You’re already on Google.

Short and honest: Google My Business, these days Google Business Profile, is the free listing that appears the moment someone looks up your business or your kind of service nearby: your name, your opening hours, your phone number, your reviews and a place on the map. It costs nothing, for almost any local service business it’s the highest return per hour you can put into being found, and most profiles sit there half filled in. This guide goes a layer deeper than "just fill it in": where your profile shows up, how Google decides who is at the top, which fields really carry weight, how to measure what it brings in, and who else can change your details without you noticing.

Before you dive into the settings, first where this thing actually appears. Your Business Profile feeds four places at once, and that’s why the work pays off so well:

• The little map with nearby businesses, known in the trade as "the local pack": that group of about three businesses with stars and a map, above the ordinary blue links. This is where someone searching "plumber near me" looks first.
• Google Maps itself. Someone searching Maps for "hairdresser" is searching the same data.
• The panel next to your own name. If someone looks up your business name, your profile appears with a call button, directions, opening hours and reviews. So people who already know you also arrive through this profile.
• Increasingly: AI answers. If someone asks Gemini or ChatGPT for a good electrician in their town, that answer comes largely from the same local business data. The use of AI tools to find a local business jumped in a year from 6 to 45 percent (US consumer research, so read it as a direction). The good news: you need do nothing separate for it.

Fill it in well once, four places at a time. That’s the leverage.

According to Google's own figures, a profile with photographs gets 42 percent more requests for directions and 35 percent more click-throughs to the website than a profile without. Reviews work just as hard: by far the most people read reviews before choosing a local business, a low score or too few reviews costs you customers concretely, and businesses that reply to all their reviews are trusted far more often than businesses that never do. That last part comes from US consumer research, so read it as a direction, not as exact truth for your own market.

And on how much it matters within the whole: in the yearly Local Search Ranking Factors survey by Whitespark, in which dozens of local search specialists weigh 187 factors, the signals from your Business Profile together account for about 32 percent of what decides your local position, and review signals for another 20 percent or so. Note what that is: a weighted opinion of experts, not a measured statement from Google. But it does show the proportion. More than half of your local findability hangs on two things that cost not a euro.

Google is clear about this itself: your position in the local results depends on three factors, with those exact names on Google's own help page about local ranking: relevance, distance and prominence. Know these three and you know exactly where to spend your time and where not to.

Since a large update at the end of 2021, distance weighs more heavily than it used to, which concretely means: a plumber two streets away with a mediocre profile can rank above a better plumber ten kilometres out. Frustrating when it happens to you, but it explains straight away why "why am I not at the top" is rarely only about your profile. Relevance and prominence are entirely in your hands, and the rest of this guide is about those.

If you only have one afternoon, spend it here. In that same expert survey, the three heaviest factors a business owner controls themselves are: your primary category, your review pace, and the consistency of your name, address and phone number across the web. Two of those are in this section.

Your category: the heaviest control you have

Your main category weighs more than anything else in your profile. Choose the category that most specifically fits what you actually do, not the broadest one. Picking "contractor" when you’re really a roofer waters down your relevance for exactly the people looking for a roofer. You can add up to nine additional categories for the other things you do.

Want to know why a competitor ranks above you: look their business up in Google Maps and see which category sits under their name. That’s their primary category. If it says something more specific than yours, you probably have your explanation without needing a tool. Check your category at least once a year: businesses grow, Google's category list changes.

Your business name: where most of the damage happens

This is the mistake that goes wrong most often. Your name has to match your real, registered name exactly, optionally with your core activity added. What is not allowed: stuffing your name with keywords or place names so you appear more often.

That second example may feel like clever search work, but it’s a direct breach of Google's guidelines and one of the fastest routes to a suspended profile: days to weeks completely unfindable, exactly the opposite of what you were after. Competitors can report a breach too. If you do want to work with keywords, that’s fine, but in your description, your categories and your services, not in your name.

Your services: the field that has risen most in importance

Under your category you can add individual services, each with its own short description. This was treated as a side issue for years, and it’s not any more: in the latest expert survey this field jumped from place 81 to place 22 in importance, the biggest rise of all 187 weighted factors.

