Google Business Profile

The listing people judge you on, run like a channel.

Most customers meet your business on Google before they ever reach your website — the star rating, the last three reviews, whether anyone bothered to reply. That page is doing your selling whether you tend it or not. This connects it to your workspace so it stops being something you remember to check.

Connect One Google sign-in Choose Only the locations you want Map Google location to business Sync Reviews pulled in Respond Replies and posts back out Measure Trends, gaps, risk queue You do the first four once. The last two are the ongoing work.
Why not just use Google

Google shows you one profile. You run a business.

Google's own dashboard is fine for a single listing and a slow week. It stops being fine the moment you have several locations, a backlog you cannot see the shape of, or anyone besides you answering customers.

Google Business Profile Connected to Alzaro
Where reviews liveOne profile at a time, in the appOne inbox across every location you manage
Finding what needs workScroll until you spot itFilter by rating, reply status, date, keyword
Writing the replyFrom scratch, every timeAn AI draft you edit and approve before it posts
Repetitive repliesManual, or nothingRules that draft or publish by rating and keyword
Proof of what happenedNo log once the reply is sentEvery generation, publish, skip and failure is logged
Reading the trendCurrent rating onlyVolume, rating mix and reply rate over 7 / 30 / 90 days

The row that matters most is the log.

Once a reply is sent on Google, there is no record of who wrote it or why. Here, every draft, publish, skip and failure is written down — which is what makes it safe to let a rule act on your behalf at all.

How it is put together

Four layers between Google and your workspace.

Reviews and profile data come in, replies and posts go out, and a local copy of everything sits in between so you can filter, log and automate without waiting on Google.

GOOGLE Business Profile Accounts Locations Reviews Local posts reads profile, reviews writes replies, posts 01 Connection OAuth 2.0 · Encrypted tokens · Auto-refresh 02 Locations Pick, then import · Map or create · Duplicate check 03 Work surfaces Review inbox · Posts · Publish logs 04 Automation and readout Auto-reply rules · Scheduled sync · Analytics · CRM timeline
Layer 01

Connection

A standard Google sign-in grants access to the profiles you already own. Tokens are encrypted at rest and refreshed automatically, so the link keeps working without anyone re-authorising it every week.

OAuth 2.0 Encrypted tokens Auto-refresh
Layer 02

Locations

Connecting does not import anything. Your Google locations appear as a shortlist, and only the ones you pick are written in — then linked to the business record they belong to.

Pick, then import Map or create Duplicate check
Layer 03

Work surfaces

Two things flow in both directions: reviews come in and replies go back, posts are drafted here and published out. Everything keeps a local copy, so filtering and history do not depend on Google being reachable.

Review inbox Posts Publish logs
Layer 04

Automation and readout

Rules decide what happens to a new review without you opening the tab. A schedule keeps reviews arriving and scheduled posts going out. Analytics reads the result, and new reviews also land on the customer timeline in CRM.

Auto-reply rules Scheduled sync Analytics CRM timeline
The part people get stuck on

Connecting Google does not import anything.

This is deliberate, and it is the one behaviour worth understanding before you start. Signing in shows you a shortlist; nothing is stored until you pick. Then a location moves through four states, and only one of them actually does any work.

Available nothing runs Managed reviews sync here Stopped nothing runs Deleted reviews removed MAP STOP DELETE map it again to resume

Available

Added to the workspace and visible in the Locations list, but nothing runs against it. No review sync, no analytics, no rules.

You get here by clicking Add to manage on a location in the shortlist.

Managed

The working state. Reviews sync, the location appears in analytics, and auto-reply rules can act on it.

You get here by mapping the location to an existing business, or importing it to create a new one.

Stopped

Still connected and still holding its synced history, but removed from the managed workflows. Nothing new arrives and no rule touches it.

Use this for a location you have handed back to a client — it keeps the record without acting on it.

Deleted

Removed from the workspace along with its synced reviews. The Google account stays connected and the location can be added again later.

Deleting here never touches anything on Google. Your profile, reviews and published replies are untouched.

An added location is not a working location.

Adding a location from the shortlist puts it in the list, but reviews will not arrive until you map it to a business. If you have synced twice and the review inbox is still empty, this is almost always why.

The order to work in

Eight steps, and two of them are not yours.

Two steps belong to whoever administers the platform — the Google credentials and the schedule. The other six take an afternoon, and most of them you never touch again.

