Your Google Business Profile Is Showing Wrong Information — How to Fix It and Keep It Fixed

Wrong information on your Google Business Profile isn't a minor administrative issue. It's a revenue problem. Every day your listing shows incorrect hours, a dead phone number, or the wrong address, real customers are walking away. Some will try again. Most won't.

The challenge is that wrong information has several different causes — and the right fix depends on the cause. An error introduced by a public suggested edit needs a different response than one caused by Google's own auto-correction systems or stale data from a third-party aggregator.

This guide walks through how to diagnose what's wrong and why, how to fix each type of field correctly, and how to stop it happening again.

Step 1: Diagnose the Source of the Wrong Information

Before you fix anything, take a moment to understand where the wrong information came from. This tells you what you're dealing with and whether the fix is likely to stick.

Check the GBP Edit History

Log into Google Business Profile (business.google.com), select your location, and look for any recent activity or change notifications. While Google's edit history is not as detailed as it should be, you may be able to see whether a recent change was flagged as a "suggested edit" from a user or an "update" from Google itself.

Compare Against Your Records

Go through each field on your live listing — as a customer would see it, in an incognito window — and compare against what you know to be correct:

• Business name and spelling
• Address (including unit, floor, Eircode or postcode)
• Primary phone number and any additional numbers
• Website URL
• Business hours (each day individually, including any special hours)
• Primary and secondary categories
• Business description
• Attributes (parking, accessibility, payment methods, etc.)

Document every discrepancy, not just the obvious ones. It's common for one visible error to be accompanied by several less-obvious ones.

Check External Data Sources

Search for your business on Bing Maps, Apple Maps, Yelp, Foursquare, and any relevant industry directories. If the wrong information appears consistently across multiple platforms, the source is likely a data aggregator that feeds all of them — and fixing just your GBP won't fully solve the problem.

If the wrong information appears only on Google, the source is likely a GBP-specific suggested edit or Google auto-correction.

Step 2: Fix Each Field Type Correctly

Different fields have different behaviours in Google Business Profile, and the fix for each is slightly different.

Business Name

What goes wrong: Competitors or pranksters suggest a name change (sometimes adding offensive words, sometimes adding service keywords that violate Google's guidelines). Google may also "correct" capitalisation or spelling based on what it sees on your website.

How to fix it: Go to Edit Profile → Business name and enter the correct name exactly. Google's guidelines require you to use your real-world trading name — no keyword stuffing, no taglines. If the edit keeps reverting, someone may be repeatedly submitting the same suggested change.

Key tip: your GBP name should exactly match the name on your signage, website, and other official registrations. Consistency across sources reduces the likelihood of Google "correcting" it.

Address

What goes wrong: Address formatting may be standardised by Google to match its address database. Units or floor numbers may be dropped. In Ireland, Eircode may be added, removed, or changed. Occasionally an address is replaced entirely with a nearby address that Google's systems consider more accurate.

How to fix it: Edit the address through your GBP dashboard. Make sure every component is correct: street number, street name, unit or suite if applicable, town/city, county, and Eircode. If Google keeps reverting to a different address, there may be conflicting data in Google's systems — contact GBP support with evidence of your correct address (utility bill, official registration).

Key tip: avoid using a PO Box as your primary address — Google requires a physical service address.

Phone Number

What goes wrong: Old phone numbers from when the business was previously under different management. Numbers from aggregator data that hasn't been updated. A competitor submitting a wrong number as a suggested edit.

How to fix it: Update the primary phone number in Edit Profile. Remove any additional phone numbers that are incorrect. Consider adding a second legitimate number (mobile backup, for example) so Google's systems have less incentive to source a number from elsewhere.

Key tip: use the same phone number everywhere — website, business cards, GBP, other directories. Inconsistency is what makes Google look for a "better" number from another source.

