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Google My Business and Google Business Profile are the same product. Google renamed Google My Business to Google Business Profile in late 2021, retired the standalone app in 2022, and moved the job of managing your listing into Google Search and Google Maps. Your listing, your reviews and your photos all carried over untouched. What changed was the name, the place you manage it from, and a handful of features Google has switched off in the years after.
A Google Business Profile is the free listing Google shows for your business in Search and Maps. If you claimed yours before 2022, you knew it as Google My Business, or GMB, and plenty of owners still call it that. The confusion is fair. Google changed the name, then quietly kept changing the product.
Is Google My Business the same as Google Business Profile?
Yes. One product, two names, and only one of them is current.
Google announced the rename in November 2021. Google My Business became Google Business Profile, and the shorthand GMB became GBP. No listing was migrated, deleted or rebuilt. The listing you claimed years ago is the one sitting in Google Maps today, with the same reviews attached and the same star rating.
So when you see GMB, Google My Business, Google Business Profile, or just “your Google listing” used online, people are talking about the same thing. Older blog posts and forum threads still use the old name, which is part of why the confusion has stuck around.
Why did Google rename Google My Business?
Most owners were already managing their listing from the places customers were looking: Google Search and Google Maps. A separate app and a separate dashboard added a step nobody needed.
Renaming the product to Google Business Profile put the emphasis on the thing itself, the profile a customer sees, rather than a tool you log into. The listing moved to the front, and the management layer moved out of the way.
Did the Google My Business app shut down?
Yes. Google retired the standalone Google My Business app over 2022. Searching your app store for it now turns up nothing useful, which catches out plenty of owners who assume their listing vanished along with it.
It did not. The listing is still live and still working. Only the app is gone.
How do you manage a Google Business Profile now?
Straight from Google Search or Google Maps, signed in to the Google account that owns the listing.
Search your own business name on Google. If you are signed in as the owner, your profile appears with a set of controls on it: Edit profile, Read reviews, Add photo, Promote. That panel is your dashboard now. The same controls sit on your listing in Google Maps.
If you run several locations, Google keeps a separate dashboard called Business Profile Manager for handling them in bulk. That is the closest thing left to the old Google My Business dashboard, and it is built for multi-location businesses rather than the single shopfront.
What features has Google removed?
The rename itself was cosmetic. These are the changes that actually cost owners something.
The free website is gone. Google used to build a basic website from your profile, hosted on a .business.site address, at no charge. Google switched those off through 2024 and the old links now lead nowhere. If the Google one was your only website, you no longer have a website at all, which is worth acting on.
Chat and call history are gone. Google retired the messaging feature and the call history log on 31 July 2024. Customers can no longer message you through your profile, so your phone number and website link carry that load now.
The Call button moved out of the local three-pack. In 2026 Google took the Call button off the group of three businesses shown at the top of local results. Customers now tap into a listing before they can ring. Getting into that three is still the goal, and your profile has to be worth the tap once they land on it.
What did not change about your Google Business Profile
Everything that decides whether you rank. Your categories, your reviews, your photos, your hours, your service area and your activity all work the way they did under the old name. Google still looks at relevance, distance and prominence to decide who appears in the top three.
Your reviews carried across. Your star rating carried across. The listing is still free to create, claim and manage, exactly as it was under the old name. And the work of keeping it accurate and active is the same work it always was.
Should you still call it Google My Business?
Call it whatever you like. Your customers do not care, and Google still recognises the old term.
What counts is knowing that GMB advice from a 2019 blog post might send you looking for an app that no longer exists, or a website builder Google has switched off, or a chat feature customers cannot reach. The product has moved on. A fair bit of the advice online has not.
If your listing has been sitting untouched under the old name for a few years, the name is the least of it. The hours, the categories, the photos and the reviews are where the calls are won or lost, and they are almost certainly out of date too.
If you would rather skip the guesswork and have someone get your profile working properly, that is exactly what we do. Get in touch with Pear Tree Media, tell us about your business, and we will audit your listing, tell you straight where it stands, and get the phone ringing.
