Why did Google change the information on my business profile?

Google changed the information on your business profile because it treats the profile as its own listing about your business, and it updates that listing from sources other than you. You manage the profile. You don’t have the only say over it. Google’s stated aim is for the listing to match the real world, and when another source disagrees with what you entered, Google may decide the other source is right. Sometimes it is, and the change is a correction. When it’s wrong, the cause is usually a conflicting detail somewhere you can find and fix.

Where the changes come from

Check first whether someone with access made the edit: a manager, a former employee or an agency. That’s the easiest cause to rule out, and working out which source applies tells you what to do.

Next come suggested edits from the public. Anyone using Google Maps or Search can suggest an edit to a business: its hours, phone number, category, address, or whether it has closed. Google reviews suggestions and applies some of them.

Your own website is another source. If the site footer shows different hours or an old phone number, Google may take the site as the better one. Other listings and directories work the same way, because old records elsewhere on the web can carry a previous address or number for years. Google also uses its own data, drawing on its mapping imagery and on automated systems that look for likely errors.

How to see what was changed

Look in the profile editor and in the inbox of the account that owns the profile. Google generally emails owners and managers when it updates a profile, and the editor has typically marked the fields Google altered so you can review them. The way this is shown has changed over the years, so if you can’t find it, check Google’s current help page on updates to a Business Profile. Many owners never see the emails because the profile sits in an account nobody reads. That’s worth fixing in its own right.

What to do about a wrong change

Correct the field, then go after the source, or the same change is likely to come back.

1. Open the profile and review the update. You can usually accept it or put your own information back.
2. Check your website. The name, address, phone number and hours on the site should match the profile exactly.
3. Check the main directories and listings for old details. Matching name, address and phone number across the web is what NAP consistency means, and cleaning up those records is citation work.
4. Look at the list of people with access and remove anyone who shouldn’t be there.
5. Watch the field for a few weeks.

Take a hypothetical electrician who moved from National City to Chula Vista two years ago. The profile was updated at the time, but an old directory record and a page on the company’s own site still show the National City address. To Google, that looks like evidence the profile might be wrong. Until those are corrected, the old address can keep resurfacing.

When the change looks deliberate

Most unwanted changes are caused by stale data and not by anyone acting against you. Occasionally a suggested edit is malicious: a business marked as closed, a phone number swapped, a category changed to something unrelated. That raises the question of whether a competitor can edit your Google Business Profile, including what a rival can and can’t do and how to respond.

Why you can’t switch it off

No setting stops Google from updating a profile. Your part is to make your information the most consistent version available, sign in often enough to catch a change within days, and keep your hours current, including holidays. When I run a profile audit, I compare every field on the profile with the website and the main listings, because a mismatch between them is the usual reason a profile keeps changing.