Every individual that uses the Business Profile APIs is expected to have already created their own Google Account.
The Google Identity Platform and OpenID Connect are available to help you sign in to multiple accounts at once, and from different platforms. Your Google Account phone and email preferences help determine which of your contact methods are available for PIN verification. For example, your account must have a phone number configured for Google to initiate PIN verification when you use voice or SMS.
Merchants can have multiple Google Accounts and locations. To avoid duplicates, as well as ownership and verification delays, best practice is for merchants to sign in to all of their accounts.
Changes made through the Business Profile APIs appear immediately in your Business Profile account.
Business Profile account types
There are four account types used with the Business Profile APIs to manage users and locations.
Personal account
A personal account is automatically available to you when you create a Google Account. Personal accounts are linked to the Google Account of the business owner, or, optionally, to the Google Account of an operations team member. Personal accounts can be owners and managers of listings.
Organization account
If an operations team assists the business owner with management of the business, such as with responses to reviews, operation hours, pricing, and menu updates, then it's best to create an organization account.
Organization accounts act as containers for multiple listings and groups. An organization account represents your agency. Your location group and user groups are saved in it, and all members of an organization have access to them. Locations can be part of multiple organizations.
Location group account
A location group is used to manage a group of individual locations. You can use a location group to perform bulk tasks to multiple locations. When you add personal accounts and user groups to a location group, they inherit the location group's permissions.
Location group accounts enable sorting, access, and management of listings by partner-defined categories, attributes, or roles.
User group account
User group accounts enable management of account permissions that are common to multiple personal accounts.
You can add personal accounts to a user group. Then, you can grant the user group management access to multiple location groups in the organization. In this manner, all personal accounts in the user group can perform managerial actions on the locations under the location groups.