Google Business Profile, still universally called Google My Business despite being officially rebranded in 2021, is Google’s free tool for controlling how your business appears in Search and Maps. It’s the listing you see when you search for a local business: the panel showing the address, phone number, hours, photos, and reviews. That’s it. Straightforward concept.
If you run any kind of local business and haven’t set this up properly, it should be at the top of your to-do list. It’s free, it takes a few hours to set up fully, and it directly determines whether you appear when someone nearby searches for what you do.
Why it matters more than your website for local search
When someone searches “plumber near me” or “coffee shop Bristol”, they don’t see organic website results first. They see a map and three business listings (the local pack) which appear above everything else and capture the majority of clicks for local searches. Your Google Business Profile is what gets you into that local pack. A website alone won’t do it.
Think about your own search behaviour. When you’re looking for somewhere to eat, a tradesperson, or a local service, how often do you scroll past the map? Rarely. Your customers don’t either.
Setting it up
Go to business.google.com and claim your listing. If your business already shows on Google Maps, you’ll claim the existing one. If not, you’ll create it from scratch. Google will verify you own the business, usually by sending a postcard with a code, though phone and email verification are available for some business types.
Once you’re verified, fill everything in completely. Not most of it, all of it.
Business name: your actual trading name, nothing else. Keyword stuffing (“Dave’s Plumbing | Emergency Plumber London”) gets listings suspended. It also just looks ridiculous to anyone reading it.
Primary category: this is the most important ranking signal in your profile. Be specific, “Plumber” beats “Contractor”, “Wedding Photographer” beats “Photographer”. Add secondary categories for other relevant services, but don’t pad it out with things you don’t actually do.
Service area: if you go to customers rather than them coming to you, set a service area instead of just an address. Keep it realistic, a radius that covers everywhere you could theoretically go dilutes your relevance for searches in your actual working area.
Phone, website, hours: keep these accurate. Wrong hours generate avoidable bad reviews from people who turned up when you weren’t there.
Business description: 750 characters. Write for a human, not an algorithm. Cover what you do and who you serve in plain language.
Photos
Don’t skip this. Listings with photos get significantly more engagement than those without. Add photos of your premises, your work, your team, and your products or services. Update them regularly. Blurry images from 2018 are worse than no images at all, they signal a business that doesn’t pay attention.
Keeping it active
An active profile outranks a neglected one. Post updates a few times a month, offers, news, work you’ve completed, anything that shows the business is alive and doing things. Respond to every review, including the negative ones. Answer questions in the Q&A section before they sit there unanswered.
This isn’t significant time. But businesses that treat their profile as a set-and-forget listing lose ground to competitors who treat it as a live marketing channel. Which is what it is.
Reviews
Volume, recency, and rating all influence your ranking in the local pack. Get your review link (in your profile under “Ask for reviews”) and send it to every customer who’s had a good experience, while that experience is still fresh. Build this into your process rather than hoping people remember to do it unprompted. Most won’t.
