I Asked If Tattoo Artists Can Have Their Own GBP. The Answers Split Three Ways.

My wife is a tattoo apprentice at a shop in Cookeville. Simple question came up while I was looking at her local footprint because they are moving to a new shop in the building next door: can each artist in the shop have their own Google Business Profile, with their own phone number, at the shop’s address?

I did not know. So I asked on X and in r/DoSEO, and thirteen people answered. The answers split three ways, and one of the three is wrong in a way that would cost a tattoo artist their profile.

What I actually asked

any local SEOs know if individual tattoo artists at a shop can claim GBP with different phone, same address?

1.1K views on the tweet, 816 on the Reddit post. Here is what came back.

Camp one: yes, this is the practitioner rule, it has always been allowed

Chris Silver Smith went straight to precedent:

This scenario has long been allowed. For instance, doctors often share the same office & also need individual GBPs to show up for their name searches. When doing it, differentiate the addresses for each provider a bit, such as using a diff suite number or letter for each one.

Frank Jones had it running in a different vertical:

I have insurance agents that have their own GMB and the agency has their own.

Peter Mindenhall gave the conditions, and his answer is the most specific one anybody gave me:

Technically it can be done, must be able to prove they are independent and have their own name/trading name and must have own number, and must have an allocated/definable and dedicated space (Chair/Booth 1, Chair/Booth 2 etc)

On Reddit, briankato added the part nobody on X mentioned:

They can absolutely do that. They just need to be able to provide proof that they’re actually at the specific address, typically Secretary of State documentation. You also need to make sure that the business is listed as “located inside.” This is common for businesses also located within strip malls or shopping centers. Business a is located within XYZ — It’s a setting when you set up your GBP.

Camp two: technically yes, but you will hurt the shop

Tim Capper did not argue the policy. He argued the consequence, and this is the reply I keep coming back to:

Practitioners can create profiles – however it does not do the main business and favours. The different phone numbers will also create a whole new problem fir the main business.

So in this instance, I would think twice and make sure the main business is aware of this

That is a different question than “is it allowed,” and it is the better question. Six artist profiles at one address, each with its own number, each collecting its own reviews, all competing for the same map pack. The shop’s profile does not get stronger from that. It gets thinner.

Camp three: no, you are going to get suspended

SEO_Mada pushed back hardest, twice:

That sounds like a lot of bad ideas entity pollution is going to take place it’s going to compete with the GMB you can’t have more than one GMB at the same address in the same category that’s a known thing it’s a lot more issues going on there

And when I said the shop has a whole number address so suite numbers could be added:

No dude 🙁 Google looks at the straight address. That why we always check any coworker places for conflicts. Your playing with fire.

On Reddit, AbbreviationsNext484 landed in the same place:

Technically no, if it’s just one shop/business. Unless the name differs meaningfully. Otherwise, even if you add a slight differentiator in the name, Google will likely mark it as a duplicate. In which case, you’d need to provide proof of ownership and it would need to have it’s own sigil and bills.

I read “sigil” as signage. With that swap it is a reasonable answer and it lines up with briankato’s proof-of-address point from the other direction.

The advice everybody gave, and the line in Google’s docs that complicates it

Four different people, on two platforms, independently gave me the same fix. townpressmedia said “Suite A, B , C”. Redpythongoon said:

No. You have to have independent qualifiers. Like another poster said, assign each space a letter or number. Example: 123 1st street Suite 201-a

Wyatt on X just said “Suite B”. Chris Silver Smith said it too. When four people who do not know each other give the same answer, that is worth taking seriously.

Here is the problem. Google’s own address page says both of these things:

Include building, suite, and floor numbers and other unit info.

Only include info that’s part of your official address.

Those two sentences are the whole ballgame. Suite numbers are fine. Suite numbers you invented for a GBP are not part of your official address. A tattoo shop in a single storefront with one street number does not have a Suite A and a Suite B just because six people work there.

So the crowd’s advice is right on mechanism and quiet on the prerequisite. You need the suite designations to be real before you use them. That means the landlord or the county assigns them, they show up on the lease, and they show up on the artist’s business registration. Peter Mindenhall was the only person who named the underlying requirement, which is a definable dedicated space, not a label you type into a form.

What the guidelines actually say

The practitioner rule is real and it is not vague. From Guidelines for representing your business on Google:

An individual practitioner is a public-facing professional, typically with their own customer base. Doctors, dentists, lawyers, financial planners, and insurance or real estate agents are all individual practitioners.

Tattoo artists are not on that list. Neither are hairdressers, and hairdressers have been treated as practitioners for years. The list is examples, not a whitelist. The operative test is in the two conditions: the person has to be public-facing rather than support staff, and they have to be contactable directly at the verified location during their stated hours.

A booth-renting tattoo artist passes that test better than most of the professions Google does name.

Clients book them by name.

They set their own prices.

They own their client list.

They are at the shop on their own schedule and they answer their own phone.

Sterling Sky’s practitioner guide puts tattoo artists in the qualifying group for exactly that reason.

The duplicate rule that SEO_Mada invoked is also real, and it carves this out. Google says do not create more than one page for each location of your business, and then names departments and individual practitioners as the exceptions. That is the exception being used here, not a loophole around it.

The one answer that would get somebody suspended

One reply I would not follow.

jagdipkumarseo said “Yes hide address”. Hiding the address turns the profile into a service-area business. A service-area business is for people who go to the customer. A tattoo artist works on clients at the shop, at a fixed address, on a chair that does not move. Hiding the address on a profile where customers physically show up is the kind of mismatch that gets flagged, and you lose the reviews with it.

Where I landed

I said this in the thread and I still think it is right. A few categories of business are allowed to be located inside another one. I have managed a medical client set up exactly that way: unique name, unique number, unique website, suite address, all sitting inside a clinic. It held.

For a tattoo shop, here is the order I would work in.

• Start with the shop’s profile and make it good. That is the one Google will trust first and the one every artist benefits from.
• Talk to the shop owner before anything else. Tim Capper is right that the shop bears the cost of this, and doing it behind the owner’s back is how an artist ends up with no chair.
• Get the paperwork real before you touch the address field. Business registration in the artist’s trading name, their own number, their own booking page. briankato’s Secretary of State point is the version of this that survives a manual review.
• Use the “located in” setting rather than putting the shop’s name in the artist’s business name. Google’s guidelines specifically call containment information in the name unacceptable.
• Use a suite number and make sure the suite number shows up in your citations.

And one thing I would watch. Tim’s warning about phone numbers is the sleeper risk. Google reconciles the numbers it finds for an address. Six artist numbers plus a shop number at one street address gives it a lot of chances to decide the shop’s main number is the wrong one.

Thanks to everybody who answered. Thirteen replies in an afternoon got me to a better answer than the docs did on their own, and the disagreement was the useful part.