Google Business Profile: how to set one up properly, in the right order

Setting up a Google Business Profile is mostly a matter of doing things in the right order. Check you're eligible, then claim the profile and verify it. Get the name, category and address right before you touch anything else, and leave reviews until last. Do it in that order and you won't be redoing the whole thing in six months' time, or appealing a suspension.

The profile is the free listing that puts a business on Google Maps and in the local results above the ordinary ones. If your customers are local, it's often the first thing they see of you. Google changes its rules from time to time, so what follows is how its own help pages stood on 28 September 2026, linked as we go.

First, check you're eligible

Google's guidelines for representing your business open with the test: a business can have a profile if it "either has a physical location that customers can visit, or travels to customers where they are".

That rules some set-ups out. A virtual office, a postal address you rent but don't work from, "isn't eligible for a Business Profile". A desk in a co-working space counts only if it has clear signage, receives customers during opening hours and is staffed by your own people during those hours. And it's one profile per business: Google says duplicates cause problems with how your information shows on Maps and Search.

If you work from home and travel to your customers, you're what Google calls a service-area business. You're still eligible, but you hide your address, as the section on where you are explains.

Step 1: add or claim the profile

You'll need a Google Account, though not a Gmail address: any email address will do. Then follow Google's page on adding or claiming a profile:

• If your business isn't on Google yet, go to business.google.com/add and follow the steps.
• If it's already there, find it on Google Maps and select Claim this business, then Manage now.

It costs nothing. Google says so on the same page, and its local ranking help adds that "there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google". So anyone selling you a guaranteed position on the map is selling something Google says doesn't exist.

Step 2: verify it

Verification proves that you run the business. Until it's done your photos won't show, and Google says some businesses can't edit their profile at all.

Google's verification page lists phone or text, email, a live video call, a postcard and a video recording, but the choice isn't yours: "Verification methods are automatically determined by Google and can't be changed." The options depend on your type of business, public information, your region and your opening hours. If a video recording is offered, Google recommends it.

Three details save a lot of grief:

1. Phone verification needs a person. Google says automated phone menus won't receive the code, so make sure a human, or a mobile, can take the call.
2. With a postcard, change nothing while you wait. Most codes arrive within 14 days and expire after 30. If you edit the business name, address or category in the meantime, the code won't work, and requesting a new one cancels the first.
3. Live video calls happen during your opening hours, at your premises. Be ready to show a sign or street name that places you, and the tools or stock you work with. Then show something that proves you run the place, such as keys or a staff-only area.

Once you've submitted it, Google says its review takes up to five working days. Some profiles are verified at once, including when the business's website is already verified in Google Search Console, Google's free tool for seeing how your site appears in its results. That's one more reason to set Search Console up, and it's the first thing to check if your website isn't showing up on Google.

Step 3: name, category and where you are

These three decide which searches you can appear for, and they're where most suspensions start. It's far better to get them right now than to need the fixes for a suspended profile later.

Your name is your real name. Google's guidelines say it should reflect your business's "real-world name, as used consistently on your shopfront, website, stationery and as known to customers". Adding your town or main service to the name, as in "Smith Plumbing Epsom Emergency Plumber", is the classic mistake. Legal terms count too: Google lists terms like LTD among the things you may include only if your signs and paperwork consistently show them.

Your category describes the business itself. Google's guidelines ask for "as few categories as possible to describe your overall core business", and suggest a test: the category should complete "This business IS a", not "this business HAS a". A café with Wi-Fi is a café. Choose the primary category first, and choose it with care.

Your address, or your service area. If customers come to you, show the address exactly as it appears in the real world. If you go to them and don't see customers at your base, Google's service area help says to remove the address from the profile and set a service area instead. That can be up to 20 places, and the whole area should be no more than "about two hours of driving time" from where you're based. A business that does both, such as a garage that also offers roadside repairs, can show its address and set a service area.

Step 4: the rest of the profile

Once the fundamentals are right, fill in everything else. Google's local ranking help is plain that complete, accurate information helps: "If your business info isn't accurate, your Business Profile might not show up for relevant searches in your area."

• Phone number: a local number rather than a central call centre where you can, and never one that forwards to someone else's business.
• Opening hours: your real hours for customers. For holidays, events and short closures, use special hours, which cover changes of up to six days in a row. Google suggests confirming bank holiday hours even when they're unchanged, so that customers can trust them.
• Description: up to 750 characters and no links, about what you do and what makes you different. Google's guidelines rule out promotions and prices here, and its own example of what not to write is "Best butties in town for £5!".
• Services or products: list them one by one, in the words your customers use.
• Photos: start with the outside of the premises, because Google says an exterior photo helps customers recognise you when they arrive. Then add the work itself, and the inside if people visit. Photos appear only once you're verified.

You can edit all of this from Google Search or Maps while you're signed in: search for your business name to find the editing panel.

Step 5: reviews, the honest way

Reviews are the part of the profile customers read most closely, and Google's ranking help says "more reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking".

Asking for them is fine. Google's review help suggests sending customers a link or QR code that goes straight to the review form. What its fake engagement policy forbids is offering anything in return, including discounts or free goods. It also forbids asking only the customers you expect to be happy: businesses may not "discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers".

Reviews from staff, family or anyone with a conflict of interest are out too. UK law has its own rules on fake and incentivised reviews, and they settle a question plenty of businesses ask: should you only ask happy customers for reviews?

Reply to every review, briefly and in your own words. For a bad one, reply once, calmly, with the facts and a way to put it right. The reply is for the next customer who reads it as much as for the one who wrote the review.

Keeping it alive

A profile isn't a one-off. Update it whenever your hours, services or phone number change, and set special hours before every bank holiday. Posts let you share news, offers and events on the profile itself. Google presents them as a way to help customers decide to visit and makes no claim that they affect ranking, so post when you have something worth saying rather than to a schedule.

Copy the same details to the other maps people use, too. Bing can import a Google profile, which makes getting your business on Bing quick. Wherever your business appears, the name, address, phone number and hours should match exactly, because listings that disagree cost you more now than they used to, which is one reason local search matters more than it did five years ago.

How ranking works, as far as Google says

Google names three factors. Its local ranking help introduces them as "relevance, distance and popularity", then heads the third section "Prominence", so it uses both words for the same thing:

• Relevance: how well your profile matches the search.
• Distance: how far you are from the person searching, or from where Google thinks they are.
• Prominence: how well known you are, which Google says draws on things like how many websites link to you and how many reviews you have.

You can't do anything about distance. Relevance is the profile itself: the category, the services and the description above. Prominence comes from being known, offline and online, and that's where the rest of our local SEO checklist comes in.

What Google doesn't tell you

• How the factors are weighted. Google doesn't publish how the three are weighed against each other, and says it keeps "search algorithm details confidential". Anyone quoting precise ranking factors for the map results is estimating.
• How much posts and photos help. Google recommends both and says complete, accurate profiles are more likely to show up, but it publishes no figures on how much either changes where a profile appears.
• Which verification method you'll get. Google decides that business by business and doesn't publish the rules, so whatever a friend was offered may not be offered to you.

If you're near us, our pages for Surrey and South West London and for Somerset show how we work locally. And if you'd like the profile set up for you, with the rest of your local search checked alongside it, that's part of our SEO audit and first fixes, a fixed £2,500.