Google Business Profile management

What is Google Business Profile management?

Google Business Profile management is the routine work that keeps a business's Google listing correct and alive. The listing is what people see on Google Search and Maps: name, hours, photos, reviews, posts. Nobody sets it up once and walks away. Reviews arrive, hours change, and Google edits things on its own.

For one location it is a small weekly habit. For an agency with dozens of clients it is a real job, and the habit has to scale without anyone forgetting a client.

What does managing a Google Business Profile involve?

Reviews

Read new reviews, reply to them, and ask happy and unhappy customers alike for more. This is the part customers see first. Start with the guide on how to reply to Google reviews, and the one on how to ask for Google reviews.

Google review guides collects both, and Google review management covers the inbox that handles many locations at once.

Posts

Short updates, offers and events that show on the profile. Posts have their own rules, such as no phone numbers in the text. Google Business Profile posts in OpenGMB are drafted, checked and scheduled.

Profile details

Hours, categories, services, the description, the address and the phone number. Wrong hours cost real customers, so holiday hours are worth a calendar reminder. Changes are easier to get right when a tool checks them first, which is what Google Business Profile optimization does across locations.

Performance

Calls, website clicks, direction requests and impressions show whether the profile is doing its job. Google Business Profile insights keeps them in one place with reports you can send to a client.

Rank

Where a business appears on Google Maps depends on where the searcher stands. A local rank tracker checks from a grid of points around the business, so you see the whole picture instead of one lucky spot.

Suspensions

Sometimes Google suspends a profile it cannot verify or thinks breaks its rules. Most of the work is prevention: careful address changes, no stuffed names, and noticing edits that nobody on your team made.

How much work is it, and who should do it?

I will not invent an hours-per-week number. It depends on how many reviews you get and how many locations you run. What holds up is the shape of the job: a short weekly slot for reviews, a monthly look at the numbers, and a check on the details whenever something changes in the business.

Owners of one location can do all of it. Agencies need approvals and a record of who did what, because a client's profile is public the moment something is published.

What goes wrong when nobody owns the profile?

• Reviews sit unanswered, and the unhappy ones sit longest.
• Holiday or moved-location details stay wrong for weeks.
• Someone suggests an edit on Google and the change goes live unnoticed.
• Replies and posts go out with a phone number, a link or an offer that Google or the reader dislikes.

Every item on that list is fixable with a routine and a few checks. None needs a big tool, but a big tool helps when there are many profiles.

How do you manage profiles with OpenGMB?

OpenGMB connects to Google through the official Business Profile API and puts reviews, posts, profile edits, performance and rank tracking in one place. Rules check replies, posts and edits before they are approved, and you choose who can approve. Google work is free, with a fair-use limit. Only AI drafts and rank scans use credit.

Use the opengmb MCP server. Call locations_list. For each active location,
call reviews_list_unreplied and count the reviews without a reply.

Give me a short table: location, unreplied reviews, and the oldest unreplied
review date. Do not draft, approve or change anything.