Digital marketing

Your Google listing: what anybody can change about you

Your business listing is a public record. Strangers can change its opening hours, answer questions on it, and add photographs to it.

Published on 2 August 2026 — Algeria Agency

The article on online reputation describes five surfaces and puts the business listing first. The article on local search explains why it does more work than the website. This page handles the object itself, and it starts with what almost nobody knows.

A listing is not a page you publish. It is a public record the platform keeps about you, fed by the platform, by you if you claim it, and by any user at all — including a competitor, an unhappy customer, or a passer-by who has the wrong place.

Three things follow and they are rarely anticipated. Your opening hours can be changed by a third party. A question asked about your business can be answered by a stranger, displayed under your name. And photographs added by visitors appear on the listing without your agreement.

This article describes how that record works, what you actually control, what you can report, and what simply has to be watched. It also refuses a figure you will see everywhere else, and section 8 says why.

The listing already exists, and it may not be yours

The first surprise for many businesses: the listing exists before they do anything about it. It is created from directories, mentions and user contributions, and it already shows a name, a position on the map and sometimes opening hours.

The second surprise is less pleasant: it is sometimes already claimed. By an agency that worked for you three years ago, by a former employee who created it with their personal account, by a franchisee, or by somebody who was simply quicker.

The consequence is concrete and we meet it regularly: the business can neither correct its hours, nor answer a review, nor change its phone number, because the account holding the listing is not theirs.

The first useful reflex costs nothing: search your company name and see whether a banner offers to claim the business, or says it is already managed. The answer tells you which scenario you are in before any spending.

And if a third party holds the listing, there is an ownership-dispute procedure. It is slow, it asks for evidence — trade register, photographs of the shopfront, invoices at the address — and it is better started on an ordinary Tuesday than on the day you need it.

Claiming: the procedure, and what blocks it here

Claiming means proving you are at the declared address. The methods offered vary: a code sent by post, an automated call to the landline, a video showing the premises and the sign, sometimes an email at the domain name.

Postal verification is the one that fails most often here, and through nobody’s ill will: addressing is imprecise in many districts, post arrives late, and the code has a validity period. Plan on repeating it rather than concluding it does not work.

Video verification has become the most reliable in our experience, and it takes ten minutes of preparation: the sign readable from the street, the door, the interior, something proving the activity — the till, the workshop, the stock — and a document in the company name, filmed without a cut.

One point of accuracy that avoids a refusal: the declared name has to be the real name of the business, not an enriched form. Adding the city or the trade to the name is a widespread practice, it runs against the platform’s rules, and it exposes the listing to suspension at the worst moment.

Finally, do it from an account belonging to the company, never from somebody’s personal account. It is the same ownership rule as for advertising accounts, set out in the article on search advertising, and it is paid for in exactly the same way two years later.

What anybody can change about you

The least known and most awkward function is the suggested edit. Any user can propose a change to your listing: hours, address, number, category, the position of the pin on the map, and as far as marking it permanently closed.

Those suggestions are not all applied, but some are applied automatically when several contributions agree or when the signal looks reliable. You are generally warned by a notification, which nobody reads if nobody watches the account.

The cases we see most often: hours changed after an exceptional closure, a pin moved two streets, a number replaced with a reseller’s, and a permanent closure reported by mistake on a business that had simply moved.

The last case is the most expensive because it is invisible from inside. Your listing still exists, but it is struck through in results, and your customers conclude you have closed. We have seen it last three weeks at a business that could not understand the collapse in its calls.

The protection is monitoring rather than locking, because there is no lock: somebody has to receive the listing’s notifications and check the status of the business once a week. It takes two minutes and it is the only defence there is.

The questions: a stranger answers on your behalf

The listing has a questions-and-answers area, and it works in a way few businesses suspect: anybody can ask a question, and anybody can answer it. Not only you.

A third party’s answer appears exactly like yours, under your business name, with the same look of an official source. Information that is wrong but plausible — "they do not take cards", "they close at four", "they are not there any more" — stays displayed for as long as nobody corrects it.

Correcting is not deleting: you cannot erase a third party’s answer unless it breaks the platform’s rules. What you can do is answer yourself, and the most useful answers rise, which pushes the bad one down.

The method that works is preventive and takes an hour: ask the ten questions your customers actually ask, yourself, and answer them from the business account. You occupy the area with accurate answers before somebody else occupies it with approximations.

