Short answer: Use your real business name, pick the most specific primary category, fill in every service, your hours and service area, add real photos regularly, post about offers and news, and reply to every review. Keep the details identical to your website. Google decides local rankings on relevance, distance and prominence, and a complete, accurate profile helps with the first and last.
Your Google Business Profile is the box that appears on Google Maps and on the right of a search for your business name. For many customers it’s the only thing they look at before calling. It’s free, it’s yours, and most profiles are missing things that would help.
Work through this list once, then keep it up a little each month.
1. Make sure you own it
Search for your business on Google Maps. If the profile shows “Own this business?”, you haven’t claimed it. Claim it with an email address the business controls, not a personal one or an agency’s.
If someone else manages it for you, add them as a manager, not an owner, so you never have to share your password and can remove them any time. Google’s notice on working with a third party explains this and reminds owners that the profile itself is free.
2. Use your real name
Your business name on Google should match your sign, your website and your paperwork. Adding keywords or towns (“Smith Plumbing, Best Plumber in Jackson”) is against Google’s guidelines and a common reason profiles get suspended. If you want to be found for “plumber,” that’s what your categories and website are for.
3. Choose categories carefully
The primary category is one of the strongest signals Google uses to decide which searches you appear for. Pick the most specific one that describes your main business: “HVAC contractor” rather than “Contractor”; “Cannabis store” rather than “Store.” Then add a few secondary categories for other things you genuinely do. Fewer, accurate categories beat a long list.
4. Fill in services, area and hours
- Services: list each service you want to be found for, with a sentence describing it. Google suggests some; you can add your own.
- Service area: if you go to customers, list the towns or counties you serve, within about a two-hour drive. If customers don’t come to you, hide your address.
- Hours: regular hours, plus holiday and special hours. Wrong hours are the fastest way to lose trust.
- Phone and website: a number someone answers, and a link to the most relevant page on your site.
5. Add real photos, often
Photos help people recognize you and decide. Add:
- The outside of your building or your marked vehicle, so people know what to look for
- The inside, if customers visit
- Your team at work
- Finished jobs or products
- Your logo and a cover photo
Use your own photos rather than stock images. Add a few new ones each month; it shows the business is active.
6. Post updates
Google posts appear on your profile and can include a photo, a short message and a button. Use them for offers, events, new services, seasonal reminders and recent work. One or two a month is enough to keep the profile looking alive.
7. Get reviews, and answer them
Reviews are one of the clearest prominence signals, and almost every customer reads them. Ask every customer, the same way, with your profile’s review link or QR code. Don’t offer anything for a review, don’t ask only happy customers and don’t write reviews yourself or ask staff to. All of that breaks Google’s policies, and the FTC can fine businesses for fake or bought reviews.
Reply to every review. Thank people specifically for good ones. For unhappy ones, acknowledge the problem, don’t argue in public or share private details, and offer a way to talk it through. Future customers read the replies as closely as the reviews. Our review guide has a template.
8. Answer questions and keep details current
Check your profile monthly. Answer any public questions. Look for “suggested edits” from Google or the public and accept or reject them; anyone can suggest a change to your hours or phone number. Update anything that changed.
9. Connect it to the right page
Make sure the website link goes somewhere useful, usually your home page or the page for your main service, and that the page shows the same name, phone and area. A customer who taps through should feel they’ve arrived at the same business.
10. Watch what it does
Your profile’s performance section shows how many people saw your listing on search and Maps, and how many called, asked for directions or visited your website. Check it monthly, and compare against the same month last year where seasons matter. We show these numbers for clients in Bridge alongside their website and search results, so the profile is judged by what it does.
What a profile can’t do
Google says local results depend on relevance, distance and prominence. A complete profile helps relevance and prominence, but no one can change how far you are from a searcher, and no one can guarantee a position on the map. If someone promises the top spot, ask how; the honest answer is a lot of small, steady work.
Sources
This guide is general information for small business owners, not legal or financial advice. Search platforms change their systems often; we review our guides when they do.