Connect and manage business listings

Use Listings to keep location names, addresses, phone numbers, weekly hours, and holidays current on Google Business Profile. A business can link multiple independent accounts for every supported provider when different owners or teams manage different profiles. Google Business Profile is currently the supported provider; Bing Places and Apple Business Connect are shown as planned and cannot be connected yet.

Prerequisites

• At least one active location with complete address and phone information.
• An Administrator who can authorize each Google account needed to reach the business’s profiles.
• Listings must be available and active for the business, and Customer Help’s Google policy approval switch must be enabled by the platform team. If Connect Google is unavailable, no Google read or write is attempted; contact support to confirm availability.
• Each location should show Ready before you rely on Customer Help changes appearing on Google.
• Automatic publishing is optional and must be authorized separately for each connected Google account.

Connect Google

Select Connect Google in the Google Business Profile provider section, choose any Google account that manages the business locations in Google’s account chooser, and authorize it. After the first connection, Add another account remains visible so an Administrator can create another independent authorization without replacing the accounts already connected. The Customer Help account email and business owner email do not restrict or preselect the Google account. Each account row shows its connection state, the number of matched Customer Help locations, its automatic-publishing choice, and its own reconnect or disconnect action.

One Google sign-in can expose more than one Business Profile account, and two connected sign-ins can sometimes expose the same profile. Customer Help reads the account and location resource names and storefront addresses needed for matching, deduplicates the same Google location resource returned through overlapping authorizations, and connects a Customer Help location only when its normalized address has one unique provider match. It does not create a second listing merely because another connected account can reach the same Google profile. Distinct Google profiles with the same normalized address remain ambiguous and stop for review instead of being assigned arbitrarily. Unmatched locations also remain disconnected for review.

Complete Google authorization in the same browser that started Connect Google, Add another account, or Reconnect, with cookies enabled, within 10 minutes. Customer Help binds each one-time authorization link to that browser with a Secure, HttpOnly callback cookie, rechecks that the initiating user is still a current Administrator, and clears the binding after the callback. A forwarded link, a replayed link, a callback from another browser, a removed or demoted Administrator, or an expired flow is rejected before Google credentials are exchanged; start the account action again. Customer Help’s dedicated OAuth client requests only https://www.googleapis.com/auth/business.manage and rejects an authorization response that reports any missing or additional scope.

Platform setup also requires LISTING_TOKEN_ENCRYPTION_KEY as canonical unpadded base64url: 43–128 characters that decode to 32–96 bytes. Platform administrators can generate a 32-byte value with openssl rand -base64 32 | tr '+/' '-_' | tr -d '='. A missing, noncanonical, or shorter key leaves Google connection unavailable. The key encrypts saved Google credentials and signs browser bindings; before rotating it, a platform administrator must disconnect and revoke every Google account while the old key is still active, then replace the secret and have each business reconnect. Changing it first makes existing saved credentials unreadable and still requires reconnecting.

The Google go-live migration creates the secure authorization storage absent from the first Listings release, then clears any older Google account labels and location mappings that have no provider fetch clock. Authorization credentials remain, but an Administrator must select Sync locations after migration before any listing write, review sync, Performance sync, or reply can use those profiles. If deployment reports that the authorization-state table is missing, install the current release and rerun the still-pending go-live migration; keep Connect Google unavailable until it succeeds.

Sync locations is a read-only discovery action. It reads the latest Google account and location details and updates matching status, but does not publish Customer Help addresses, phones, hours, holidays, posts, photos, or replies. If a successfully refreshed Google account no longer returns a previously matched profile, Customer Help immediately marks that location as needing a new match and stops publishing to the old mapping. Refresh dashboard only reloads Customer Help’s stored status and cached Google content; it does not call Google or change a Google profile.

Automatically publish future location changes is off until an Administrator gives express consent for that specific connected Google account. Adding another account does not copy consent from an existing row. When enabled, future saves to locations matched through that account can queue addresses, primary phone numbers, weekly hours, and holiday hours for Google; business names, descriptions, websites, photos, announcements, and review replies are not part of automatic publishing. For a primary-phone change, Customer Help first reads Google’s current phone collection, replaces the primary phone, and sends the complete collection so Google-only additional phones are preserved. A blank Customer Help primary phone stops for review instead of clearing the Google collection. For an address change, Customer Help reads and reuses the current Google profile’s country code for that one request; it does not save the provider address, does not assume that an unknown country is the United States, and stops for review if Google does not return a valid country code. Address matching recognizes explicit United States, Mexico, and Canada country suffixes while leaving ambiguous abbreviations such as CA untouched. Turning automatic publishing off stops future automatic publication through that account without disconnecting it or changing another account’s consent, even when billing or automatic delivery is temporarily unavailable. Enabling it does not backfill or publish earlier Customer Help changes by itself. If the automatic-update notice or field list changes, Customer Help stops automatic publishing for the affected account and asks an Administrator to review and authorize the current notice again.

