Setting up your Google Business Profile properly

Your Google Business Profile is the free listing that appears when someone searches for your business, or for what you do nearby. It shows your name, where you are, when you’re open, your phone number, photos and reviews.

For a lot of local customers, it’s the first thing they see about you. Often it’s the only thing they see before they call. It’s worth an hour to get it right.

This guide goes through it in order. You’ll need a computer or phone, your business details, and a few decent photos.

1. Find out whether you already have a profile

Search Google for your business name and town. If a listing appears on the right (or at the top on a phone), a profile already exists. Customers or Google may have created it without you.

If it’s there, look for an option like “Own this business?” to claim it. If nothing appears, you can create a new one. Google’s help page Add or claim your Business Profile has the current steps, which change from time to time.

2. Verify that it’s yours

Google needs to check that you really run the business before it lets you manage the listing. According to Google’s page on verifying your business, the options can include a phone call or text, an email, a video and a postcard sent to your address.

You don’t get to choose. Google says the methods are decided automatically, based on things like your type of business and where you are. Google also says that after you complete the steps, its review can take up to five business days, and occasionally longer.

If you’re asked to record a video, read what Google asks you to show before you start, and plan it. It usually means proving where you are and that you run the business, so have your sign, your premises or your van ready to film.

3. Get your name right

Use your business name exactly as customers know it. Google’s guidelines say it should match the name on your shopfront, website and stationery.

Don’t add your town, your services or a slogan to the name. “Smith & Sons” is right. “Smith & Sons Plumbing Emergency Plumber Ipswich” isn’t, and Google’s guidelines don’t allow it.

4. Choose your category carefully

Your main category is the short label that says what you are, like “Electrician”, “Dog groomer” or “Café”. It’s one of the most important settings on your profile, because it’s how Google understands what to match you to.

Google asks you to use as few categories as possible, and to pick the most specific one that fits your core business. Add a second category only if it’s genuinely a big part of what you do.

5. Address or service area

There are two kinds of local business, and Google treats them differently.

• If customers come to you (a shop, café, salon or surgery), enter your full address and check the pin is in the right place on the map.
• If you go to them (a plumber, cleaner or gardener), Google’s guidelines say you should hide your address and set a service area instead: the towns or areas you cover. Google says this shouldn’t extend beyond about two hours’ drive from your base.

If you do both, for example a garage that also does call-outs, you can show your address and set a service area.

6. Hours, holiday hours and contact details

Add your normal opening hours, and keep them right. Few things annoy a customer more than driving to a business that Google said was open.

Google lets you set special hours for bank holidays and other one-off changes. Put a reminder in your diary before Christmas, Easter and the summer bank holiday.

Add your phone number and your website, and make sure the number is one that gets answered.

7. Write a plain description

You get 750 characters to say what you do. Google’s editing guidance says not to include web addresses, and not to focus on promotions, prices or sales.

Write it for a customer, not for Google. Say what you do, who you do it for, where you work, and anything that makes you different. For example:

Family-run electricians based in Bungay, working across the Waveney valley since 2009. We do rewires, fuse boards, EV chargers and fault-finding for homes, farms and small businesses. NICEIC registered.

(That’s an example to show the shape, not a real business.)

8. Add real photos

Google’s editing guidance encourages photos and videos of your premises, products and services. Use real ones, taken in good light. A few good photos of your shopfront, your work and your team are worth more than a stock photo of a smiling stranger.

If people come to you, include a photo of the outside, so they recognise it when they arrive.

9. Set up a review link

Reviews are one of the things Google says can help your local ranking. Once your profile is verified, you can create a short link or a QR code that takes customers straight to the place to leave one. Our guide to getting more reviews without being awkward covers what to do with it.

10. Keep it up to date

A profile isn’t a one-off job. Google reviews some changes before they go live, and customers can suggest edits to your listing, so check it every month or two.

A short routine helps:

• Check your hours, especially before holidays.
• Reply to new reviews.
• Add a new photo now and then.
• Make sure your phone number and website still work.

A quick checklist

• Profile claimed and verified
• Real business name, nothing added
• One specific main category
• Correct address and map pin, or a sensible service area
• Opening hours and holiday hours
• Phone number and website
• Plain description, no web addresses
• Real photos
• Review link ready to share

What next

Your profile gets people to notice you. Your website is often where they decide whether to get in touch. The free website health check looks at your website and tells you, in plain English, what might be putting people off. It doesn’t check your Google profile yet.

If you’d like help with your profile and how you show up on the map, see getting found on Google.