client profiles under my company account. It was easier. I could manage everything in one place. It seemed more efficient.

Then I had a client want to leave. They asked for ownership transfer. I said sure, started the process, and realized how complicated I’d made it. I had dozens of profiles under one master account. Untangling one profile without disrupting others was harder than it should have been.

That’s when we changed our policy. Manager access only. No exceptions. Yes, it means we log into multiple accounts instead of one master account. Yes, it’s slightly less convenient for us.

But it’s the right thing to do. Your business, your ownership.

Implementation Roadmap: How to Fix This Today

Here’s exactly what to do, in order:

If You’re the Owner (10 minutes):

Go to business.google.com
Click on your profile
Go to Users & access
Remove anyone who shouldn’t have access
Make sure your agency has Manager access, not Owner
Document who has access and why

If Your Agency Is the Owner (30-60 minutes):

Email your agency: “I need ownership of my Google Business Profile transferred to [your email]. You can remain as a Manager with full access to continue managing it.”
If they resist, ask why they need ownership instead of manager access
If they still resist, that’s a red flag about how they operate
Document the request in writing so you have a record

If You Don’t Know Who the Owner Is (1-2 weeks):

Go to business.google.com and try to access your profile
If you can’t access it, use Google’s “Request access” feature
Track down who might have set it up (former employees, friends, old agencies)
Contact them directly and request ownership transfer
If the email is dead or the person is unresponsive, go through Google’s account recovery process
This will take time—start immediately

Be Honest About DIY vs. Hiring Help:

You could manage this entire process yourself. If you’re organized, comfortable with technical systems, and have a few hours to dedicate to it, you can audit access, clean up duplicate profiles, and set up proper permissions.

But here’s what you’re signing up for: tracking down old email accounts, negotiating with unresponsive agencies, going through Google’s verification systems, connecting all your marketing tools properly, and maintaining everything ongoing.

Or we can do it in a week, with documentation, and ongoing monitoring so it never becomes a problem again.

Most contractors realize halfway through the DIY process that their time is worth more than this. If you’d rather focus on running your business, let’s talk about handling this for you.

Common Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)

Mistake #1: Giving Ownership to Your Agency Because “They Need It”

No, they don’t. Manager access gives them everything they need to manage your Google Ads, respond to reviews, update information, and handle your local SEO. The only reason an agency needs ownership is if they want control you shouldn’t give them.

How to Fix It: Ask them to explain specifically what they can do as an owner that they can’t do as a manager. If they can’t give you a clear answer, transfer ownership to yourself and give them manager access.

Mistake #2: Never Reviewing Who Has Access

Access accumulates over time. The person who set up your profile six years ago. The agency you worked with for two years. The employee who moved to a different department. All still there unless you remove them.

How to Fix It: Set a quarterly reminder to review your Google Business Profile users. Remove anyone who doesn’t need access anymore. This takes five minutes.

Mistake #3: Using a Personal Gmail Instead of a Business Email

Personal Gmail accounts get forgotten. Passwords get lost. You sell the business and the new owner can’t access anything because it’s all tied to your personal email.

How to Fix It: Use your business email for ownership. If you don’t have business email through Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, set it up. It costs maybe $6/month and solves a hundred problems.

Mistake #4: Creating Multiple Profiles to Cover More Service Areas

You don’t get to make up addresses to rank in more cities. Google’s rules are clear: one profile per physical location where customers can visit you or where you have staff.

How to Fix It: Use one profile and properly set your service areas. Google’s algorithm is smart enough to show you in nearby cities if your content and reputation warrant it. Trying to game the system just gets you suspended.

Mistake #5: Not Documenting Access Changes

When you give someone access, you’ll forget about it three months later. When you need to audit who can manage your profile, you won’t remember.

How to Fix It: Keep a simple spreadsheet or document that lists who has access, when they got it, and why. Update it whenever you add or remove someone.

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s the difference between Owner and Manager access on Google Business Profile?

Owners have full control—they can add/remove users, delete the profile, and transfer ownership. Managers can update information, post content, respond to reviews, and manage almost everything except user permissions and profile deletion. For agencies and contractors, Manager access provides everything needed for day-to-day management without risking the ownership being transferred without your knowledge.

Can I have multiple owners on my Google Business Profile?

Yes, you can assign multiple people as owners. We recommend having two owners maximum—you and one other trusted person in your company who isn’t going anywhere. This protects you if something happens to the primary owner. Everyone else should be managers.

My agency says they need ownership to connect Google Ads and Local Service Ads. Is that true?

No. Manager access can connect Google Ads, Local Service Ads, analytics, and any other marketing tool. They’re either misinformed about Google’s permission system or they want ownership for their own convenience, not because they need it.

What happens if the owner of my profile leaves the company and I don’t have another owner?

You’ll need to go through Google’s account recovery process to prove ownership. This requires business verification documents, can take weeks, and is stressful. This is exactly why you should have proper ownership structure set up now, before it becomes an emergency.

I found out my previous agency owns my profile and they’re not responding to transfer requests. What do I do?

First, document your requests in writing via email so you have a record. If they still don’t respond after 7-10 days, go through Google’s “Request access” feature in your Business Profile. If that doesn’t work, you may need to work with Google’s support directly to prove ownership of the business and force the transfer. This is where having proper documentation of your business becomes critical.

Should I give my team members access to my Google Business Profile?

It depends on what they need to do. If they need to respond to reviews or messages only, give them Communications Manager access. If they need to post updates and manage content, give them Manager access. Only give ownership to someone in a permanent leadership position who needs ultimate control.

How do I actually add a user to my Google Business Profile?

Sign into business.google.com, select your business, go to Users & access, click “Add user,” enter their email address, and select their permission level (Owner, Manager, or Communications Manager). They’ll receive an email to accept the invitation. The whole process takes about two minutes once you know who should have what level of access.

Can someone remove me as an owner if they have manager access?

No. Managers cannot remove owners or change ownership. Only an existing owner can transfer ownership or remove other owners. This is why you should never give ownership to your agency—they could theoretically remove you and take complete control.

The Bottom Line

Your Google Business Profile is too important to treat casually.

It’s not just where people find your phone number. It’s the hub that affects your local SEO rankings, your paid advertising performance, your review generation, and your entire Google ecosystem presence.

When you don’t control ownership, you’re one relationship change away from losing access to everything.

The fix takes ten minutes if everything is set up properly, or weeks if it’s not. Either way, you need to know who owns your profile and make sure it’s you.

Never give ownership to your marketing agency. Manager access gives them everything they need. If they insist on ownership, find a different agency.

If you’re not sure who owns your Google Business Profile, or if you need help auditing your access and maximizing your local presence, schedule a call with us. We’ll help you protect your profile, set up proper permissions, and turn it into a lead generation machine that you actually control.