If a row says Reconnect, use that row’s action and authorize the intended Google sign-in again; the other connected rows remain in place. An authorization failure turns off automatic publishing for only that connection before another save can try it. Disconnect on an account row revokes and removes the selected authorization, turns off its automatic-publishing consent, clears its location mappings and cached provider content, and leaves the provider’s other connected accounts available. A location that was reachable through the removed account must be matched through a remaining account during Sync locations before Customer Help can use it again.

Disconnect all is provider-wide. It revokes every connected Google authorization for this Customer Help business, removes every saved Google credential and mapping, turns off all Google automatic-publishing consents, and purges all cached Google location, review, and performance content for the business. Neither disconnect action deletes locations from Customer Help or profiles from Google, and Customer Help-authored drafts remain. Revoking a Google grant can also affect another Customer Help business that used the same grant, so that business may need to reconnect. If Google cannot confirm a revocation, Customer Help still removes the selected local connection—or all local connections for Disconnect all—and tells the Administrator to remove Customer Help under the Google Account’s third-party connections.

Google account states include Not connected, Policy approval needed, Ready to connect, Connected, and Reconnect. A provider summary shows its connected-account count, while its account list keeps each authorization and matched-location count separate. Provider cards show Supported or Coming later. If policy approval or Google connection setup is unavailable, Customer Help blocks Google calls while leaving the available disconnect actions visible; keep location information current in Customer Help and contact support to confirm availability.

Update location information

Use Manage locations, Manage hours, and Manage holidays to edit Customer Help’s source information. When the correct Google account is connected, the location shows Ready, and automatic publishing is enabled for that account, saving a matched address, phone number, weekly schedule, or holiday schedule can queue that specific change for Google. Without that per-account consent, the save changes Customer Help only. Confirm every attempted Google write under Recent listing updates.

Business names, descriptions, and websites are never included in automatic publishing. If a separately authorized business-information update includes a description, Google’s limit is 750 characters. Customer Help sends an authored description unchanged at or below that limit; an over-limit description stops the location for review instead of being silently shortened.

Each location shows:

• missing phone or address information and other warnings;
• whether the correct Google location is connected or still waiting for a match;
• how the match was found, such as by address;
• whether the location is ready for updates and any message that needs attention.

Resolve Needs review before relying on updates. Never change a correct address merely to make it match the wrong Google location.

Publish optional content

Provider accounts and location readiness stay at the top of Listings. Below them, expand Optional listing content to publish an announcement, link, or photos to selected Google locations. Expanding the section does not publish or change anything by itself.

Field	Limit and behavior
Locations	Choose All active locations or specific active rows. Only the selected locations receive the update; review the selection after using filters or All. An omitted, empty, malformed, inactive, or unknown selection is rejected and never broadened to every location.
Announcement title	Up to 120 characters, authored per enabled business language. The title also counts toward the combined 1,500-character Google summary limit. Make the subject clear without placing private customer information in public content.
Announcement	The title, two newline characters used as its blank separator, and body may total up to 1,500 characters per language. The body therefore uses the characters left after its title and separator. Customer Help rejects an over-limit authored version instead of truncating it.
Announcement link	Optional public absolute HTTPS call-to-action URL, up to 500 characters. Test it signed out and ensure it matches the announcement. Customer Help rejects an invalid or over-limit link instead of shortening it.
Publish language	Select the one version to publish to Google. That selected version must contain a title or body; Customer Help rejects the request instead of silently dropping copy authored only in another language. Other language drafts remain saved in Customer Help but are not included in this publication.
Photos	Enter up to 20 absolute public HTTPS image URLs per update, one per line. Google must be able to fetch every image without authentication; Customer Help rejects an over-limit list, local path, non-HTTPS address, or malformed URL instead of silently dropping it.

Select Publish optional content when Google publishing is enabled and connected. If it is disconnected or the platform policy switch is off, Save optional draft keeps the content in Customer Help without making any Google request. Google can return a new announcement as LIVE, RECURRING, PROCESSING, SCHEDULED, or REJECTED: Customer Help marks LIVE or RECURRING as published, marks PROCESSING, SCHEDULED, or an absent state as Pending, and marks REJECTED as unsuccessful. Customer Help does not poll Google to reconcile a pending announcement’s final moderation state. Check Recent listing updates, then verify a pending announcement directly in Google before sending it again.