01

An administrator adds the Google credentials

One-time, admin

Google requires a project and an OAuth client before any account can connect. This is set once for the whole platform, not per business.

Why here: It is first because nothing else is clickable without it — the Connect button stays disabled until credentials exist.
02

Connect your Google account

Business owner

Sign in with the Google account that already manages your profiles and approve the permission request. You are returned straight to the Locations tab.

Why here: Use the account that genuinely owns the listings. Connecting a personal account that was only ever given viewer access will authorise, then show you nothing to manage.
Open this step
03

Choose which locations to add

Business owner

Your Google locations appear as a shortlist. Add the ones this workspace should work on; ignore the rest. Nothing is stored until you choose.

Why here: This exists so an agency with sixty listings does not adopt all sixty by accident. The shortlist is temporary — if you leave without choosing, reconnect to see it again.
Open this step
04

Map each location to a business

Business owner

Link the Google location to a business you already have, or import it to create one from the Google data. Mapping is what promotes a location to Managed.

Why here: Reviews are stored against a business, not a raw Google ID. Skip this and the review inbox stays empty no matter how often you sync. If a similar business already exists, you will be warned before a duplicate is created.
Open this step
05

Decide what syncs

Business owner

Per location, choose whether to pull business details, opening hours and reviews, and whether auto-reply may act on it. Pulling details overwrites your local name, phone, website and address with what Google holds.

Why here: Hours sync is the one to think about. If your local hours are more accurate than the ones on Google, turning it on will overwrite the better copy with the worse one.
Open this step
06

Clear the backlog by hand first

Business owner

Sync reviews, then work the Not replied filter. Generate a draft, read it, edit it, publish it. Do a dozen this way before you automate anything.

Why here: This is how you learn what the AI sounds like on your actual customers while every reply is still under your eye. It is also the stage that tells you which rules are worth writing.
Open this step
07

Add rules, starting in draft mode

Business owner

Write rules that match on rating and review text. Start every rule in Save AI Draft so replies queue for approval instead of going live.

Why here: A rule that drafts costs you a review of the draft. A rule that publishes costs you a public apology if it is wrong. Earn the second one.
Open this step
08

Turn on the schedule

One-time, admin

Two scheduled jobs do the unattended work: pulling in new reviews, and publishing posts you scheduled for later. Both are off until an administrator enables them.

Why here: Without the schedule everything still works, it just only happens when someone opens the page and clicks Sync. Scheduled posts in particular will simply never publish.

Tool links open the workspace and require a signed-in account.

Automation, carefully

Three modes. Start on the safest one.

A rule watches incoming reviews and matches on rating and on the words in the review — any rating, five stars only, three and below, contains a keyword, has no text at all. When it matches, it does one of three things.

Mode What it does Use it for Risk
Save AI Draft Writes a reply and holds it for you to approve Everything, to begin with — and permanently for anything rated three or below Low
Use Template Reply Sends a fixed text you wrote, with no AI involved Short thank-yous where the same sentence is genuinely fine every time Low
Auto Publish Writes a reply and posts it to Google immediately Four and five star reviews only, once drafts have earned your trust High
Built-in guard

Bad reviews will not auto-publish

If you set a rule to publish automatically and point it at low ratings, it quietly saves a draft instead. An unhappy customer gets a human, not a generated paragraph — even if the rule says otherwise.

Everything is logged

You can see why a rule did nothing

Skips are recorded as well as actions, so a rule that never fires is diagnosable instead of mysterious. Failed publishes keep the error Google returned.

Write your rules before you press Sync, not after.

The scheduled sync only applies rules to reviews that just arrived. Pressing Sync reviews by hand applies them to every unanswered review you have ever imported. With a rule set to publish, that can post replies across years of history in one click.

The safe order: import, clear the backlog by hand, then write rules. If you write rules first, keep every one of them on Save AI Draft until the backlog is done.

Posting to the profile

Updates, offers and events — drafted here, scheduled, published there.

Posts show on your profile in Search and Maps. They are the one part of the listing you fully control, and the part almost nobody keeps current.

Update

A general announcement — new stock, a change of hours, something you want on the profile this week.

Photo and call-to-action optional

Offer

A promotion with a run of dates, an optional coupon code, a redeem link and terms. Google renders these differently from a plain update.

