Your Listing Changed Its Name This Month

What was announced

Google My Business is being renamed Google Business Profile.

Alongside the name, the way businesses manage their listing is changing: rather than going to a separate dashboard, you will manage it directly in Search and Maps, where the listing already appears.

The separate mobile application is to be retired during next year, with its functions moving into the main Search and Maps apps.

Businesses with several locations continue to have a web dashboard, now called Google Business Profile Manager.

The name is the smallest part

Worth saying plainly, because the rename is what everybody will discuss and the workflow change is what will actually affect people.

Nothing about your listing changes because of the name: the same profile, the same reviews, the same photographs, the same history.

What changes is where you go to edit it, and for a great many small businesses that is a genuine improvement, because the dashboard was somewhere you had to remember to visit.

Managing the listing where it is displayed means you see what customers see while you edit it, which is the sensible arrangement and was not previously the case.

What has not changed

• Your listing and everything on it.
• Reviews, ratings, and your replies.
• Photographs and posts.
• Verification status.
• Who has access as owner or manager.
• How the listing ranks in local results.

No migration is required, nothing needs reclaiming, and any message telling you otherwise over the coming weeks should be treated as fraudulent.

Single location or several

The distinction that determines which route applies to you.

A business with one location, which is most small businesses, is expected to manage directly in Search and Maps.

Sign in, search your own business name, and the editing controls appear alongside the listing.

A business with several locations continues to use a web dashboard, which is where bulk editing, multiple users, and location groups remain practical.

If you have two or three locations, either route works, and the dashboard is generally easier for comparing them.

The app is going away

The change with an actual deadline attached, and the one worth preparing for.

The separate application is to be retired during next year, so anybody who manages their listing that way will need to move to Search or Maps.

That is not urgent this week and it is worth doing early rather than on the day it stops working.

Try the new route once now, while the old one still exists, so you know where things are before you need them in a hurry.

Ten minutes spent finding the controls today saves a frustrating afternoon at some point next year.

A worked example

A single-location business read the announcement and did three things in about fifteen minutes.

They signed in, searched their business name, and confirmed the editing controls appeared and that the person who normally updated hours could reach them.

They checked the second administrator could do the same, which they could.

And they sent a short internal note saying the product had a new name, nothing needed migrating, and any message asking them to reverify should be forwarded rather than acted on.

That was the whole response, and it was sufficient.

The one thing they noticed while looking was that their holiday hours for the coming period had not been set, which they then did, and which was worth more than anything to do with the rename.

Expect impersonation

A predictable consequence of any change of this kind.

Fraudulent messages referencing a rename, a required migration, or a reverification deadline will circulate, and they will look plausible because a real change has occurred.

Small businesses already receive a steady volume of calls and emails claiming to be from search companies, and an announcement like this gives those calls a new pretext.

Nothing about this requires you to log in through a link, pay anybody, or confirm details to somebody who telephones you.

Manage the listing by navigating to Search or Maps yourself, signed in, and treat every unsolicited approach about it as unwanted.

Adjust your own notes

A small housekeeping item worth doing while it is in mind.

Any internal instructions, staff handover notes, or supplier documentation referring to the old dashboard will be wrong within a year.

Update them when you next touch them rather than as a task, and note the new route: signed in, search the business name, edit in place.

The same applies to anything you have written for clients if you provide this service to others.

Nothing here is urgent, and leaving stale instructions in place is how somebody ends up unable to update hours before a holiday.

The features arriving alongside it

The announcement is not only a rename, and two of the additions are worth knowing about.

Claiming and verifying a business is moving into Search directly, so a business that has never claimed its listing can do so from the same place it would look itself up.

Messaging and call history are being surfaced where the listing appears, rather than living only in a separate application, which makes them likelier to be seen and answered.

That second point matters more than it sounds. A customer message sitting unanswered in an app nobody opens is worse than no messaging at all, because the listing advertises a channel you are not servicing.

If you have messaging switched on, check now that somebody actually sees it, and switch it off if nobody does.

The counter-case

Renames and interface moves are frequently reported as more disruptive than they are.

For most small businesses this changes nothing about how the listing performs, what it costs, or what work it does, and the correct response is a few minutes of orientation rather than a project.

There is a real inconvenience for anybody who had built a routine around the app, and for people who manage listings for several clients, where a familiar workflow is being replaced on somebody else's timetable.

That is a genuine cost and it is a cost of adapting rather than a risk to the business.

Learn the new route early, keep doing the things that actually matter for the listing, and do not let a rename consume more attention than the holiday hours do.

This week

1. Sign in and search your own business name.
2. Confirm the editing controls appear.
3. Check every administrator can reach them.
4. Tell your team nothing needs migrating.
5. Treat any reverification message as fraudulent.
6. Try the new route before the app is retired.
7. Set your holiday hours while you are in there.

Step seven is the one that will actually earn you something this quarter.

Claiming a listing in the first place is covered in claiming your Google My Business listing.

Frequently asked questions

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