Google My Business Becomes Google Business Profile: What Changes for Your Listing

Since Google's announcement on November 4, a few of my clients have called me over the past weeks asking where their My Business app went. The account and the access stay the same: what changes is the tool's name and, soon, the place where you go to edit it. Here is what changes for your listing, where I now go to edit it with clients, and what I tell owners who can no longer find their usual dashboard.

What changed with the new name?

Your listing's name moves from Google My Business to Google Business Profile, but the content it shows (hours, photos, reviews, address, phone number) stays exactly the same. Google announced the change in November: the goal is to retire the standalone My Business app and move listing edits directly into Google Search and Google Maps, the two places your customers already see it. For a small business that manages its own listing, that means one less app to install on your phone, and one new habit to build: searching your business directly instead of opening a separate app.

Where do you edit your listing now that the My Business app is closing?

Directly from Google Search or Google Maps, by typing your business name, then clicking Edit profile under your listing. This is the most concrete change for an owner used to opening a separate app on their phone: that step disappears, and you edit your Google Business Profile listing in the same place a customer would look it up. I now do this search directly with clients during our meetings, instead of showing them an app that will not be around much longer.

What if you were still looking for the business.google.com dashboard?

Keep signing in there for now, but expect to be redirected to direct search more and more often. The business.google.com site still works as of this writing, and it remains the place where a few features, like posts or messaging, stay available for a single listing. What is changing is the My Business mobile app itself: Google has confirmed it will be phased out over the course of the year, so if you rely on that app on your phone, now is the time to get used to searching your business directly rather than opening an icon that will not be there for much longer.

Should you change the words you use with clients and staff?

A little, yes, mainly to avoid confusion the next time someone looks for help online. I now say Google Business Profile listing rather than My Business listing to clients, even though in everyday conversation Google listing stays perfectly clear and skips the jargon. The point is not to memorize the full new name: it is to understand that tutorials, screenshots and written instructions from before November show an app that will not exist much longer. If a guide you find online still shows the blue My Business icon, check its publish date before following its steps, and prefer a support page from Google itself over a third-party blog when the two disagree on where a setting has moved.

Could you lose your reviews or photos during this transition?

No, nothing gets deleted or moved somewhere else during this change: reviews, photos and the listing's history stay attached to the same account, no matter where you go to view them. This is the question I get most often since the announcement, usually from a client who watched the app disappear from their phone and worried they had lost years of accumulated reviews. The listing itself does not move: only the door you use to edit it changes. I still tell clients to keep a screenshot of their most useful reviews once a year, as a general precaution, but that habit has nothing to do with this particular change.

Will the notifications you get for a new review change too?

Not right away. Email alerts for a new review or a new question keep arriving at the Gmail account tied to the listing, the same way they did before the November announcement. What will likely change is where you click to respond: instead of opening the My Business app from the notification, you will be sent to the management page inside Search or Maps. I tell clients to hang onto these notification emails and, the next time one lands, check that the link still works and takes them to the right place.

Does a business with several locations manage its listing differently now?

Yes, if you manage ten listings or more, the tool for that changes name too: the Business Profile Manager replaces the multi-location view from the old My Business interface, with the same bulk-editing functions for a network of branches, such as updating holiday hours across every location in one pass instead of opening each listing on its own. For a small business with a single address, like most of my Greater Montreal clients, this change does not affect you directly: you still manage one listing at a time from Search or Maps, just from a different starting point than before.

Does this renaming change your listing's ranking on Maps?

No, nothing moves in the ranking because of the name. This is a question several clients have asked me as soon as they saw the icon disappear from their phone, worried they had lost their position in the results. The renaming touches the management interface, not the signals that decide where your listing shows up in the local pack or on Maps: distance, relevance and prominence keep working exactly as before. If your position shifted recently, the cause is somewhere else, not in this name change.

What should you do with your listing this week?

Here is the order I follow with clients to get through this change without losing anything:

1. Search your business name on Google and confirm you still see Edit profile under your listing.
2. Write down the Gmail account tied to the listing, so you are not hunting for it later when you need it.
3. Replace any bookmark or shortcut that pointed to the My Business app with one that points to your business search result instead.
4. Tell whoever on your team replies to reviews that the app is changing name, so they do not think they have lost access.
5. Check that your hours, phone number and description are still accurate while you are in there: it is a good moment for a quick pass over the whole listing.

That is the sequence I run with every client this week, whether they have always managed their own listing or hand the whole thing to us through our Google Business Profile service: the name changes, but the listing stays the same tool that gets a customer to call you instead of a competitor.

Drafted with AI assistance, checked and published by Marven Salgado.