If your web address did not change, your Google Business Profile link does not need editing. If it did change, edit it the day the new site goes live, and paste the full address including the https:// part. Then work through everywhere else that still points at the old one.

Start with the listing that sends you the most work

Google Business Profile Help has a page called Edit your Business Profile. It says “You can edit your Business Profile directly on Search or Maps.” You sign in with the Google account tied to the profile, open the edit panel, and find the website field. That page carries no update date.

Under Website it gives three instructions. The first is the one people get wrong. “Enter the full URL, which includes ‘http://’ or ‘https://.’” A bare bobsplumbing.com is not what it asks for. Paste the whole thing.

The second one earns a look after a rebuild. “Make sure that Googlebot isn’t blocked on your site.” A new site can go live with crawling still switched off from its staging days, and no amount of editing the profile link fixes that.

One more line matters before you start clicking. “We review your changes before we update them live on your profile.” An edit is not always instant. Make it once, make it right, and do not keep resubmitting the same change.

Here is the part that saves most contractors the trouble. A rebuild on the same domain does not move your web address. The link on your profile is already correct, so leave it alone. An edit you did not need still goes through review. If the domain itself changed, that is a bigger job, and the change of address step belongs with it.

The website field is not the only link a profile can hold. The same help page notes that “Some business categories might be able to add more links to their website, like online orders, reservations, or appointments.”

Those extra ones are what Google calls business links, and they have a page of their own: Business links policies & guidelines. It opens by saying “Business links allow customers to do things like book appointments with your business or place orders online.” That page carries no update date either.

It is blunt about what a working link means. “The link must return a ‘200 OK’ status code or a similar successful code.” It then lists what the link must not return, including “404 Not Found,” “403 Forbidden,” and “500 Internal Server Error.” It also says “Local business links must lead to a dedicated landing page for your business.”

And it says what happens when a link stops holding up: “Google will regularly check whether the business links you have provided are in compliance with our policies, and we may remove any non-compliant links.”

That is the part a rebuild breaks quietly. If your profile had a booking link pointing at one page and the new site renamed that page, nobody sends you a note. The link just stops being there one day.

Google does not publish that same status code rule for the plain website field. Check it anyway. Open your profile, tap your own link on a phone, and see where you land. If it lands on an error, that is one of the 404s worth caring about after a move.

The hour of work you can do yourself

The rest of this only matters when the address itself changed. Google Search Central has a guide called How to move a site, written for the moves where the web address changes. It was last updated June 17, 2026. Its short section called Update links names two things nobody else can fix for you: “Profile links such as from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn” and “Ad campaigns to point to the new landing pages.”

So sit down with a list and work it in one go:

  • Google Business Profile, plus the same listing on Bing and Apple Maps if you claimed them.
  • Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Nextdoor.
  • Yelp, Angi, Thumbtack, and any trade directory you pay for.
  • Supplier and manufacturer dealer finders. Whoever certifies you has a page with your address on it.
  • Your chamber of commerce and any local trade association page.
  • Google Ads and every other ad account, since the guide names ad campaigns separately.
  • Email signature, invoice template, quote template.
  • Truck wrap, yard signs, and the fridge magnet. Print cannot be redirected.

None of that needs a developer. It needs the logins.

Search Console Help has a page called Links report. Under top linking sites it says “See which sites contain the most backlinks to your site. This report shows the root domain of sites with the most links to your site, sorted by count of links.” That is your list of who points at you. The page carries no update date.

Two numbers on it you can go and check for yourself. “Tables are limited to 1,000 rows, so tables may be truncated in larger or more linked-to sites.” And “Export up to 100,000 rows of data using the Export button.” For one plumbing company, that export is far more room than you will ever fill.

The site move guide tells you what to do with the list. Among the lists it says to save, it names “A list of sites linking to your old URLs. You can find the links to your site in Search Console.” Then, in the update step: “Try to contact the sites in the saved list of sites linking to your current content, asking them to update their links to your new site. Consider prioritizing your efforts by the number of inbound visits for each link.”

Prioritizing is the useful word there. Ten emails to the sites that actually send you visitors beats two hundred emails to sites that send none.

Where this stops being worth your time

Read Google’s own wording again. “Try to contact.” It does not say the sites will change anything, and most of them will not answer. Send the polite two line email, then let it go.

The Links report prints its own limit right on the page. “This report isn’t a comprehensive list of every link on your site. It shows a sample of internal and external links to help you understand your site’s overall link profile.” A sample. The list you export is incomplete by design, so anyone selling you a complete picture of your links is selling you a guess.

Here is a harder limit. Google publishes the advice to update these links. Google does not publish how much a ranking moves after you do it. Nobody can measure that on one contractor’s website. An agency that shows you a chart claiming otherwise is showing you a story, not a measurement.

There is also a case where you should not buy anything at all. If you have six listings and one Facebook page, a monthly listing cleanup service is not worth the money. That is a spreadsheet and one quiet hour.

And your redirects are meant to carry the old links across while you work through the list, which is why how long you keep those redirects matters more than how fast you get the emails out.

What to do next

  • Check first whether your web address actually changed. If it did not, the link on your profile is already right and needs no edit.
  • Open your Google Business Profile and tap your own link on a phone. Note the exact page it lands on.
  • Check any booking or ordering link on the profile the same way. Those are the ones Google says it removes on its own.
  • If the address changed, edit the website field with the full address, https:// included, then wait for the review to clear.
  • Write down every place you can log into that shows your web address. Work down that list in one sitting.
  • Export the Links report from Search Console and sort by link count.
  • Email the top ten only. Two lines: old address, new address, thank you.
  • Check the profile link again a week later.

If you would rather this were somebody else’s afternoon, the listing sweep and the watching afterwards sit inside the search checks. And if you want to know what AI assistants already say about your trade in your town, the free scan asks them and writes down who gets named.

Written by Galloping