You are about to bring on an agency, or a new staff member needs to post updates and answer reviews. Either way, they need access to your Google Business Profile.
Most owners do one of two things here. Share their own login directly, which creates its own problems. Or make the other person an Owner, because it feels like the generous, safe option.
It is not the safe option, and the reason comes down to one specific permission most people never think to check.
The Role System Changed, and Old Guides Still Describe the Wrong One
Two Roles Now, Not Three
Google’s current guidance is direct about this: there are two roles on a Business Profile, Owner and Manager. What used to be called Site Manager is simply the old name for Manager. It was not a separate, more limited tier, it was renamed.
A lot of content still online describes Owner, Manager and Site Manager as three distinct levels. That was accurate once. It is not accurate now, and following outdated instructions here means granting access levels that no longer exist in the way described.
Why This Matters Before You Grant Anything
If you are working from an old guide, you might be trying to find a “Site Manager” option that will not appear, or assuming a more restricted tier exists when it does not. Confirm current terminology before deciding what to grant, not after.
What a Manager Can and Cannot Do
Direct answer: nearly everything you can, except the two things that actually matter for control.
The Day-to-Day Access Is Almost Identical
A Manager has mostly the same access to the profile as an Owner. Editing business information, hours, and contact details. Responding to reviews. Creating posts. Managing photos, services, and products. For anyone actually doing the daily work, Manager access covers all of it.
The One Restriction That Is the Entire Point
What a Manager cannot do: add or remove other users, and cannot delete the Business Profile. That is the whole distinction, and it is a significant one.
An agency or employee with Manager access can run the profile day to day and never touch who else has control over it. An agency or employee with Owner access can add themselves as an additional Owner, add other accounts you never approved, and in the worst case, you discover this only when you try to make a change yourself and find your own access has been altered.
Primary Owner Is Its Own Special Case
A profile can have multiple Owners, but only one Primary Owner at any given time. The Primary Owner cannot remove themselves from that role without first transferring it to someone else. If you are the business owner, you want to be the Primary Owner, and you want to stay that way deliberately, not by accident.
How to Actually Add a Manager
The Steps
From your Business Profile, select More, then Business Profile settings, then People and access. Select Add, enter the email address of the person you are granting access to, choose Manager under Access, and select Invite.
That is the entire process. It takes under two minutes.
Check the Current List Periodically
People and access also shows everyone who currently has any level of access. Reviewing this list every few months, not just when adding someone new, catches situations where a former employee or agency still has standing access long after the relationship ended.
When Owner Access Is Actually Justified
Rarely, and Only for People You Trust With the Whole Business
There is a genuine case for a second Owner: a business partner, a co-founder, someone who needs to make decisions about the profile’s future independent of you, including potentially becoming Primary Owner if something happens to you.
An agency you have hired for marketing work is not that case, regardless of how much you trust them. Their job is managing the profile’s content and activity, not deciding who else can access it.
The Cost of Getting This Wrong
We covered what happens when this goes wrong in our guide on recovering a Google Business Profile from an ex-employee or old agency. That entire situation, and the weeks it typically takes to resolve, exists because someone was granted Owner access when Manager access would have covered everything they actually needed to do.
Granting the correct role from the start is the version of this where that guide never becomes relevant to you.
A Scenario Worth Recognising
The Agency Handover Nobody Thinks Through
A common pattern: a business hires an agency, and the agency asks for Owner access “to set things up properly.” The business agrees, because refusing feels awkward and the request sounds routine.
Eighteen months later the relationship ends. The business asks for access back. The agency, now an Owner, is slow to respond, disputes the request, or has simply moved on and stopped checking that inbox. The business is left negotiating for control of its own listing, sometimes for weeks, over a permission that Manager access would have made unnecessary to negotiate in the first place.
What to Say Instead
You do not need to justify granting Manager rather than Owner access, and a competent agency will not push back on it, because Manager genuinely covers everything they need to do the work. If an agency insists on Owner access specifically and cannot explain why Manager is insufficient for their actual tasks, that itself is worth treating as a signal.
Common Mistakes When Granting Access
Adding by Name Instead of the Correct Google Account Email
Access is tied to a specific Google account, not a name or a company. Confirm the exact email address the person uses to sign in to Google, not a general company inbox that might not be linked to any single Google account at all.
Forgetting to Remove Access When It Ends
An expired contract or a departed employee does not automatically lose access. Removing it is a manual step, and it is the one most commonly forgotten, precisely because nothing prompts you to remember it.
Granting Owner Access “Just in Case”
Broader access than someone currently needs is not a safety margin, it is a liability sitting quietly until something goes wrong. Grant what the role actually requires today, and adjust later if the role genuinely changes.
The Bottom Line
Manager access covers essentially everything an agency or employee needs to run your Google Business Profile day to day. The one thing it withholds, control over who else has access, is precisely the thing you should keep for yourself.
Add people as Managers by default. Reserve Owner access for someone you would trust with the entire business, not just its marketing. And check your access list periodically, because standing access nobody remembers granting is how these situations start.
If you would rather have your profile’s access set up correctly from the start, or audited if you are not sure who currently has it, our Google Business Profile management service covers exactly this.
WhatsApp Hameed for a quick question, or call +971 56 544 6241 for a free consultation. There is also a contact form if you would rather write it out.
The right access level costs nothing to set up correctly. The wrong one costs weeks to undo.
