Profile Ledger (Change History)

The Profile Ledger is the permanent record of everything that happens to a Google Business Profile: every edit, review, photo, post, status change, and change to who can manage the listing, each with a timestamp and a source.

Google lets users, employees, third parties, and its own systems change a profile. Most of it happens with no notification. The ledger records all of it, so when a ranking drops or a client asks "what changed?", you have the answer instead of a guess.

Where it lives

Open a profile. Two tabs hold the ledger:

Tab	What it shows
Change History	Every change that has a before and after. Field edits, attributes, action links, status changes, and listing access. Grouped so one save that touched five fields reads as one entry with five rows.
Activity Log	Everything. The Change History entries, plus every review, post, photo, question, alert, and every action your team took through the platform. Newest first.

Change History is the subset you open to answer "what changed?". Activity Log is the one you open to answer "what happened?".

Reading either tab needs the same permission as viewing the profile. Members and viewers restricted to certain companies see only those companies' profiles.

What the ledger records

Profile edits

Any change to the listing's fields on Google: name, address, phone, website, hours, description, categories, service area, and the rest. Each entry shows the field, the value before, and the value after.

Every entry carries a source badge:

Badge	What it means
Edited via platform	Your team changed it here, and the platform pushed it to Google.
Changed on Google	The field changed on Google and nobody changed it here. A user suggestion Google accepted, a manager editing in Google directly, or Google's own systems.
Google suggested	Google changed the listing on its own (a "Google update") and is waiting for the business to accept or reject it. The entry shows your value and Google's side by side.
Accepted	A Google suggestion your team accepted.
Status	Verification or suspension state changed.
Listing access	Someone was added to, removed from, or changed role on the listing's admin list.

Categories get special handling. The entry shows the full before and after list, plus a highlighted row for just what was added or removed. A change to the primary category is called out on its own, because that is the one that moves rankings.

Attributes

Accessibility, amenities, payment types, service options, ownership identity, and the rest of Google's attribute list. When one appears, disappears, or changes value, the ledger shows one Attributes entry listing exactly what changed. For example: Wheelchair accessible entrance: Yes → No.

Action links

The "Order online", "Book", "Reserve a table", and "Shop online" buttons on the listing, where enabled for your organization. When one appears, disappears, or changes its URL, the ledger records it and names the provider. Third-party links are called out, for example Food delivery (3rd-party, doordash.com), because a delivery or booking aggregator can attach a link to a listing without the business knowing. That is the most common way a client's orders get quietly redirected.

Reviews

• A new review, with the rating and the reviewer's display name
• A reply posted
• A review that disappeared from Google, and the date it was last seen
• A review that came back after disappearing

The review itself is kept in the platform's own storage. See Review Backups.

Photos and videos

• Media that appeared on the listing without being uploaded through the platform, grouped into one entry per check with the count and categories
• Media that disappeared from the listing

Photos your team uploads through the platform appear as Photo uploaded, not as Media added.

Posts

• A post that appeared on the listing without being published through the platform, with the post text
• A post Google rejected, with the reason
• A post that was removed

Posts published through the platform appear as Post published.

Questions and answers

Where enabled for your organization: a customer question the moment it appears, the business's answer, and a question that was removed. The ledger records who asked only as a type (customer, Local Guide, or the business), never by name.

Listing access

Who can administer the listing on Google. An admin added, an admin removed, or a role changed, for example a manager becoming an owner. Google tells the person who was added. It does not tell you. This is the highest-privilege change that can happen to a profile, so it is badged as a warning.

Listing access entries name a real person. Only an org owner or admin, or a member assigned to that company, sees the identity. Everyone else sees that access changed, without the name.

Status

Active, pending verification, suspended, disabled. Each transition, with the date. The dashboard shows how long a profile has been in its current state.

When entries are written

The platform checks every monitored profile against Google on a schedule, once a day by default. Changes found on a check are written to the ledger with the time of the check. That is the time the platform saw the change, not the exact moment it happened on Google.

To check a profile right now, open its Edit Info tab and click Refresh from Google. The ledger records the refresh and whether anything changed.

Changes your team makes through the platform are written at the moment they are made.

Your own edits do not raise an alert

If your team changes a field through the platform and Google reports that same field changed within the next 7 days, the platform treats it as your edit landing, not as an outside change. The entry is still written. It is not raised as a pending alert. This stops you from being paged about your own work.

Alerts

Not every entry is an alert. What reaches you, and how:

Entry	Where it goes
Status change (suspended, pending, back to active)	Profile page, dashboard feed, and email to org members who have the toggle on. See Profile Monitoring.
New review, negative review, review removed	Reviews tab, dashboard feed, and email per the review toggles. See Reviews.
Google suggested an update, pending edits, listing access	Profile page and the dashboard's Google Updates widget. No email.
Media added or removed, posts appeared or removed, questions	Activity Log and the Google Updates widget. No email.
Fields, attributes, or action links changed on Google	Change History and Activity Log on the profile. Not in the dashboard widget, no email. Open the profile to see them.

Using the ledger

Answer the question on the call. A client says the phone stopped ringing. Open Change History. If the phone number changed on Google three weeks ago and nobody here touched it, that is the answer, with the date.

Find out before the client does. Check the Google Updates widget on the dashboard each morning. It lists Google's own suggested updates, new media, posts, questions, and listing access changes across every profile. For field edits made on Google, open the profile's Change History.

Build a stronger appeal. A reinstatement request is stronger when you can show exactly what changed on the profile and when. The ledger is where that comes from. See Reinstatement.

Prove the work. The Activity Log shows what your team did, next to what Google did. Both with dates.

How far back it goes

The ledger starts recording the day a profile is connected. It does not reach back before that. Google does not provide a history of past changes through its API, so nobody can.

Entries are kept for as long as the profile exists, with one exception. Listing access entries name a person, so they follow your organization's personal-data retention window, one year by default. Contact support if you need a specific entry held longer.

Limits

• No history before the connection date.
• Field edits are recorded per check, not per keystroke. If a field changed twice between two daily checks, the ledger shows one entry from the first value to the last.
• The ledger is not exportable as a file today. The Reviews tab has its own CSV and JSON export, and review backups are covered there. A ledger export is not built.
• Questions and answers, and action links, are enabled per organization. If you do not see them, they are not on for your account yet.

Related

• Profile Monitoring, for the alert settings.
• Review Backups, for the stored copy of every review.
• Google Business Profile, for editing the profile and reviewing Google's pending suggestions.
• Reinstatement, for using the ledger in an appeal.