Guide · Google
The booking link on your restaurant's Google profile: what you control
For many guests the first page of your restaurant they ever see is not your website but your profile on Google Maps. Whatever sits behind its booking button decides where the booking goes, and quite often the owner has never checked.
Published
Two buttons that look the same
Google's help page on business links describes links you add yourself: a single link for a menu, and up to ten links per category for bookings, reservations and orders. You choose where each one goes. If you have more than one, you can mark one as the business's preferred link so it sits at the top.
The same page says that some links appear on your profile automatically, supplied by companies Google works with. Those come from booking platforms that have connected to Google through what it calls the Actions Center. Google's developer page is clear about who that is for: platforms that provide reservations for many restaurants, not an individual restaurant. It also says Google may include or exclude merchants as it sees fit.
So when a guest presses “Reserve a table” on your profile, the booking may go to your own page, or to a platform that has its own terms with you, or, if you changed system this year, to a platform you no longer use.
Check what is there now
- 1
Open your profile as a guest would
Search your restaurant's name on Google Maps on a phone, not signed in as the owner. Press every booking-shaped button and see where it lands.
- 2
Then open it as the owner
Google's help page describes the route: from your Business Profile in Search, the Booking section; in Maps, Edit profile and then the booking type. Here you see your own links and any provider's.
- 3
Remove what you have left
For a provider you no longer use, Google offers Remove provider. Its page says providers must process the removal within five days, and you can report it if they do not.
- 4
Add your own link and make it preferred
Paste the address of your own booking page and mark it as the business's preferred link, so it sits above anything else on the list.
Why your own link is worth the five minutes
A link you add yourself goes to a page you control. The guest books with you, under your terms, and the booking does not carry anybody else's fee. You can change it in a minute when you change system, and it does not depend on a partnership between two companies that might end. The restaurants that left Quandoo this year found out how much that is worth: some of them spent weeks with a dead button on their profile.
Two small cautions from Google's page. Business links cannot be managed through Google's API or a spreadsheet upload, so somebody has to do it by hand for each location. And the changes are not always instant; check again a day or two later.
Where Slotora fits
- Each restaurant gets its own booking page, where a guest picks the party size, the day, a room if you have more than one, and a time that is really free.
- That page's address is the link you paste into your Google profile and mark as preferred.
- Once booked, the guest gets a link to cancel, change the party size or pick another free time, without an account; close to the booking, your own late-change rule sends them to the phone.
- Slotora is not a Google booking partner. Bookings do not arrive through a Google integration; they arrive because the guest pressed your link.
Google booking links: short answers
Can I get the built-in Google reservation button for my own restaurant?
Not on your own. Google's developer page offers that integration to booking platforms, which then connect their restaurants. What you can always do is add your own booking link.
An old booking provider still shows on my profile. What now?
Use Remove provider in the booking section of your profile. Google's help page says the provider has five days to process it.
Do I need a website to add a booking link?
No. The link can point straight at your booking page.
Sources
Your online booking page · After Quandoo · The booking link in your Instagram bio · All guides