So don’t add two services but all the services you want to be found for, each in the words your customer uses. A painter puts in not just "painting", but "interior painting", "exterior painting", "rotten wood repair", "wallpapering", "painting window frames". Each with one or two sentences explaining what it involves and who for.

Your business description: 750 characters you write yourself

The place to say in plain words what you do, who for, and what sets you apart, in the words your customer uses too.

The difference isn’t style, it’s information. The second example says what you do, where, when, on what terms, and what someone may expect of you. The first says nothing.

The rest of the fields

• Attributes: wheelchair accessible, free parking, appointment needed. People genuinely filter on these in Maps, so tick whatever is true.
• Products: if you have fixed packages or products, put them in. They get their own block in your profile.
• Opening hours: these have to be right, because a closed door after directions is the most expensive review you can get. Also set special opening hours around holidays, which sit separately from your normal hours.
• Temporarily or permanently closed: if you’re closed for more than a week, a holiday or a refit, set "temporarily closed". That no longer costs you position. Never set "permanently closed" by accident: that destroys your place in the local map.

Reviews: the biggest single lever you have

Reviews are about a fifth of your whole local findability, and at the same time the first thing a hesitating customer looks at. Three things count: how many, how good, and how regularly. That last one is forgotten most often. Forty reviews from 2021 and nothing since reads, to Google and to a customer alike, as a business that has stalled. Five reviews a quarter, every quarter, is stronger than forty in one go.

How to ask. Ask everyone, not only whoever seems happy, and ask just after a good experience: at handover, not three months later by newsletter. You find your own review link in your profile under "Ask for reviews". You simply send that link along:

"Glad it turned out the way you wanted. If you have a minute: a short review on Google helps me enormously to be found by new customers. You can do it through this link. And if something isn’t right, do tell me first, then I’ll sort it out."

Example text to reuse

That last sentence isn’t a trick to catch bad reviews, and you shouldn’t use it as one: you must give everyone the same chance and not discourage unhappy customers. But you’re perfectly allowed to say you would rather fix a problem.

How to reply. Reply to everything, positive and negative. To a good review briefly and personally, no copy-paste. To a bad one:

Acknowledge the point, stay professional, and move the discussion to a phone call. An angry public reply costs you more customers than the review itself, because every next reader sees how you handle criticism.

Photographs: the cheapest lever you have

See the figures above: this costs purely time, no money. Use real photographs, not stock: your premises or your van from outside, inside if customers come to you, your work before and after, and yourself and your people. A face does more for trust than any slogan. Refresh them regularly, at least a few new ones each quarter. Google and customers both see the difference between a profile last touched three years ago and one that’s alive.

Posts: two minutes a week

Posting something roughly weekly is the advice you see everywhere. More important than the frequency is that it doesn’t stall: behavioural signals such as posts, photographs and clicks have been rising in weight for years.

Questions, messages and mentions elsewhere

• Questions and answers: historically anyone could answer a question here, including a competitor or a well-meaning stranger with the wrong information. Google has narrowed this, but the rollout differs per profile and old public questions may still be there. Look at what’s on yours, correct what’s wrong, and put your own frequently asked questions in yourself.
• Messages: if the chat function is on, actually reply. An ignored chat question is a missed customer. If you can’t keep up, switch it off deliberately and make sure your phone number is right. That’s a more honest choice than opening a channel you don’t staff.
• Mentions elsewhere: the third heaviest factor you control yourself, and the dullest. Your name, address and phone number have to be identical everywhere online: your own website, your business register, trade associations, local directories, your social channels. Put your official details in a note and use exactly the same spelling everywhere from now on.

The last piece of standing sits outside your profile: a website of your own that’s findable in itself. That’s a guide in its own right: read How do I rank higher on Google? for the full explanation. Your profile and your website strengthen each other both ways.

Being honest about what you can’t steer is part of it. Distance is the straight line between the searcher and your registered location, and you don’t move that. What you may and should do: make sure your address or service area is right, put your pin exactly right on the map (Edit profile, Location), and don’t expect to reach the top in a city you’re not in. Anyone who wants to appear in the Rotterdam map without a base in Rotterdam ends up at a fake address sooner or later, and that’s exactly what profiles get suspended for.