Business Hours

What goes wrong: Hours are among the most frequently auto-edited fields. Google cross-references your GBP hours against your website, aggregator data, and even user visit patterns. Holiday hours are a common trigger — if you haven't specified what you do over Christmas, Google may fill that in from a previous year's data or from a nearby similar business.

How to fix it: Edit hours in Edit Profile → Hours. Set each day explicitly — don't leave days ambiguous. Add special hours for every upcoming public holiday, even if your hours don't change. If your hours were changed by Google's auto-edit system, use the revert option if available, or simply re-enter the correct hours.

Key tip: add Schema.org OpeningHoursSpecification markup to your website and make sure it exactly matches your GBP. This is one of the most effective ways to reduce hour-related auto-edits.

Business Category

What goes wrong: Categories affect which searches your listing appears in, making them a target for competitors who want to push you into irrelevant categories. Google's systems may also recategorise you if it decides your primary category doesn't match your website content or review text.

How to fix it: Go to Edit Profile → Business category. Your primary category should be the most specific accurate description of your main business activity. You can add up to nine additional categories.

Key tip: categories cannot be freely invented — you must choose from Google's predefined list. Review Google's available categories to find the most precise match. Avoid using multiple broad categories; specificity serves you better in local search.

Website URL

What goes wrong: If you change domains, Google may update to the new domain on its own — but sometimes it picks up a redirect page or an old URL from aggregator data. Occasionally a competitor submits a wrong URL as a suggested edit.

How to fix it: Edit the website URL in your profile and make sure it points to your homepage or to the most relevant landing page. Check that the URL is accessible and not showing a redirect error.

Key tip: if you change your domain, update your GBP immediately and set up proper 301 redirects from the old domain. A broken URL on your GBP is a ranking signal as well as a customer experience problem.

Business Description

What goes wrong: Google occasionally rewrites business descriptions based on information it scrapes from your website. The result may be technically accurate but not the copy you'd choose. Descriptions are also sometimes targeted by spam edits.

How to fix it: Edit the description in your profile. Keep it under 750 characters (Google's limit), make it informative rather than keyword-stuffed, and don't include URLs or phone numbers (Google strips these). Write something you're happy to have on your listing indefinitely.

Step 3: Prevent It Happening Again

Fixing wrong information is only half the problem. The real challenge is keeping it fixed — because the same forces that introduced the error in the first place are still operating.

Update Your Website to Match

After correcting your GBP, update your website to match exactly. Google cross-references these sources, and a consistent website reduces the chance of your GBP being "corrected" back to the wrong values.

Audit Your Directory Listings

If the wrong information came from third-party aggregators, fix it at the source. Update your listing on Yelp, Bing Places, Apple Maps, and any industry-specific directories. Data aggregators eventually re-feed correct data back into Google's systems.

Set Up Automated Monitoring

Manual checking is not a sustainable strategy. You'd need to check your profile every day to catch changes before they affect customers — and most business owners simply can't do that.

MyReputation.ie monitors your Google Business Profile continuously. The moment any field changes, you get an email alert showing exactly what changed. If you want to revert it, one click pushes your previous values back to Google. No logging in, no navigating menus, no trying to remember what the old value was.

For businesses with multiple locations, this is even more important. Each location is independently monitored, and you can manage all your alerts and reversions from a single dashboard.

The free plan covers one location — enough to see immediately whether your profile has already been changed without your knowledge. Many business owners are surprised by what they find on their first check.

The Bottom Line

Wrong information on your Google Business Profile is a solvable problem — but it requires more than a one-time fix. The sources of incorrect data (public edits, Google's own auto-corrections, stale aggregator data) are ongoing, not one-off events.

The approach that works:

1. Fix the wrong information correctly, with the right method for each field type
2. Remove the source of the error where possible (update your website, fix directory listings)
3. Monitor continuously so that when changes happen again — and they will — you catch them in hours, not weeks

Start with MyReputation.ie and know within 24 hours whether your profile is clean — or whether it's already showing something you didn't authorise.