You already know those ten questions — they are the ones drawn from your incoming messages, as the article on content marketing describes. They serve here a third time, after the website page and the ready-made reply.

The photographs you cannot remove

Visitors can add photographs to your listing, and those appear beside yours. You cannot delete them because they are not yours, and reporting only succeeds if they break a rule — offensive content, off topic, an identifiable person.

The problem is almost never a malicious photograph. It is a badly framed one, taken with flash, showing premises under refurbishment or a dish served on a bad day, which becomes the main image because it is the most viewed.

The only effective answer is quantitative: add adequate photographs regularly, taken by the process described in the content-creation article, and the isolated contribution stops dominating. A listing with three photographs is governed by visitors; one with forty is governed by you.

Three categories matter more than the rest and are nearly always missing: the shopfront seen from the street, which helps people recognise the place on arrival; the interior, which reassures before anybody travels; and the team at work, which proves the business exists.

Add one a week rather than forty in one day. Freshness is visible on the listing, and a business whose last photograph is three years old reads as one nobody is sure is still open.

Duplicates: the old address that is still alive

A business that has moved, changed name, opened a second site or worked with successive suppliers nearly always ends up with several listings. They coexist with no apparent conflict, and they quietly share your reviews and your visibility.

The symptom is recognisable: you have twelve reviews on one listing and four on another, your customers say they called a number you no longer use, and the pin on the map sends them to the old premises.

The fix is a merge rather than a deletion. Report the duplicate as such: the platform then attaches the reviews to the kept listing in some cases, whereas an outright deletion loses them permanently.

One particular case is frequent here and deserves naming: businesses operating without premises open to the public — repairs, delivery, mobile trades. They have to declare a service area rather than a visible address, and a home address displayed by mistake is a listing to correct before anything else.

That tidying is dull, takes half a day, and is nearly always the first useful work on this subject. Answering reviews carefully across three listings is attention spent where nobody sees it.

What can be reported, and what cannot

The general rule is set by the article on online reputation: a truthful review cannot be erased, and the attempt leaves a heavier trace than the review. This page adds the exact boundary, because it exists and is poorly known.

What is a legitimate report: a review clearly aimed at a different business, an insult or personal attack naming an employee, advertising content posted by a third party, and a review from an account that never had contact with you and says so explicitly.

What is not a report: a harsh but accurate review, a review from somebody who bought nothing after a bad phone exchange — the reputation article notes that they are a prevented customer — and a review whose interpretation you dispute.

The procedure is slow and its outcome is uncertain, including in legitimate cases. Treat it as background work rather than as an answer to an urgent problem: the only work that produces an effect within the week is the public reply, not the report.

One practice to rule out permanently: mass reporting from several accounts to bring a review down. It is detectable, it puts the listing at risk, and you will then have a bigger problem than the one you set out to fix.

Answering: the language, the length, and the name

A reply on this surface is public, permanent and indexed. It is read by the next reader rather than by the review’s author, as the hub establishes, and that dictates three concrete choices.

The language: answer in the language of the review. A review written in Arabic and a reply in French signals that the reply is a procedure rather than a conversation, and that detail is noticed immediately.

The length: three to four lines. A long reply to a short complaint reads as self-defence, and the next reader takes that as an admission. A reply containing a checkable fact — a date, an order reference, a lead time — beats three sentences of regret.

The name: sign with a first name and a role. "Karim, workshop manager" reads as a person; "The team" reads as a template. It costs nothing and it changes the register of everything that follows.

One last thing, true only here: do not ask for the review to be removed in the reply. It is visible to everybody, it is read as pressure, and it turns an ordinary negative review into a story whose subject becomes your behaviour.

The figure we will not publish

There is a statistic you will see in nearly every proposal on this subject: a proportion of consumers who supposedly read online reviews before choosing a business. It travels with a decimal place and a great deal of confidence.

We will not publish it. The surveys that produce it cover North American, British or European consumers; they are often commissioned by vendors of review-management tools; and none of them covers Algeria.

That is the house rule, applied throughout this series: a figure that cannot be dated and placed does not get published, and the reason gets said where the reader is most likely to be handed one.

Nor is there any series published by the platform at country level on the number of listings, reviews or views. So we have no honest chart to put in this article, and a page without a chart beats a borrowed chart.

The one dated local figure that genuinely touches this subject is the split of internet subscriptions, and it is already used where it argues something: in the article on local search, to explain that this listing is consulted from a phone.

