The Google Business Profile checklist

The map pack is the most valuable piece of free real estate a local business can own, and most owners fill in about a third of it.

A Google Business Profile is not a directory listing. For a local service business it is frequently the first and only thing a customer looks at before calling, and increasingly it is the thing an AI assistant reads when someone asks it to recommend a plumber.

Part 1. The fields almost everyone leaves empty

Fill every one of these

• Primary category. The single highest-impact field on the whole profile. Pick the most specific one that describes your main service, not the broadest.
• Secondary categories. Add every service you genuinely offer. Do not add ones you do not.
• Services, itemised, each with a description. This is a large free text area most profiles leave blank.
• Service areas, if you travel to customers. List the towns you actually serve, not a 90-mile radius.
• Hours, including special hours for public holidays. Wrong holiday hours generate one-star reviews.
• Business description, 750 characters. Say what you do, where, and for whom.
• Opening date. Feeds the "years in business" signal.
• Attributes: identifies as, accessibility, payment types, appointment required. Customers filter on these.
• Products, if you sell any. Underused and it renders prominently on mobile.
• Booking or appointment link, if you have one.

Part 2. Photos, which matter more than owners expect

• Logo and cover photo, correctly cropped. These are the two that appear everywhere.
• At least ten photos of real completed work. Before and after pairs outperform everything else for trades.
• Photos of the team and of vehicles. Customers are deciding whether to let a stranger into their home.
• Interior photos if customers visit you.
• Add new photos monthly. A profile whose newest photo is from 2023 reads as a business that may not exist any more.
• Do not upload stock photography. It is obvious, and it undoes the trust the rest of the profile builds.

Part 3. The parts that keep working after setup

1. Reviews and replies

   The profile is where the review engine actually shows up. Keep the last-90-days window populated and reply to everything.

2. Questions and answers

   You are allowed to post questions and answer them yourself. Seed the ten questions you get asked on every call: do you charge for quotes, are you insured, how fast can you come out, what areas do you cover.

   This section is frequently the raw material an AI assistant quotes when summarising your business.

3. Posts

   Short updates with a photo. Weekly is plenty. Recent jobs, seasonal reminders, availability.

4. Messaging

   Only switch it on if someone will actually answer it. An unanswered message thread is worse than no messaging at all.

Part 4. NAP consistency, the boring one that matters

Name, address and phone number must match character for character everywhere they appear: your website, your profile, your invoices, every directory. "St" in one place and "Street" in another is the kind of mismatch that quietly weakens a profile.

• Decide the canonical version of your name, address and phone. Write it down in one document.
• Use exactly that version everywhere from now on.
• Your business name field should be your actual business name. Adding keywords to it ("Smith Plumbing | Emergency Plumber Leeds") is against Google’s guidelines and is one of the most commonly reported violations.
• One profile per physical location. Do not create profiles for towns you do not have premises in.

The monthly ten minutes

• Add two or three new photos of recent work.
• Answer any new customer questions, and add one of your own.
• Reply to every review from the last month.
• Check hours against anything unusual coming up.
• Open your profile in an incognito window and look at it as a customer would. This catches more than any tool.