You cannot make your marketing company press the button, but you can go around them. Google runs a request access form, and the current owner has 3 days to answer it. If no answer comes back, you may get the option to claim the profile yourself.
First, find out what role you have
Sign in to Google with your own email, not theirs. Open your Business Profile, then Business Profile settings, then People and access. Google’s own instructions send you down that path, and that screen is where your role is written.
Three roles matter. Google Business Profile Help, on Manage your Business Profile owners & managers, says a profile “can have multiple owners but only one primary owner.” Owners can add and remove users. Managers cannot. The same page says “Only owners can remove other owners and managers.”
So if your name says Manager, you are locked out of the one thing you want. You can post, and you can reply to reviews. You cannot remove the company sitting above you.
That page carries no update date. Open it and read it yourself before you act on any of this.
Ask in writing, and ask for the exact word
Send one email. Ask to be made Primary owner, and use that phrase.
Owner alone is not enough while the company keeps the primary seat. Google’s page on Transfer primary ownership of a Business Profile says “Only the primary owner can transfer primary ownership.” That page carries no update date either.
Give a date to reply by, and keep the email thread.
This is not legal advice and it is not tax advice. Contracts are read differently from state to state, so if your agreement has a line about who holds your listings, take it to an attorney licensed where you work.
The listing is rarely the only account in their name. The domain, the hosting and the billing usually sit in the same place, so run the checks on all of them in the same week.
Use the Google request access form when they go quiet
Google Business Profile Help, on Request ownership of a Business Profile, gives the steps. Go to business.google.com/add, enter the name and address of your business, pick it from the list, select Request Access, fill out the form, and submit.
Then, in Google’s own words: “The current profile owner is then notified by email and has 3 days to respond.”
Three things can happen after that.
- Approved. You get an approval email and can manage the profile.
- Denied. The page says “You’ll get a rejection email but you can still suggest an edit to the profile.” It adds that “You can also try to appeal the decision.”
- Nothing. The page says “If you don’t get a response after 3 days, you may have the option to claim the profile.”
Read that middle word. May. Google’s page on Resolve duplicate profiles & ownership issues drops the may and says you have the option to claim, then puts the limit in a tip underneath it: “The option to claim a profile isn’t always available.” Anyone who tells you the outcome is certain is reading something Google did not write.
Claiming is not the last step either. The request page tells you to “Follow the on-screen instructions to verify your business.” That part runs on Google’s terms. Its page on Verify your business on Google says “Verification methods are automatically determined by Google and can’t be changed,” and that the review “can take up to 5 business days.” Nobody you hire changes either one, and if the method you get is a video with no storefront to film, that is its own job.
The form itself is free. Google’s page on Add or claim your Business Profile says “You can add or claim your business at no charge.” None of those pages carries an update date.
Do not open a second listing while you wait
This is the expensive mistake. The live profile holds your reviews, your photos and your history, and a fresh one starts empty.
The duplicates page tells businesses “If you offer different services at your business, do not create separate Business Profiles for each service,” and “If your business relocates, do not create a new Business Profile for the new location.”
Cleaning a second listing up later costs you something either way. That page says “When 2 profiles are merged, their reviews are combined, but replies to reviews may be lost,” and that when you remove a duplicate profile, “all content and linked managers will be removed.”
Wait the request out. Leave the phone number alone until you hold the profile too, since on a lot of these accounts the number in the listing is rented, not yours.
The first 7 days after you get in are limited
Owner access does not hand you every button on day one.
The owners and managers page says “When you become a profile owner or manager, you have to wait 7 days before you can manage some profile features.” In those days you get an error if you try to delete or undelete a profile, remove other owners or managers, or transfer primary ownership. It adds that “If an existing owner tries to make someone else the primary owner in their first 7 days, they’ll get an error.”
So the cleanup is a second visit, not the same one. Set a reminder for day 8, then open People and access and remove every account that is not yours.
One honest limit while you are in there. Removing someone does not erase what they did. That page says their “replies to reviews, posts, comments, and other actions stay on the Business Profile.” Anything they wrote in your voice is still sitting under your reviews. Read it.
If the profile sits inside the company’s business group, that is a separate container with its own owners and managers. Google’s page on Manage business group owners & managers says business groups “make it easier for multiple administrators to manage a set of profiles,” and it lists transferring profiles to a different business group as something group owners and managers can do. Ask for yours to be moved to a group in your name. That page carries no update date.
What to do this week
Work through it in this order.
- Sign in with your own Google account and read the word beside your name under People and access.
- If it says Owner, remove the accounts you did not add, and you are finished.
- If it says Manager, or your name is not there at all, email the company and ask to be made Primary owner by a named date.
- No reply by that date: send the request at business.google.com/add, then wait the 3 days.
- Denied is not the end. Suggest an edit, and try the appeal the rejection email offers.
- Once you hold it, mark day 8 and finish the cleanup then.
Nobody can move you up Google’s queue, and the form costs nothing. If someone quotes you a fee to recover a listing, the fee buys the form and the waiting.
Do not pay for ongoing search checks on a listing that is still in somebody else’s name. Fix the ownership first, then spend. A free scan is a person reading your SEO and what ChatGPT and Google say about your business, then emailing back what to fix first. It will not tell you who holds your Google listing. Only People and access does that.