Start and end dates required

Event

Something happening on specific dates, with a title and a window customers can see before it starts.

Start and end dates required

Buttons you can put on a post

Point the button at anything you run in the workspace — a booking page, a coupon, a landing page, a lead form — by pasting its link. Call uses your listed phone number and needs no link.

BOOK ORDER SHOP LEARN_MORE SIGN_UP CALL

Photos must be publicly reachable

Google fetches the image from a link rather than receiving an upload, so it has to be a live public address. An image behind a login, on a staging site or on your own machine will be rejected.

Reading the numbers

Two questions the analytics actually answer.

Is feedback getting better or worse, and are we keeping up with it. Everything on the tab serves one of those two.

Is it getting better

Volume and rating mix over time

New reviews per day alongside how many were low-scoring, plus the full one-to-five distribution. A rising average with a rising count of one-star reviews is a very different story from a rising average alone.

Filter to a single location before drawing conclusions. One struggling branch will hide inside a group average.

Are we keeping up

Reply rate, and what is still waiting

How many reviews were answered, how many sit as unapproved drafts, how many nobody has touched, and how often an automated publish failed. Top locations are ranked by volume so you can see where the work is.

A draft is not a reply. Drafts count towards handled, not towards published — the customer sees nothing until you approve it.

This measures your reviews, not your Google traffic.

Profile views, searches, calls and direction requests are Google metrics and are not shown here. If you need those, read them in Google. What this tab knows is everything about the reviews themselves and what you did about them.

What it costs

No credits. Just plan limits.

Unlike image and video generation, nothing here spends credits — not syncing, not analytics, and not generating a reply draft. What your plan controls is how much you may connect and which actions are unlocked.

Plan control What it decides
Google BusinessThe master switch. Without it the tool is hidden and no account can be connected.
ConnectionsHow many separate Google accounts this workspace may link.
LocationsHow many Google locations may be added in total across those accounts.
Review syncWhether reviews may be pulled in from Google.
Review replyWhether replies may be published back to Google.
PostsWhether updates, offers and events may be created and published.

This is a separate connection from Search Console.

The Google sign-in used elsewhere in the workspace for search data is a different link with different permissions. Connecting one does not connect the other, so expect to sign in to Google twice — once for each.

Keeping it running

What to do, and how often.

Most of this is not a daily job. The one habit that pays for itself is answering low-scoring reviews the day they land — that is the reply future customers will read.

WhenWhat
Every 15 minutesNew reviews are pulled in for managed locations, and any matching rule acts on the ones that just arrived. Runs unattended once an administrator enables it.
Every 5 minutesPosts you scheduled for a later time are published. Also unattended, and also off by default.
DailyClear the Not replied filter. Anything rated three or below deserves an answer the same day.
WeeklyApprove the drafts your rules queued up, and publish a post if you have something worth saying.
MonthlyRead the 30-day trend and the reply rate. Check whether any rule is producing drafts you keep rewriting — that is a rule worth editing.
After any changeAdding a location on Google, or changing who owns the listing, means reconnecting to pick it up.
Being straight with you

What this does not do.

Knowing the edges up front is worth more than discovering them in week three. These are real limits today, not a roadmap.

No Google performance metrics

The Analytics tab measures your reviews and your replies. It does not show profile views, searches, calls or direction requests — those live in Google and are not read by this tool.

No questions and answers

The Q&A section of your profile is not managed here. Neither is the photo library.

Posts are create-only on Google

A post can be published from here, but not edited or removed on Google afterwards. Editing one that is already live resets it to a local draft and leaves the published copy in place, so make the edit on Google as well.

Rule delay is not applied yet

A rule can be given a delay, and it is stored and shown, but replies are currently generated the moment the review arrives.

Replies are written in English

The language selector on a rule does not yet change the output, and manual drafts are always English. Edit before publishing if you serve customers in another language.

Very large accounts read the first page

Accounts with a long list of locations, or a location with a long review history, currently import the first page from Google rather than the entire set.

Removed reviews are not pruned

If a review is deleted on Google, the copy stored here stays and keeps counting towards your totals.

Disconnecting is not self-service

Locations can be stopped or removed at any time from the Locations tab. Unlinking the Google account itself is an administrator action today.

Start with one location and the backlog.

Connect, add a single location, map it, and answer the reviews nobody got to. You will know within an afternoon whether the drafts are worth automating — and that is the only question that matters.