If you work across a large area, this is the honest conclusion: your profile brings you customers from your own surroundings, and for the rest of your working area you need your website. That’s not a shortcoming of your profile, it’s the division of labour.

A word on the name. You probably still search for and hear "Google My Business". That was the old name and the separate app for it has been retired; you now manage your profile directly in Google Search and Maps. It’s the same thing, it’s simply called Google Business Profile now.

You claim or create your profile, and then you have to prove you really are the owner. Google decides which verification method you get, you don’t choose it yourself.

If you get the video option: it has to last at least 30 seconds, recorded live and uploaded from your phone through the profile itself, no edited material. In one take, show your surroundings, your business name on the front or your van, your tools or workplace, and yourself at work. If you get the postcard: start this in good time, two to three weeks is long when you’re already missing customers.

Someone else has already claimed my profile

This happens often to business owners who once worked with an agency, or to a business that has changed hands. You see it from the notice that the profile is already managed. What to do:

1. Click Request access. The current owner gets an email and has 3 days to respond.
2. If they don’t respond, you can usually claim the profile yourself after all. That option isn’t always available, but usually it is.
3. If Google asks for proof: your business registration in your own name is the strongest evidence that you represent the business.

If the agency does respond and won’t cooperate, this is a contractual conversation, not a technical problem. The profile is about your business; that argument is stronger than it looks.

A real and common concern, especially for sole traders working from home and visiting customers (plumber, cleaner, mobile hairdresser). The solution: set yourself up as a service-area business. Go to Edit profile, Location, switch off "show business address to customers", and fill in your service area instead (up to twenty areas, by place or postcode). Your address disappears from the map, you stay findable for your own region. For safety, also shield your visiting address in your public business register, or it leaks out there instead.

One honest caveat: a service area isn’t a way to stretch your reach. Google still uses your actual location to decide who you appear for. Filling in twenty areas doesn’t make you visible in all twenty.

Almost nobody knows this, and it’s exactly the kind of thing that happens to you once and then you never forget it. Anyone with a Google account can submit changes to your profile through "Suggest an edit": your opening hours, your phone number, your website, your address, and even that you’re closed or a duplicate. Google sometimes applies such suggestions automatically, without warning you. Usually it’s a helpful passer-by who has it slightly wrong. Sometimes it’s a competitor.

There’s no switch that turns this off. The only real answer is to check periodically:

• Look your own business up in Google once a month and go through your details: name, phone number, opening hours, website, and whether it says "temporarily closed" or "permanently closed".
• If something is wrong, fix it straight away in Edit profile.
• Pay extra attention after a move, a number change or a period you were closed: those are the moments wrong suggestions come in.

A quarter of an hour a month stops you finding out six months later that you have been on the map with the previous owner's phone number all along.

1. The Performance tab in your profile

Your profile has a Performance tab. It shows, over the last 6 months: how often your profile was viewed and whether that came through Search or Maps, how often your phone number was clicked, directions requested and your website clicked, and which search terms people found you with. That last one is the most valuable block of all, because it tells you in your customer's own words what you’re found for. If you see terms there for services you haven’t even put in your profile, you have your to-do list.

Watch the rhythm: the interaction statistics (calls, directions, website clicks) are updated daily, the rest monthly. The search terms refresh at the start of each month and it can take up to five days before you see the new figures. So look monthly, not daily, and draw no conclusions from a single week.

2. See profile traffic in your own statistics

By default, visitors clicking through from your profile disappear into the big pile of "organic" or "direct" in Google Analytics. So you never see what your profile really contributes to your website. You fix that by tagging your website link in your profile:

After that you see that traffic separately in GA4 under Reports, Acquisition, Traffic acquisition, and then the Session source/medium view. One honest caveat: there are two schools of thought about what to put in utm_medium. Some use "organic", which lines up neatly with how Google is already counted but makes your profile invisible in the pile again. A distinct, recognisable label as above keeps it separately visible. Pick one and use it consistently; then your comparison over time holds.

Do the same with the links in your Posts and your booking button, with a different campaign label, and you know not only that your profile works but which part of it.

