Getting Your Google Business Profile Right
For many local businesses, the Google Business Profile is the first thing a customer sees: the box with your name, hours, phone number, photos, and reviews. It is free, and getting it right takes an hour or two. Keeping it right takes ten minutes a week.
1. Claim and verify it
- Search for your business name on Google Maps. If a listing exists, choose to claim it. If not, add it.
- Enter your name, category, address (or service area if you travel to customers), phone, and website.
- Verify. Google offers different methods depending on your business, which can include a text or phone call, email, video recording, or a postcard with a code. Which ones you see varies, so use what is offered. Follow the steps on the verification help page.
Verify with your own account, one you control long term, and make sure at least two trusted people are listed as owners or managers so you are not locked out later.
2. Use your real name
Google's guidelines say your name should reflect your business's real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website, and stationery. Do not add extra keywords, service descriptions, locations, or phone numbers to the name. Listings that do this can be suspended or edited, and it can cost you the profile when you need it most.
3. Choose categories carefully
- Pick one primary category that best describes what you are, not everything you sometimes do.
- Add a few secondary categories that are accurate. More is not better.
- Categories change what features and attributes are available, so check the options after you choose.
- Look at how similar local businesses are categorized, and borrow the wording that fits you.
4. Keep hours and details accurate
- Enter regular hours, then set special hours for holidays ahead of time.
- If you close for a vacation or an emergency, mark it. Customers who drive to a locked door leave bad reviews.
- Check the phone number and website link by clicking them yourself.
- Fill in services, products, and attributes that apply. Write the business description in plain words about what you do and for whom.
- Do not use a P.O. box or a virtual office as your address when customers cannot visit you there. Service-area businesses should hide the street address if they do not serve customers on site.
5. Add real photos
- Upload a logo, a cover photo, the outside (so people can recognize the place), the inside, your team, and real examples of your work.
- Use your own photos, not stock images.
- Add a few new ones each month. Fresh photos show you are active.
6. Reviews: ask, reply, and stay honest
- Get your review link from your profile and share it by text, email, or a card at checkout. Ask every customer, not just the happy ones.
- Reply to every review, short and specific. Thank the positive ones by name. For a negative one, apologize for the actual issue, say what you will do, and offer an offline way to reach you. Never argue in public.
- Do not offer discounts or gifts in exchange for reviews, do not write reviews for your own business, and do not ask only for positive ones. Google prohibits this, and the FTC has rules against fake and manipulated reviews.
- If a review breaks Google's policies (spam, fake, off-topic), use the flag option to report it.
7. Posts and updates
Use posts for offers, events, and news. Keep each one short, with a clear photo and a button, such as Call or Learn more. Weekly is plenty. Do not post filler.
What not to do
- Do not stuff keywords or locations into the business name.
- Do not create multiple listings for the same location.
- Do not list a fake address or a spot you do not staff.
- Do not ignore edits suggested by the public. Check your profile for changes now and then.