Knowledge base / Local search
Google Business Profile, done properly.
It is free, it takes an afternoon, and for a local service business it is worth more than most of the website. Most profiles we audit are about forty percent filled in.
Key takeaways
- What is a Google Business Profile? The free listing that puts your business on Google Maps and in the three-result map pack. It is a separate product from your website and it is managed in its own dashboard.
- Which field matters most? The primary category. It does more to decide which searches you appear for than anything else on the profile, and it is the field most often set wrong at setup and never revisited.
- How complete should it be? Every field that applies, including services, attributes, hours, holiday hours and photos. Profiles we audit average around forty percent complete, and the empty fields are searches you are not eligible for.
- How often does it need attention? A few minutes weekly for reviews and questions, an hour quarterly for a full pass. It is not a set-and-forget listing, and the dormant ones slip.
What does the Business Profile actually control?
Your Business Profile decides whether you appear in the map pack, what Google shows about you when you do, and what an assistant repeats when someone asks for a business like yours nearby. Your website barely influences any of it.
That split surprises owners who have spent money on a site and seen nothing in Maps. They are separate systems with separate inputs. The site earns organic rankings. The profile earns the map pack. Both matter, and the work is not interchangeable.
Which fields do the most work?
| Field | Why it matters | The common error |
|---|---|---|
| Primary category | The strongest single input into which searches you are eligible for. | Set once at signup, often too broad, never revisited. |
| Secondary categories | Widens eligibility to related searches. | Stuffed with categories the business does not offer, which dilutes the primary. |
| Services | Individual services with descriptions, matched to what people search for. | Left entirely empty. This is the most common blank on profiles we audit. |
| Business description | 750 characters stating what you do and where. | Written as a slogan rather than a plain description a machine can read. |
| Hours and holiday hours | Drives the open-now filter and the trust of anyone looking today. | Holiday hours never set, so the listing says open on a day you are closed. |
| Attributes | Powers filters such as accessibility, payment types and appointment options. | Ignored, which removes you from filtered searches entirely. |
| Photos | Decides which of three listings a person picks. | A logo and two stock images uploaded in 2021. |
Google publishes its own guidelines for representing your business, and they are worth reading once in full. Most suspensions come from breaking a rule in there that the owner never knew existed, usually about business names or addresses.
The business name rule, which costs people their listing
Your profile name has to be your real-world business name. Not your name plus your city. Not your name plus your main service. The version on your signage, your invoices and your vehicles.
Adding keywords to it works, briefly, which is why it keeps spreading. It is also against the guidelines, it is the single most reported violation by competitors, and the correction can come with a suspension that takes weeks to lift. We have never recommended it and we have cleaned up after it more than once.
How often should I update it?
- Weekly, ten minutes. Reply to new reviews, answer new questions, check nothing has been edited by a member of the public. Google accepts suggested edits from anyone, and wrong hours can sit there for months.
- Monthly. Add a few genuine photos. Check the insights for which searches found you.
- Quarterly, one hour. Re-read every field. Re-check the categories against the services you actually sell now rather than the ones you sold when you set it up.
- Before each holiday. Set the holiday hours. It takes two minutes and it is the one that embarrasses businesses publicly.
If you would rather not own the rhythm, a Business Profile rebuild is on our Fix Menu at a published price, and ongoing attention is part of the monthly plan. It is also free to do yourself, and this page is the whole method.
Business Profile questions
You can change it, and you should if it is wrong, but do it deliberately rather than experimentally. Rankings move when the category moves, sometimes within days. Change one thing, write down the date, and watch for a fortnight before changing anything else.
Only ones you genuinely offer as a service. Adding categories to cover more searches is a common tactic and it dilutes what Google thinks you are, which costs you the searches that matter most. Three accurate categories beat nine optimistic ones.
They affect whether someone picks you from the three listings, which is the part of this that converts. Real photos of your work, your vehicles and your people do more than stock images or a logo on a white background. Add them steadily rather than fifty in one day.
Set it to the areas you will genuinely travel to, and no further. An inflated service area does not make you rank in those places, because proximity is calculated from your actual location, and it can trigger a review of the listing.
If customers do not come to you, yes. Set it as a service-area business and hide the street address. Leaving a home address visible is both a privacy problem and a mismatch with the directory listings that do not show it.
That depends entirely on who owns it, and this catches people out. Check now whether your own Google account has the primary owner role on the listing rather than a manager role. Our guide to who owns your website covers the same question for the domain, hosting and site.
Your profile is only half the picture.
The free AI Visibility Score checks the website side: whether your business name, city and phone number are stated where a machine can read them, and seven other points.
Get your AI Visibility Score