Your reviews follow the business, not the address

The reviews are the part of a Google profile you cannot rebuild. Photos can be retaken, hours retyped, categories reselected. Four years of reviews are four years.

So the question that comes up every time a business moves, sells, or renames is the same one: do they come with me. Google answers it on a dedicated help page about moving reviews across Business Profiles, read 3 September 2026, and the answer is more generous than most owners expect — as long as you do not do the one thing everyone’s instinct says to do.

The instruction that comes before everything else

Google puts it in bold on its own page, and it is worth repeating in the same words: do not create a new Business Profile because of a change in a physical location or ownership change.

That is the mistake the rest of this post exists to prevent. A new profile is a stranger to Google. It has no reviews, no photo history, and no accumulated signals, and creating one voluntarily throws away the asset you were trying to protect. If you have already done it, that situation has a name and a repair path.

Where reviews move on their own

You relocated and kept the name. Google transfers the reviews automatically. No request, no ticket. It flags one exception: for certain business categories — its examples are hotels, golf courses and scenic attractions — reviews might not move automatically.

For the three kinds of business we work in, the address is often not the point anyway; a mobile clinic, a detailer or a caregiver is defined by the area it covers rather than the pin it sits on, and a service-area move is a service-area edit.

Where you have to ask

You created and verified a duplicate by accident, because of a move or an ownership change. Google’s instruction here is to contact them to transfer the reviews from the old profile to the new one. That is a support conversation, not a button, and it is the reason the “do not create a new profile” line is at the top of the page.

Where reviews simply stay, and nothing you do changes it

This is the part people find out the hard way, usually after buying a business.

• New owner or manager, same name. The reviews remain. All of them, including the ones about the previous owner’s work. Google’s suggested remedy is to reply to old reviews to explain the changes or improvements — which is genuinely the tool available, and it works better than it sounds.
• A minor name change. Reviews remain. Same for a name change across a business with multiple locations.
• Closed for a while, or closed for good. Reviews remain on the profile either way. A temporarily closed business can still receive new reviews. A permanently closed one cannot.

Read the ownership case again if you are buying something. Inheriting a profile means inheriting its reviews, and the price of the business should reflect a two-star history as clearly as it reflects the van.

The line Google is actually drawing

Every rule above collapses into one question: is this still the same business?

Same name, new address — same business, reviews follow. Same name, new owner — same business, reviews stay. A name change big enough that Google no longer recognizes continuity — that is a new business, and it starts empty.

Which is why the name field is the highest-stakes text box on the profile, and why changing it, moving, or closing sends the whole profile back through review. Change one thing at a time and let each settle.

If you are genuinely opening a second place

Different situation entirely, and none of the transfer rules help you. A second location is a second profile, and it begins with nothing — which is a plan, not a problem, if you accept it early.

Before you move, rename or sell: change nothing until you know which rule you are under. Profile changes handled without losing the review history are part of every plan we run.