Your Google Business Profile Is Still in the Agency's Name

The listing follows a Google account, not the signboard

A Google Business Profile is how Maps, Search and the local panel decide which phone number, hours and reviews belong to a shop. The signboard, the SSM registration and the domain name do not decide who can edit that panel. Access follows whichever Google account was made the owner when the profile was verified.

That is why a business can pay for the premises, answer the phone on the listing, and still be unable to change Saturday hours. The agency that set the profile up kept the owner role. Staff were added later as managers, which is enough to publish a post and reply to a review, and not enough to remove the agency.

Google describes the roles on its own help page for adding owners and managers (Google Business Profile Help: Add owners and managers). Read that page on the day you do the work. Google revises the labels and the waiting rules.

Primary owner, owner, and manager

There is one primary owner. That account can transfer the primary role to someone else. Additional owners can edit the profile and manage other people, but they cannot strip the primary owner. Managers can edit most public fields and reply to reviews. They cannot add or remove people, and they cannot hand the profile to the business.

If your login can change the cover photo and cannot open the People screen, you are a manager. Collecting a screenshot of that screen, with the role written next to each email address, is the first useful record. A shared password in a WhatsApp chat is not a record of ownership.

When the agency will still cooperate

Cooperation is the short path. The primary owner adds a Google account the company controls — a Workspace user on the company domain, not a personal Gmail that belongs to one director — as an owner. Google does not let a newly added person become primary owner in the same minute. The help flow imposes a waiting period before the transfer option appears. The length of that wait is Google's, and it has changed, so do not plan the agency's last day as the day of the transfer. Keep someone at the agency available until the company account shows as primary owner and the agency's own login has been removed.

After the transfer, open the profile from the company account on a different browser and confirm the agency address is gone from People. Then check the verification method. A postcard, a phone call or a video verification that only the agency can repeat is a second lock. Note which method was used.

When nobody answers

If the primary owner will not respond, Google publishes a separate path: request ownership of a profile you believe is yours (Google Business Profile Help: Request ownership). The current owner is given a response window. If they approve, you get in. If they refuse or ignore it, Google may ask you to verify the business yourself, which for a shopfront can mean a video or a postcard to the address on the listing.

That path is not instant and it is not guaranteed. A profile that was verified at an old address, or that duplicates a second listing the agency also created, can stall. Do not create a brand-new profile beside the old one to "start fresh". Two listings split the reviews and confuse Maps. Request ownership of the existing profile, and only create a new one if Google's own flow tells you the original cannot be recovered.

What to record before you touch anything

Write down the profile URL, the business name exactly as Maps shows it, the primary category, the address, and every email under People with its role. Export or screenshot the reviews page so you know the count before anyone merges or removes a duplicate. If the agency also runs the ads that point at the listing, that is a different asset and is not moved by this transfer.

None of this is a legal claim over the reviews. It is the operational record you will need if Google asks you to prove the business is yours, and the record the next vendor will ask for.

What a review can and cannot settle

JagaWeb's Essential System Review (RM1,500) can inventory whether the company account is primary owner, whether a manager login is all you hold, and whether a stale verification is still sitting on the listing. It does not make Google approve a contested request, and it does not move reviews. If the only gap is ongoing edits after you already hold primary ownership, JagaWeb Care (RM450/month) is the retainer for that upkeep, not a substitute for the transfer itself. Details are on the ownership review.