You’re taking on a partner and “Dave Smith Plumbing” needs to become “Smith & Hall”. You’ve outgrown the unit and you’re moving two miles across town. You’re dropping a name that sounded good in 2011. In every case the same question comes up before anything else: what happens to the reviews?
The short version: your reviews are attached to your Google Business Profile, not to the text in the name field. Edit the profile you already have and the reviews stay. Create a shiny new listing for the new name and you start again from zero — this is the single mistake that costs businesses their rating, and it is easy to make because creating a new listing feels like the tidy thing to do.
Renaming: edit, don’t replace
Sign in to your existing Google Business Profile, edit the business name, and submit. Your reviews, photos, questions and answers, and the profile’s history all stay attached, because none of them were ever tied to the name itself.
Two things to expect. First, the edit will almost certainly go for review rather than appearing instantly — a name change is exactly the sort of edit Google checks, because it is also what listing hijackers do. Second, the more you change at once, the more scrutiny you attract. Changing your name, your primary category and your address in the same afternoon is far more likely to be held for verification than changing the name alone.
Give the change the best chance of sailing through by making the rest of the world agree with it first. Update your website, your signage photos, your social profiles and your main directory listings to the new name, thenchange the profile. Google is checking whether the name you’re claiming matches your real-world presence; make that easy to confirm.
Moving premises: the same rule, higher stakes
Relocating works the same way. Update the address on the profile you already have and Google moves the listing — reviews included — rather than treating the new address as a new business. Google does flag that for some categories, such as hotels, golf courses and scenic attractions, reviews may not be carried across automatically, since those reviews arguably describe the place rather than the operator.
What you must not do is create a second profile at the new address and leave the old one live. You end up competing with yourself for the same searches, splitting reviews across two listings, and confusing customers who find the closed one. If you have already done it — plenty of people have — Google’s guidance is to contact support and ask for the reviews to be transferred from the old profile to the new one, rather than trying to patch it yourself.
Expect a relocation to need re-verification, and expect a temporary dip in local rankings while Google re-establishes where you are. That dip is normal and not evidence that something has gone wrong.
The bit nobody warns you about: what breaks downstream
Your reviews surviving on Google is only half the job. The rebrand also touches every tool that points at your listing, and those fail quietly rather than loudly.
Your Place ID may change
Ordinary edits usually leave it alone, but Google has never promised a Place ID is permanent, and a real relocation can produce a different one. Anything storing yours — a reviews widget, a booking system, a review-request link — is pointing at a stale identifier from that moment on. If you’re not sure what yours is, start with what is a Google Place ID.
Your review link and QR codes
Printed review QR codes on invoices, counter cards and van stickers point at a specific link. Re-test yours after the change goes live, and reprint if it no longer opens the review box. Details in our guide to Google review QR codes.
Your NAP consistency across directories
Name, address and phone number scattered across dozens of directories, all still saying the old thing, is a genuine local-SEO drag and a customer-confusion problem. Work through them with our UK directory checklist.
Reviews that mention the old name
These are an asset, not a liability. A review saying “used Dave Smith Plumbing for years” shown on a site called Smith & Hall is the clearest possible signal that you are the same trusted business under a new name. Leave them be.
A sane order of operations
- Change the real world first. Website, signage, email footers, invoices, social handles. Google is looking for corroboration.
- Edit the existing profile. Name, or address, or both — but on the profile you already own. Never create a new listing.
- Wait it out without fiddling. Repeatedly editing a pending change slows it down and can look like manipulation. Give it days, not hours.
- Re-check everything that stores your listing. Widget, review link, QR codes, booking tools, directories. Reconnect anything that has gone quiet.
- Tell your customers. Reply to a few recent reviews under the new name, post about it on the profile, and put a line on your homepage. Familiarity is what protects a rebrand.
Make the rebrand look like continuity, not a fresh start
A new name is the moment your website looks least established — right when a visitor is wondering how long you’ve been going. Putting your existing Google reviews on the new site closes that gap immediately: years of real, dated, named reviews visible under the new branding. WeWidget connects by searching your business name — no Google login — and re-syncs daily, so once your profile change is approved, your site follows on its own. The free plan is free forever, no card. See your badge in ten seconds →
If reviews do go missing
Reviews sometimes vanish for reasons that have nothing to do with your rebrand — automated filtering, deleted reviewer accounts, duplicate listings quietly competing with each other. Before assuming the name change caused it, work through why Google reviews disappear, which covers the six real causes and the steps that occasionally bring one back. And while you’re rebuilding momentum under the new name, our guide to getting more Google reviews is the fastest way to make the new profile look busy again.
Google’s policies and dashboard change regularly. This guide reflects Google’s published guidance as of August 2026 — check the current Google Business Profile Help pages before making a change you can’t easily undo. WeWidget is an independent tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Google.