Google Business Profile — how to set it up, run it and promote it

Google Business Profile — formerly Google My Business — is a free listing that decides whether a customer looking for a service near you will see you at all. For a local business, it's more often the first point of contact than the website: the customer sees the name, the rating, the hours and a "call" button before clicking on anything else.

Below: what the profile is made of and what each part does, when to set it up, the five mistakes that most often cost visibility, and how much work it takes to run.

What a Business Profile is made of and what each part does

Google's dashboard shows these fields as one long list to fill in, and that's misleading, because each group is responsible for a different stage. Category and service area decide whether Google shows you to someone searching at all. Photos and reviews decide whether that person clicks. Phone number and website link decide whether they get in touch.

The practical takeaway: filling in the profile "from top to bottom" is worse than filling it in column by column. Do everything in the first group first — otherwise the rest works for traffic that isn't there yet.

When to set up your profile

The earlier, the better — and earlier than the website, too. Google lets you run a profile for a business that's still getting organised: you can list a service area instead of an address, hide the address if you work remotely, and fill in the rest gradually.

The profile starts collecting reviews and views from day one, while a website has to wait until search engines notice it. If your budget only stretches to one of the two, start with the profile and plan the website afterwards.

We cover setting one up separately, step by step: how to set up a Google Business Profile.

Five mistakes that cost you visibility

1. An incomplete profile. Missing opening hours, a phone number or a website link isn't cosmetic — it's missing fields from the first and third columns of the chart above. A profile without hours won't show up in "open now" results.

2. A category that's too broad. The primary category tells Google what the business is, and therefore which searches it's even in the running for. Google's own advice is to choose categories that are "as specific as possible, but representative of your main business" — "roofing contractor", not "construction services".

3. No photos. A profile with no photo of the premises, the team or finished work looks closed for business. This is a field from the second column — it doesn't affect whether you're shown, only whether someone clicks.

4. Leaving reviews unanswered. No reply — even to a positive review — reads as a lack of interest. Replying costs a minute and is the only signal that someone is actually there. More on this in our article on ranking a Business Profile.

5. No verification. An unverified profile isn't fully visible — a large part of the work is waiting on confirmation. Verification methods, timelines, and what to do when the code doesn't arrive or the profile gets suspended are covered in our guide, how to set up a Google Business Profile.

A profile instead of a website — what it's good enough for

Early on, a profile works as a stand-in business card, and it does that surprisingly well: it keeps contact details, hours, photos and reviews in one place, and posts let you announce offers and news without a blog or a newsletter.

What it won't do: it won't sell an offer that can't be described in a few sentences, it won't handle a form with an attachment, it won't show a price list in a form a customer can compare, and it isn't yours — Google sets the terms and the layout.

⚠️ One thing here has gone out of date. Google used to offer a free website generated from a profile, on a business.site address. The service was shut down in March 2024, and the redirects from those addresses stopped working on 10 June 2024 — today they lead nowhere. If you still have a link on that domain anywhere — on the profile, on a Facebook page, on a paper business card — it's a dead link.

How much work it takes to run

About an hour a month — that's our suggested minimum, not a Google requirement. More important than the number of hours is consistency: a review left without a reply stays as the last word in a conversation with a customer, and Google's own policy warns that owners who stop using it can lose it: "Merchants that don't access their Google Business Profile for long periods of time may have their access revoked and content removed after adequate warning" (Google help). Add posts to the profile whenever you actually have something to announce — Google doesn't give a recommended frequency.

The cheapest habit on this whole list is replying to reviews the day they appear. The most often skipped is a monthly check of the business details, because "surely nothing's changed". Things do change: holiday hours, a phone number after switching carriers, a website link after a redesign.

Profile and website — how they work together

They aren't competitors, just two ends of the same path. Three things worth connecting:

• The website link on the profile. The profile sends traffic to the website; the website closes the deal on what the profile can't carry — the offer, pricing, a form.
• Consistent details. The name, address and phone number should read identically on the profile, on the website and in directories. A mismatch mostly means a customer calling an old number or driving to the wrong address.
• Reviews as content. What customers write in reviews is ready-made material for a testimonials section and for ranking — people describe your service there in their own words, which are exactly the words they use when searching.

What Google says decides your position in Maps and local results — and what you can't buy — is covered in our article on ranking a Google Business Profile.

Where to go next

• Setting up a profile, or something isn't working → how to set up a Google Business Profile, verification and suspension
• You have a profile and want to rank higher → ranking a Google Business Profile
• You want more reviews, within the rules → Google reviews
• You had a free website from Google → what happened to the free Google website