How to Access Old GMB (Google My Business)

Overview

Google recently updated the UX for managing business profiles (November 2022). Instead of using the Google Business Profile Manager, users now have to make changes directly in the SERP. Google has been pushing in this direction for a while now, however there’s a lot of resistance in the SEO community. While part of this is caused by people being used to doing things a certain way, there are also missing features in this new experience. This has caused SEOs a lot of frustration, including myself. If you’re in this group, read on to find out how to get back to the old interface. 

How to Access Old GMB Interface (Updated November 2022)

1. Start by going to this URL: https://business.google.com/reviews. This will let you see all reviews for all profiles that you have access to.
2. Next do yourself a favor and scroll to the bottom. Change Rows per page from 10 to 50.
3. Click on any business name (link) to visit the Reviews page in the old Google My Business interface. From here you can navigate around to the various tabs and settings.

That’s it – pretty straightforward!

Will the Old GMB Interface Always Work?

Probably not, but who knows? Interestingly enough just yesterday (November 8 2022) I was able to navigate to the old interface directly from the All Locations page: https://business.google.com/locations.

An update was made in the last 24 hours to prevent that from working. Instead clicking a business name on that page takes you directly to the SERP. That’s because the URLs changed and the ID # that was used to access the old profile is swapped out with 2 new ones.

Ex. https://business.google.com/edit/l/12345678901234567890

^^ This URL works to access the old interface. That ID in red is nowhere to be found in the new interface.

https://business.google.com/n/11111111111111111111/profile?fid=22222222222222222222

^^ This is the new URL structure which is found on the All Locations page. The first number in the string represents the business ID. The second number represents the FID – still unsure what that means. 

Since the the new interface is being rolled out pretty quickly, I highly recommend you copy/paste the URLs for all business profiles into a spreadsheet so you can access in case they disspear from the All Reviews screen.