A location update, each photo, and an announcement are separate Google operations; the group is not atomic. If Google accepts one operation and a later one fails, Customer Help marks that location Partly live, records each photo result, and does not automatically replay the partially completed request. Verify the affected location directly in Google, then retry only the unfinished content to avoid duplicates.

Photo and announcement creation are non-idempotent Google operations. If Customer Help dispatches one and then receives a network failure, timeout, or Google 5xx response, Google may still have created it. Customer Help marks the result Delivery unknown, never retries it automatically, and requires you to verify the location in Google before deciding whether to retry; this prevents a blind retry from creating duplicate public content.

Customer Help records a processing audit row before sending a live request. If Google responds but the complete audit trail cannot be saved, the request returns an error and the row is best-effort finalized as Audit failed; it never reports the update as successfully recorded. Google may still have applied changes, so verify every selected location before retrying.

Reviews, performance, and recent listing updates

Below Optional listing content, expand Reviews · Performance · History to find the Review inbox, daily Performance values, and Recent listing updates. Use Sync reviews or Sync performance in the Google provider section above when you need current provider data; Refresh dashboard only reloads content already stored by Customer Help. Expanding this section does not call Google.

Sync reviews is a user-initiated, read-only request. It retrieves the current Google reviews for matched locations without publishing a reply or changing the listing. After every page succeeds, rows Google no longer returns for that location are removed; if any page fails, the earlier cache is preserved until a complete sync succeeds. Customer Help stops displaying fetched Google reviews and cached Google account labels at 29 days from provider fetch and removes them in the next daily cleanup, within Google’s 30-day maximum; authorization status remains visible, and Disconnect removes the cached content sooner.

Google only makes review retrieval available for verified profiles. The Review inbox shows individual review rows as Google returned them; Customer Help does not calculate or display a combined Google review count or average across reviews or locations.

Sync performance is also user-initiated and read-only; it does not run as an unattended daily import. Each request asks Google for the latest 30 daily dates. Customer Help stops displaying fetched Google performance content at 29 days from provider fetch and removes it in the next daily cleanup, within Google’s 30-day maximum; Disconnect removes it sooner.

Performance shows Google’s raw daily value for each date, metric, and matched location from the requested 30-date window while that provider fetch remains in Customer Help’s shorter storage window. Google only provides this data for verified profiles. Customer Help does not add dates or locations together, and the values are not lifetime totals. After a successful location request, an in-window value that Google omitted is removed; a failed request preserves the earlier rows until a complete sync. The dashboard displays the newest 2,000 rows, ordered by date, location, and metric, and shows a warning if additional cached rows are not displayed. A missing day is not the same as a reported zero; sync again if the displayed window is stale, and contact support with the affected date, location, and metric if the 2,000-row warning prevents you from seeing a needed value.

The Review inbox shows the 20 newest reviews currently available in that rolling cache and displays a notice when older stored reviews are omitted; use Google Business Profile to review older items. Recent listing updates shows the 12 newest write requests and displays a notice when older requests are omitted. It identifies whether each shown request is processing, complete, partly complete, delivery-unknown, or unsuccessful. A pending announcement remains pending in Customer Help because the dashboard refresh does not ask Google for its later moderation state; verify that announcement in Google. For a partly complete or delivery-unknown update, use its counts and the affected location warnings to verify Google and correct only the locations that need attention.

Reply to a review

• Review reply is the public response text authored in one or more enabled-language tabs. Each authored language is limited to 4,096 UTF-8 bytes, so some non-ASCII characters use more than one byte. Customer Help validates every authored version without truncating it. Address the review professionally, avoid private account information, and do not promise an outcome the business has not approved.
• Reply language chooses the one authored version sent to Google. The selected version must contain reply text; Customer Help never falls back to another language while labeling it as the selected one. Match the review’s language when practical, then select Send reply. Google can return APPROVED, PENDING, or REJECTED: Customer Help marks those replies Answered, Pending, or Failed, respectively. Select Sync reviews to reconcile a pending or failed reply with Google’s current state, and verify the reply in Google before sending it again. If an owner edits or deletes the reply directly in Google, the latest local version is marked superseded rather than falsely shown as published, while the review itself follows Google’s current answer state.
• Before contacting Google, Customer Help records the reply text, language versions, and a Processing audit intent. If that record cannot be prepared, nothing is sent. If Google may have accepted the reply but the completed audit cannot be saved, Customer Help marks the intent Audit failed and tells you to verify the review directly in Google before retrying.
• A reply is sent only through the connected Google account and unexpired location mapping that retrieved that review. Customer Help blocks the write if the mapping is missing, expired, ambiguous, remapped, or the cached review name does not belong to that exact Google account and location; sync locations and reviews again instead of trying another connected account.
• A review outside Customer Help’s 29-day provider-content window cannot be used for a reply, even if its local identifier is submitted directly. Sync reviews to retrieve a current row, then reply from the Review inbox.

