Adding and removing Business Profile access, and what each role can actually do

Google documents two roles you can give somebody on a Business Profile, owner and manager, and one of the owners is the primary owner. A manager can do almost everything an owner can, including replying to reviews and changing your opening hours. Adding and removing users is an owner’s job, with one documented exception that runs the other way: a manager can remove themselves. Nothing narrower than manager is documented on the pages below, and removal is partial by design, because everything the removed person published stays published.

The role names, as Google writes them

Owners and managers, with site managers retired as a label. The help page defines the first role directly:

As the owner, you have full control over the profile. You can add or remove users, manage profile info, and even delete the profile.

It defines the second by subtraction, keeping the old label:

Managers, formerly known as “site managers,” have mostly the same access to the profile as owners. The only exception is they can’t add or remove users or remove the profile.

There is no site manager role to add or remove today: everyone on the list is an owner or a manager, and “A Business Profile can have multiple owners but only one primary owner.”

What a manager can actually do

The owners and managers page carries a table headed Capability, with a column for Owner and a column for Manager. On the date in our sources list it had 22 rows, checked for Owner on all 22 and for Manager on 20. Below are the two rows Manager is not checked on, with a sample of the ones it is.

Capability	Owner	Manager
Add and remove users	checkmark	no checkmark
Remove Business Profiles	checkmark	no checkmark
Respond to reviews	checkmark	checkmark
Edit main business info, like hours and address	checkmark	checkmark
Edit all URLs	checkmark	checkmark
Create, manage, and publish posts	checkmark	checkmark

Read the second column and the word manager stops sounding cautious. A manager can rewrite your address, replace your logo and publish a post under your business name. The two things held back are user management and deletion, and we report the table as it stood on that date, because it carries no version history.

Who can reply to reviews

Owners and managers both. The business has to be verified first, on Google’s reviews page: “Before you can reply to reviews, you must verify your business”. And the reply publishes as the business rather than as the person who typed it: “It will appear like your business replied, and your personal name won’t be shown.” The API models it the same way, describing the reply object as “Represents the location owner/manager’s reply to a review.” No third kind of actor exists in the data model, and a refused reply carries policyViolation on the reply rather than on a user, so the published rejection reasons say nothing about who wrote it. Access is not skill either: the role does not teach anyone how to answer a bad review.

Adding and removing users, and the one exception

Owners, on both counts, and Google says so twice. “Only owners can add or remove users.” on the transfer page, and “Only owners can remove other owners and managers.” on the owners and managers page. That page also documents the symptom of being the wrong role: “If you can’t select the user, it might mean you only have manager-level access.”

The exception is the sentence a departing manager needs, and the transfer page states it flatly: “Managers can remove themselves from a profile.” A manager can see themselves out but cannot show anyone else out, which is narrower than the blockquote above reads on its own.

Both acts happen on one screen: More, then Business Profile settings, then People and access, where the instruction is “Select the user you’d like to remove” and then Remove person. The same screen is the register of who holds access: “Users in the account can find names and email addresses of the owners and managers.”

An unaccepted invitation is a different object with a different button: Google puts pending invites in their own section of that screen, with Cancel invitation rather than Remove person. Check it when somebody leaves, because an unaccepted invite to a personal address outlives their last day.

One constraint on how you invite people: “You can’t add Google Groups as managers or owners of profiles.”, because “each user needs their own Google Account.”

What the removed person loses, and what they keep

Google’s paragraph is the whole answer, and its second half is the part to read twice:

When you remove a user, they get an email. They can’t change business info or do admin tasks, but their replies to reviews, posts, comments, and other actions stay on the Business Profile.

Every review reply that employee or agency wrote stays live, and stays anonymous, because a reply never carried their name. A reply you would not have approved does not come down with its author, and afterwards nobody can edit it, so read what they wrote before you cut the access.

What only the primary owner can do

One thing: “Only the primary owner can transfer primary ownership.” So the primary owner cannot simply leave, since “If you’re the primary owner, you can’t remove yourself until after you transfer primary ownership to someone else.”, and cannot transfer to nobody, because “A profile must have at least one other owner or manager to transfer primary owner access to.” Nothing we read gives another owner a documented way to take primary ownership from a holder who will not hand it over, and we will not assert one from an interface we have not driven.

The 7 days, worded three ways

A newly promoted replacement cannot do the removing straight away. Three pages carry the waiting period and no two word it alike.

Page	Google’s wording
Manage your owners & managers	“When you become a profile owner or manager, you have to wait 7 days before you can manage some profile features.”
Transfer primary ownership	“The new owner or manager of a Business Profile must wait 7 days before they can manage all the features.”
Remove a Business Profile	“New owners and managers must wait 7 days before they can remove profile content or managers.”

Some profile features against all the features against removal alone is a real difference, and we will not reconcile it. The blocked actions are consistent, and removal is one:

During these 7 days, they might get an error if they: Delete or undelete a profile. Remove other owners or managers from a profile. Make themselves or someone else the primary owner.

So promoting a replacement today and having them remove the old agency today fails. One removal inside that window is automatic: “If the new owner or manager leaves the business within the first 7 days, they’ll be removed from the profile.”

Removing a user is not removing the profile

Two similarly named actions, very different consequences. Removing a user leaves everybody else alone: “You can remove your account from a Business Profile without removing other owners and managers.” Removing the profile is permanent and destroys what an ordinary removal leaves standing: “Any posts, photos, videos, and review replies by owners and managers are permanently removed.” So to offboard a person the button is Remove person, and to leave yourself it is Stop managing: “Once you stop managing the profile, you can no longer change business info.”

Giving an agency or a tool access is the same act

Adding an agency, a contractor or the operator of a reply tool is the same mechanism as adding an employee: an email address and a choice between owner and manager. No separate agency object, no scoped app permission, no reviews-only setting. So “reply to our reviews for us” is, in practice, consent to edit the address, the phone number and the photos as well. The capability table has exactly two columns, and Respond to reviews is one row among the 20 a manager holds. If a review-only access level exists anywhere in Business Profile, we found nothing about it on the pages cited below. The API route does not change that either: the prerequisites page tells applicants to use “an email address that is listed as an owner/manager on your business’s GBP.”

One note on us: mesej is our own product, it is reply-only, and it has no Google Business Profile integration, so nothing here describes access you would grant us. It is the access other tools in this category ask for, which is worth knowing before you shop for review management software.

The short version

Add a manager when somebody should run the profile day to day, reviews included. Add an owner only when you are content for them to add and remove users and delete the profile. Removal is an owner’s job on the People and access screen, except that a manager can remove themselves, and the primary owner transfers primary ownership first. Cancel the pending invites too, and expect every reply the departing person wrote to stay under your business name.