How to give access to a Google Business Profile | Adding a manager (2026)
Adding an agency or an employee to your Google listing without handing over your password: the steps, the difference between owner, admin and manager, and the mistake to avoid.
Sooner or later, someone other than you has to touch your Google listing: an agency, an employee, the nephew who looks after the site. The wrong answer is to send them your password. The right one takes two minutes.
Why you never share the password
The Google account that owns the listing is often the same one holding your email, your Drive and your billing. Sharing it gives access to all of that. And the day the collaboration ends, you have to change the password and reconfigure every device.
Adding a user solves both problems: access limited to the listing, removal in one click.
The steps
- Sign in to the Google account that owns the listing.
- Open your business listing (by searching your business name in Google, or through the Google Business Profile dashboard).
- Go to the listing settings, Users section, or "People and access".
- Click Add, enter the person's Gmail address.
- Choose the role, then send the invitation.
The person receives an email and has to accept. Until they accept, the access does not exist — that is the number one cause of "it isn't working".
The three roles, and which one to give
Primary owner. Controls everything, including deleting the listing and transferring ownership. There is only one. It has to stay you, or someone inside the company — never an outside agency.
Admin. Can change everything and add other users, but cannot delete the listing or remove the owner. The right role for an internal manager.
Manager. Can edit the information, publish, reply to reviews. Cannot manage users. This is the role to give an agency or a freelancer.
The classic mistake, and how to get out of it
Plenty of businesses let a former agency create the listing. The agency is therefore the owner, and the owner is only a manager of their own business. When the relationship ends, the access is lost.
If that is your situation: ask the agency to transfer primary ownership to you — it is a simple operation in the interface. If they no longer answer, Google offers a listing claim procedure, longer, which requires proving that you do run the business.
To check once a year
Open the list of users on your listing and look at who is still there. Former employees and suppliers from three years ago are often still listed, with the right to change your address and your opening hours.