Add a User to Your Google Business Profile Without Sharing Your Password

When someone starts helping with your marketing, they need access to your Google Business Profile. A surprising number of business owners solve this by handing over their password. Do not do that. There is a built-in way that takes about a minute and that you can reverse whenever you like.

The steps, current as documented by Google

1. Go to your Business Profile.

2. Select More, then Business Profile settings, then People and access.

3. At the top left, select Add.

4. Enter the person's email address.

5. Under Access, choose Owner or Manager.

6. Select Invite.

They receive an invitation and the access begins when they accept it. Nothing is shared until they do.

Owner or manager, and which one to pick

There are two roles and the difference is narrower than most people expect.

• A manager can do essentially everything day to day: edit the business information, reply to reviews, publish posts, handle messaging and see the insights.

• An owner can do all of that and can also add and remove other users and delete the profile itself.

• There is one primary owner per profile, and that should be you.

For anyone doing work on your behalf, manager is the right choice, and the reason is in the list above. The only two powers an owner has that a manager does not are removing people and deleting the listing. Neither is something a contractor needs, and both are things you would rather nobody else could do.

The part people find out too late

If you gave a previous agency your login rather than adding them as a manager, two things follow. You cannot see what access exists, and you cannot cleanly remove it without changing your password and breaking anything else that used the account.

Worse, if a listing was originally created under somebody else's account, they may hold the primary ownership rather than you. Recovering it is possible and it is a slow process involving Google support, which is one of the moments the Business Profile ID becomes useful.

So a suggestion worth acting on today, whether or not you are working with anybody: open People and access and read the list. If there is a name on it you do not recognise, or an agency you stopped working with two years ago, remove it. This takes thirty seconds and almost nobody ever does it.

Related questions this raises

• Can several people manage one profile? Yes, and there is no documented limit on how many.

• Can one Google account manage several businesses? Yes. Each listing keeps its own settings and its own Business Profile ID.

• Does adding a user cost anything? No. This is not a Google Workspace seat and there is no charge for it.

• Is Google My Business the same thing? It is the former name. The product is now called Google Business Profile and management happens through Search and Maps rather than a separate app.

If you need the listing's identifier for a support conversation, here is where to find your Google Business Profile ID.

If you would like someone to look at who currently has access to your listing and what state it is in, book a free SEO consultation. You will speak to the person who does the work, and there is nothing to cancel afterwards.

Written by Spencer Capron at Capron Media, in collaboration with our AI agents. The same way we do the work for clients. Spencer reviews everything published here.