What moves the listing, and what changes nothing

The article on local search handles the three signals that decide ranking and we will not rewrite them. What follows concerns only the upkeep of the listing itself, which is the daily work.

What matters and gets neglected: the primary category, which has to be as precise as possible and has often been left on an approximate choice made at creation; exceptional hours, which exist as a field and nobody fills in; and the attributes — access, payment, services — which answer questions before they are asked.

What matters and costs little: freshness. One photograph a week, a reply to reviews within the day, one question added a month. The listing rewards recent activity, and recent activity is also what the human reader notices.

What changes nothing: the long description, rewritten every quarter in hope. It is a field that is little read and little decisive, and time spent on it is time taken from the photographs and the replies.

What actively harms: a name enriched with keywords, false hours, multiple categories added to cover a wide net, and daily promotional posts. The first two risk suspension; the last two dilute what the listing says about you.

Access control: who owns the account

The listing has an owner and managers, and the distinction is not administrative: the owner can remove everybody, including you, and a manager cannot. It is the one thing in this article to check today.

The correct arrangement is simple to describe: the owning account belongs to the company and its password is held by the director; employees and suppliers are added as managers; and somebody leaving means their access is removed the same day.

The arrangement we find most often: the listing belongs to the personal account of somebody who has left the company, and access was kept out of habit. That works until the day an opening hour has to be corrected or a crisis answered.

Check as well that the recovery email address is a company one rather than a supplier’s. That is the detail through which a listing is lost permanently, and it is corrected in two minutes while access still exists.

It is the same rule as for advertising accounts and hosting, and it is repeated every time for a reason: what you paid for has to stay with you, and a business listing carries years of reviews that nothing replaces.

What we do, and what we will refuse to do

What we will refuse: making a truthful review disappear, mass reporting from several accounts, and writing reviews. All three are refused by the article on digital marketing, and the third puts the whole listing at risk rather than only the rating.

We will refuse to enrich the business name with a city or a trade, even where it would improve ranking in the short term. It runs against the rules, it risks suspension, and a suspended listing costs all the work of the preceding years.

We will also refuse to publish a figure on Algerian consumer behaviour towards reviews, for the reason set out in section 8. We do not have one, and nobody does.

What we do: the ownership check and the handover of the account in your name; the duplicate tidying before anything else; the ten questions asked and answered from the business; the photographs added one a week by the process; and the weekly watch on suggested edits, which is the part nobody does.

And what you can do in the next ten minutes: search your company name, open the listing, and look at three things — the status of the business, the date of the last photograph, and the questions area. If a stranger has answered on your behalf, you know where to start.

Frequently asked questions

Can somebody really change our opening hours?

Yes. Any person can suggest an edit — hours, address, number, pin position, and as far as "permanently closed" — and some suggestions are applied automatically. The only defence is an employee receiving the notifications and checking the listing weekly.

Can a negative review be removed?

Not if it is truthful. Reporting is legitimate for a review aimed at a different business, a personal attack naming an employee, or advertising content. A harsh but accurate review is not a reporting case, and the public reply is the only work that acts within the week.

Our old agency manages the listing — what now?

Start an ownership dispute: it asks for evidence — trade register, photographs of the shopfront, invoices at the address — and it is slow. Do it on an ordinary day, not on the day you urgently need to correct an opening hour.

Should we add the city to the business name?

No. The declared name has to be the real one. Keyword enrichment runs against the platform’s rules and exposes the listing to suspension, which costs more than the hoped-for ranking gain.

How do we get rid of a bad customer photograph?

You cannot delete it unless it breaks the rules. The answer is quantitative: add one adequate photograph a week — shopfront, interior, team at work — until the isolated contribution stops dominating the listing.

Which language should replies be in?

The language of the review. Three to four lines, a checkable fact rather than regret, and a signature with a first name and a role. Never ask for the review to be taken down in the reply: it is public and it makes the subject worse.

Where we come in

Ten minutes is enough to see your listing as a customer sees it. It does not show what strangers have already changed on it without anybody noticing.

We pull the history of accepted edits and the ones still pending.
We answer the questions the public asked, which otherwise have no author.
We remove ourselves from the account once verification passes, unasked.

If your business receives no physical visits this listing matters little: put the effort into your own site page, which belongs to you.

Start with the free audit See the Google Reputation Management page

Let us talk about your project

A free audit, no commitment: we look at your online presence and tell you what is holding it back.

Request the free audit Write to us