The Google Business Profile Checklist Most Local Businesses Skip

For a local business, the Google Business Profile is frequently doing more work than the website. It is what populates the map pack, it is what shows on a phone before anyone scrolls, and it is free.

It is also mostly empty on most listings, because it was set up once during a busy week and never opened again. Here is the pass worth making.

Primary category — the field that matters most

Your primary category does more to determine which searches you can appear in than anything else on the profile. "Contractor" and "Electrician" are different markets. Pick the most specific category that genuinely describes your main line of work, then add secondary categories for the rest.

A useful trick: search the term you want to rank for, and look at which categories the businesses in the map pack are using. Google shows the primary category on the profile.

Services and products, filled in properly

Under services you can list every distinct thing you do, each with a description. Most listings have three entries or none. This is free structured data about your business, handed directly to the system that decides whether to show you, and it is sitting blank.

Write real descriptions. Two sentences each, using the words customers use.

Hours, including the awkward ones

• Regular hours that are actually true — a listing that says open when you are closed generates a bad first experience and occasionally a bad review
• Holiday hours, set in advance. Google prompts for these and being unset shows visitors a warning
• More hours for specific services if you offer them, such as emergency call-out

Photos, and the honest truth about them

Photos are weighted, and more importantly they are what a person looks at before calling. A profile with four stock-looking images from 2019 reads as a business that may not exist any more.

Phone photos are fine. The van, the shop, the team, finished work. Add a few every month rather than thirty at once — a listing with recent activity looks alive.

The bar is not photography. The bar is proof that somebody was there recently.

Reviews, and responding to all of them

Volume and recency both count, and so does whether you respond. A listing where the owner answers every review — including a two-line thank you on the good ones — reads differently to a human and is treated differently by the system.

Respond to bad reviews calmly and factually, and do not argue. The response is not for the person who wrote it. It is for the next twenty people who read it.

Posts, the Q&A, and the two underused fields

Google Posts expire after a week or so and are worth a few minutes when you have something to say — a seasonal service, a job you are proud of. They will not transform rankings, and an empty posts section on an otherwise complete profile is a small signal of neglect.

The Q&A section is genuinely underused. Anyone can ask a question on your listing, and anyone can answer, which means a competitor or a confused stranger can answer for you. You are allowed to post your own questions and answer them. Seed it with the five things people actually call to ask.

The consistency check

Finally, hold the profile next to your website and confirm the name, address, and phone match character for character. "Street" versus "St." is a difference. So is a suite number on one and not the other.

That consistency is the foundation everything else in local search sits on, and it is the piece that is broken on most of the profiles we audit.