Being honest about your own tools is part of it, so to be clear: the free website check from Vena isn’t a profile check.

• What the check does do: it looks at your Google reviews (the score and the number) and whether there’s an address and phone number with your listing, but only if it can tie your Google listing to your website with certainty. If that link can’t be made, it simply leaves this block empty rather than guessing. Beyond that it measures your website: load time, mobile friendliness, findability and the technical side.
• What the check doesn’t do: it doesn’t check your categories, your photographs, your services or your posts, and it doesn’t look at whether your profile exists at all.

So the checklist further down really is a self-check: you fill that in, no measurement involved. That’s not a shortcoming I’m hiding, it’s simply the line between what’s measured and what you judge yourself.

A subject you only have to go through once to understand why it belongs here. Common causes of a suspension: incorrect or misleading details (wrong address, invented name, wrong category), several profiles for the same location, changing sensitive fields without re-verification, or a disputed ownership claim. Keyword stuffing in your name is one of the fastest routes to it. Using a virtual office address or your accountant's address is another.

If you’re suspended, use Google's own appeal tool: it shows exactly which guideline was breached. You can send evidence along (a register extract, a photograph of your frontage or van with your name on it, an invoice at the address) to support your appeal; Google strongly recommends that. You get a decision by email. Prevention is easier than cure: stick to the name, address and category rules above and this will probably never happen to you.

• Someone charging money for "creating your Google My Business": that’s free and costs you only time, not a euro.
• A guaranteed first place, paid or unpaid: doesn’t exist, Google says so itself.
• An offer to buy reviews or swap them for a discount: against Google's rules and unlawful in the EU, with fines running high. The risk sits with you, not with the seller.
• An agency wanting to put the profile on their own account instead of yours: then you’re not the owner.
• A monthly fee for "profile management" without anyone being able to explain what happens each month: ask for a list of what was done that month, and ask whether you can cancel monthly.
• A name full of keywords and place names that "converts better": a suspension waiting to happen.

Doing everything above in one go isn’t realistic. This is how to spread it:

• Week 1, the basics. Claim your profile and start verification (start here, because the postal route takes two to three weeks). Set your name exactly right, choose your primary category, check your address or set your service area, and get your opening hours right. Done in about an hour.
• Week 2, relevance. Add your additional categories, write your business description, and put in all your services with a short description each. This is the dullest hour of the month and it returns the most.
• Week 3, trust. Upload ten real photographs. Then ask your last five customers for a review, with the link from your profile. Reply to all the reviews already there, including the old ones.
• Week 4, measuring and watching. Put the UTM tag on your website link, look at your Performance tab for the first time so you have a baseline, and go through your details for unrequested changes. Publish your first post.
• After that: a quarter of an hour a month. One post or photograph added, replying to new reviews, one check of your details, and a look at the Performance tab. That’s all it is.

Is your profile already complete, verified, with current details and a new photograph or review regularly? Then you need change nothing here. Upkeep is a quarter of an hour a month, not a project. Do you run mostly on regular customers and word of mouth, with no room for new work? Then setting up a complete profile once is enough, the rest is a choice, not a necessity.

And if you’re rarely searched for locally, for example because you deliver a specialist service to customers across the country, then this profile simply matters less to you than to the hairdresser round the corner. Fill it in so you’re right when someone looks up your name, and put the rest of your time into your website.

For completeness, because you rarely hear this from an agency. Everything in this guide you can do yourself, free, in a few hours spread across a month. There’s no situation in which you need an agency for the profile itself. I only become relevant when the real bottleneck sits further along: your website itself isn’t found or doesn’t convince, and that asks for more than a profile. In doubt about that, read Why does my website bring in no enquiries? for the full diagnosis.

Tick what already holds. The overview then points you at the area with the most to gain, not at everything you could still do: start there, not everywhere at once.

If you’re still right at the bottom, start with the basics, not with the photographs. A verified profile with the right category returns more than ten extra photographs on a profile that hasn’t even been claimed.

Want to know how your website itself stands, separately from your profile? Run the free website check. It runs in a few minutes and shows straight away how you score on findability, speed, trust and the technical side, free and with no salesperson on the line.