A physiotherapy clinic I know of moved four streets away, into a better building with parking. Good decision, well executed in every respect but one. The owner, wanting things to be tidy, created a fresh Google profile for the new address and marked the old one as permanently closed. Eleven years of reviews went with it, and the clinic spent the next year rebuilding a reputation it had already earned.
Nothing went wrong technically. The order of operations was wrong, and the profile was the last thing on a long list during a chaotic week. This piece is the list I wish somebody had given that owner.
In short: edit the address on the profile you already have, keep the business name the same, and Google will transfer your reviews automatically. Expect to verify the business again at the new address. Do not create a new profile and do not mark the old one closed. Then update your website and every other place your address appears, on the same day, and accept that the map result will shift, because distance is part of how map results are decided.
What Google's own rules say
Three sentences from Google's help pages cover most of what matters, and they are worth reading in Google's words rather than mine.
On reviews, Google says that if you move to a new address and keep the same business name, "Google will transfer your reviews automatically." It adds a caveat: "For certain business categories, like hotels, golf courses, or scenic attractions, reviews might not be automatically moved." For a clinic, a shop, an office or a workshop, the reviews come with you.
On verification, Google says: "If you move your business to a new address after it's verified, you must verify your business again." So the move will cost you a verification, and the profile can be limited until that completes. Google also notes that only the code requested for your current address works, and that verification codes expire after 30 days, so do not request a code before you can receive post or a visit at the new premises.
And on the mistake the clinic made, Google has a page for it: "If you unintentionally created and verified a new profile due to a change in physical location or ownership change, contact us to transfer your reviews from the old profile to the new one." So if you have already done this, there is a route back, and it involves asking Google rather than deleting anything.
Everything below follows from those three rules.
Before the move
Start a month ahead if you can, because the biggest job is one that nobody expects.
List every place your address appears. Your website, which usually carries it in the footer, on the contact page, and in the business details that search engines read behind the scenes. Your Google profile. Apple Maps and Bing, which many businesses have never claimed. Facebook and Instagram. The directories for your trade. Review platforms. Your professional body's register, if you have one. Your invoice template, your email signature, your letterhead, the sticker on the van. Most businesses find between fifteen and thirty places, and the ones they forgot are the ones that will still show the old address two years later. Our guide to fixing inconsistent business details across the web explains why those leftovers matter and how to find them.
Decide about the phone number. If you can keep it, keep it. A stable phone number means every listing you miss still connects a customer to you. If the number must change, arrange to run both in parallel for several months, and treat the number as one more thing to update everywhere.
Tell your customers. A line on the website, a note on the profile, an email to the list, a sign in the window. Plain words: the new address, the date, and how to get there.
Photograph the new premises. Exterior with signage, interior, parking, the entrance. These go on the profile on moving day, and they help Google's reviewers confirm the business is at that address when you verify.
Moving week
On the day you begin trading at the new address, or the day before if the move is certain, do the following in one sitting.
Edit the address on your existing Google profile. Do not touch the name. Do not create anything new. Do not mark anything closed. If you travel to customers and had a service area, review the area, because it should now be centred on the new base. Add the new photographs. Add a short update on the profile saying you have moved and where.
Update the website. The footer, the contact page, the map embed, and the structured business details behind the page. If you do not know how to edit those details, whoever maintains the site does, and it is a ten minute job.
Update the top listings the same day. Apple Maps, Bing, Facebook, and the two or three directories that matter most in your trade. Every source should tell the same story from the same day, because a customer or an assistant reading two different addresses does not know which is true.
Start verification when Google asks. Whatever method Google offers, whether a video call, a postcard or another route, complete it promptly. Until it is done, the profile may be limited.
After the move
Finish the list. Work through every remaining place your old address appeared, over the following two or three weeks. The remaining directories are tedious, and they are also where the inconsistencies that quietly weaken a profile live.
Put a sign at the old premises. With the new address and the phone number. Customers arrive at old addresses for months, especially the ones who saved your location in their phone.
Check the map in a month. Search for your service from the old neighbourhood and from the new one, and look at where you appear. This brings us to the part nobody warns you about.
Your map ranking will change, and that is normal
Map results are decided partly by distance between the searcher and the business. That is why the three businesses shown to a person in one part of town differ from the three shown to a person across the river. When you move, the set of people to whom you are close changes. Customers near the old address will see you less often. Customers near the new one will see you more.
This is the same rule that gave you the customers you had, now applied to a different location. If the move takes you closer to the customers you want, the map result improves for them. If it takes you further away, no amount of profile work fully restores what distance took, and the honest response is to build the website pages for the areas you want to keep serving, which we covered in how to build service area pages without a penalty.
Businesses that travel to customers and hide their address are less affected, because the service area rather than the pin decides much of their visibility.
If the reviews already vanished
Perhaps you are reading this after the fact, with a new profile, a closed old one, and the reviews gone. Do not delete either profile. Use Google's process for the case it names, an unintentionally created and verified new profile after a change of location, and ask for the reviews to be transferred from the old profile to the new one. Have the documents that prove both profiles belong to the same business at hand: registration, the lease for each address, utility bills in the business name. The process takes patience, and it is the only route that recovers what was lost.
The short version
One profile, edited rather than replaced. Same name. Verify again. Same-day updates on the website and the main listings, then the rest. Expect the map to shift with the pin. If you would like to see, after the move, whether every source now agrees about where you are and what an assistant says when asked, our free visibility check reports back in plain language, and why your profile gets views but no calls covers the settings worth reviewing once you have settled in.