Third-Party Ordering on Google: Restaurants Get the Remote

For years, the Google listing for a lot of local restaurants has worked like a cousin who borrows your car. It shows an order button, sends the hungry person off to a delivery app, and the app takes its cut before the food ever leaves your kitchen. You didn’t set that up. You just found it there one day.

That changed last week. Google rolled out controls in Business Profile that let restaurants choose which third-party ordering services show up on their listing.

The short version

• Restaurants can now turn specific third-party ordering providers on or off for their profile on Google Search and Maps, right from the Business Profile dashboard.
• You no longer have to beg each delivery company to pull its feed off your listing.
• The new switch only matters if your own website has an ordering path worth sending people to. Check that before you flip anything.

What did Google change for restaurant ordering links?

Google added third-party ordering controls to Business Profile, reported on October 28 by Search Engine Roundtable. Restaurants can now manage which ordering providers appear on their profile on Search and Maps, and opt out of specific ones.

The old way was a pain in the ass. If a delivery app had your menu hooked up to your listing and you wanted it gone, you had to go ask that delivery company to disconnect the feed. Then wait. Then ask again. Google’s own announcement basically admitted this was the number one thing restaurant owners kept asking for. Now it’s a setting in your dashboard, and from the screenshots it looks like you can also choose whether a provider shows for pickup, delivery or both.

Translation: you finally have the remote. You don’t have to throw it out the window, but it’s nice to hold it.

Should a restaurant turn off DoorDash and Uber Eats on Google?

Not automatically. Turn off the ones that hurt you and keep the ones that actually bring you customers you wouldn’t get otherwise.

Delivery apps aren’t the villain here. Some people only order through the app they already have open, and that person was never going to visit your website. Cutting the app off your listing doesn’t convert them, it just loses them. Google even said as much: keeping a mix of providers can work in your favor.

Here’s where I’d get picky:

• A provider you stopped working with (or never signed up for) that still shows up on your listing. That one goes.
• A provider with an old menu or old prices. Nothing ruins a Friday like a customer showing up angry about a price from 2023.
• Pickup orders. If someone is driving to you anyway, there’s no good reason to hand a middleman a slice of that sale when your own site can take the order.

That last one is the quiet money. Delivery is a service the app actually performs. Pickup through an app is mostly paying for a damn button.

Does your restaurant website need its own online ordering?

If you want to take pickup orders without a commission, yes. The new Google switch is useless if the only alternative is a phone number that rings during the dinner rush.

I see this all the time: the restaurant’s own website has a menu (usually a PDF, which I’ve complained about before), a phone number, and that’s it. So the delivery apps win by default. They aren’t better. They’re just the only place where a person can tap a few things and be done.

Your own ordering doesn’t have to be fancy. It needs a real menu as text, prices that match the counter, a cart that works on a phone with one thumb, and a confirmation that lands somewhere a human checks. If that exists, the Google switch becomes a real decision instead of a scary one.

How do I clean up my Google listing this week?

Block off fifteen minutes and do this once, start to finish.

1. Search your restaurant’s name on Google and Maps from your phone, logged out, like a customer would. Tap every order button and see where it goes.
2. Open your Business Profile and find the new ordering controls. Turn off any provider you don’t work with or that shows a dead menu.
3. Decide on pickup separately. If your site can take the order, consider pointing pickup there.
4. Make sure your menu details on Google are current too. Diners filter by dietary needs now, and I wrote about Google’s menu tags if you missed that one.
5. Put a reminder on your calendar to check again every few months. Delivery apps change, menus change, and nobody’s going to tell you.

The step people skip is number one. Owners almost never look at their own listing the way a stranger sees it. It’s like never hearing your own voicemail greeting. Go listen. It’s usually worse than you think, and sometimes it’s straight up BS from a menu you changed two years ago.

What about the customers who ask before they order?

Plenty of business never touches an order button at all. Somebody posts in a local group asking who does good catering for forty people, or which spot has a gluten free menu that doesn’t taste like cardboard. That’s a customer with a wallet out, and they’re asking in public.

Most owners don’t have time to watch for those posts between shifts, which is exactly why I built the Autobot, the outreach assistant I set up and run for other businesses. It learns how the business talks, finds people already asking for what they do, answers like a person at a human pace, and hands the warm leads to the owner. No delivery app in the middle, and nobody taking a cut of the conversation.

Questions people ask

Can I remove DoorDash from my Google Business Profile?

Restaurants can now manage and opt out of specific third-party ordering providers directly in Business Profile, instead of asking each provider to remove its feed. If you don’t see the controls yet, rollouts like this often reach accounts over a few weeks.

Will turning off delivery apps on Google hurt my sales?

It can if you turn off the provider that actually brings you orders. Look at where your app orders come from first, then remove the providers you don’t use or that show bad information, and keep the ones earning their keep.

Can I send Google ordering traffic to my own website?

That’s the point of having options. The cleaner and faster your own ordering page is on a phone, the easier it is to let it handle pickup instead of paying a middleman for it.

Look, I’m not anti delivery app. They’re useful, and some nights they’re the only reason a slow kitchen gets busy. I just think the restaurant should decide where the hungry people go, not whichever app got to your listing first. If your website can’t take an order yet and you want that fixed, let’s talk. And if you’d rather have someone catching the catering questions and “where should we eat” posts for you every day, the Autobot Starter below is the easy place to start, at $50 a month.