Permissions, billing, localization, and visibility

Only Administrators manage Listings, and the feature must show as active before changes can be sent. Saved provider-account identifiers are tenant-scoped; a request for one Customer Help business cannot update an account belonging to another business. Each automatic Google publishing account requires its own recorded consent; publishing optional content and sending a review reply remain explicit actions. Location information and published optional content are public on Google. Drafts remain private in Customer Help until you publish them. Google controls final display, moderation, and timing.

Every publish request uses only its explicit supported field list. If the list is omitted, empty, or contains an unknown field, Customer Help rejects it instead of expanding it to all listing fields. Announcement or photo values supplied without selecting their corresponding field are ignored: Customer Help neither validates nor saves them and does not send them to Google. Account authorization, location matching, per-account consent for automatic changes, and all validation gates still apply.

Google limits each API service to 300 requests per minute, each profile to 10 edits per minute, and Business Information location updates to 10,000 per Google Cloud quota day. Customer Help coordinates these limits across businesses, spaces calls, and uses opaque quota keys rather than storing Google location IDs in the limiter. If the daily Update Location limit is reached, the affected update fails visibly and is not repeatedly queued into the dead-letter queue; retry it after Google’s midnight Pacific reset. A quota delay or failure never rolls back the saved Customer Help location.

Troubleshooting

• Connect is unavailable or Policy approval needed appears: Customer Help is intentionally blocking Google calls until the platform’s approved access model and runtime setup are enabled. Contact support about availability while continuing to keep Customer Help locations, hours, and holidays current.
• Google connection expired or the authorization link was rejected: use the same cookie-enabled browser, return from Google within 10 minutes, and do not forward or reuse the authorization link. Confirm you still have Administrator access, then start Connect Google, Add another account, or Reconnect again. Platform administrators should also confirm the dedicated single-scope OAuth client and canonical encryption key described above.
• Google suggests the wrong account: use Google’s account chooser to select or add the Google account that manages the intended profiles. Customer Help does not limit authorization to the Customer Help login email or the business owner’s email domain.
• Account needs attention: reconnect the Google account, then select Sync locations. Connecting and syncing locations only read and match locations; they do not publish saved Customer Help data. Refresh dashboard only reloads the status already stored in Customer Help.
• Location waits for match: verify a complete, identical real-world address and the correct Google account.
• A previously matched location needs a new match: Google no longer returned it during a successful location refresh. Restore the signed-in account’s access to that profile or connect the account that now manages it, then select Sync locations.
• Saved information did not appear: confirm Listings is active, the correct account is connected, automatic publishing is enabled for that account, the location shows Ready, and the latest listing update succeeded. If it did not, contact support with the update details.
• Optional post is missing, Pending, or Delivery unknown: check the selected locations, required content, public image URLs, publish language, and latest listing update. Customer Help does not recheck Google’s final post moderation state. A delivery-unknown photo or announcement may already exist despite the missing final response, so verify the location directly in Google before correcting or sending it again.
• Reply may have been sent twice: refresh the review and confirm its current reply before trying again.
• Overnight holiday hours need review: Google requires next-day modified holiday hours to be shorter than 24 hours and to close before noon on the following date. Correct the closing time, then publish again.
• Reviews or performance look stale or empty: confirm that the Google profile is verified, then run the corresponding sync again. Customer Help stops showing a provider fetch at 29 days and removes it in the next daily cleanup within 30 days; review rows are not combined into a local total or average, and performance values are daily rather than cumulative. A performance warning means only the newest 2,000 rows are displayed.
• Daily Google update limit reached: the Customer Help save remains intact, but that Google write is marked unsuccessful. Retry after midnight Pacific rather than sending it repeatedly before reset.
• Disconnect shows a revocation warning: remove Customer Help from the Google Account’s third-party connections. A row’s Disconnect action has already removed that selected connection locally; Disconnect all accounts has already removed every Google connection for this Customer Help business locally. Reconnect only the required accounts.