Setting up, editing, verifying and keeping a Google Business Profile: where to click, what the rules say, what to do when something breaks.
Google chooses which picture leads on your profile, and it says so plainly: setting a cover photo “doesn’t guarantee the cover photo will show up as the first image for your business”. If the picture you chose is weak, Google says “a user-submitted photo may be selected instead”.
Use photos that help a new customer recognise your business and understand what to expect. Paying a photographer is not the same rule as paying for reviews, but Google’s separate media criteria still matter, including who captured the image and how it is posted. You can manage your uploads and report suspected violations in other people’s photos; removal and first-image placement are not guaranteed.
A reinstatement request is an appeal, and Google’s help pages give one place to make it: the Business Profile appeals tool. Fix whatever broke the guidelines first, then select the profile, select “Submit Appeal”, and attach your documents within 60 minutes of opening the evidence form.
Google does not name posts anywhere in what it publishes about local ranking, so nobody can honestly sell them to you as a ranking service. What posts are documented to do is show up on your own profile on Search and Maps, which is a smaller claim, and a real one.
Google chooses the verification methods your profile is offered, and its help page says they are automatically determined and can’t be changed. So the answer is not a request to Google but a look at your own screen: open “Get verified” and take whichever of phone, text, email or video is listed there.
No. Give a role, not a password: on a Business Profile that means adding the agency under “People and access” as a “Manager”, which lets them edit the profile and answer reviews but not add or remove people. Google’s own tip is that each user needs their own Google Account.
You manage the profile inside Google itself: search for your business while signed in, or open the Google Maps app and tap “Business” at the bottom right. From there you edit the profile, read and answer reviews, add photos and posts, and open the settings that hold your Business Profile ID.
There is no email box on the profile itself, so changing the email means one of two things: the Google Account that owns the profile, or the address Google writes to. To move the profile to a new address, add that address as an owner, transfer primary ownership to it, then remove the old one.
You add each location as its own Business Profile, then keep them together in one account. Go to business.google.com/add, select “Add your business to Google”, enter that address, verify it, and repeat for the next one; from ten locations upward Google lets you upload them all from one spreadsheet.
A suspended profile is fixed in one place: Google’s appeals tool. Read the reason, make the profile match the guidelines before you send anything, gather your business documents, then submit the appeal and, once you open the evidence form, finish it within 60 minutes.