Google Business Profile

Your Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business, is the business listing that appears when someone looks up your business or searches for a local service in Google Search and Google Maps. It shows your address, opening hours, phone number, photos, reviews and often your services or products too. For many customers, that profile is their first introduction to your business, even before they visit your website.

The profile is free, but you do have to claim and manage it yourself. If you don't, Google may still show a listing based on information it finds elsewhere, with the risk that it's incomplete or out of date.

Why is your business profile so important?

For searches with a local angle, such as "plumber Leeds" or "bakery near me", Google often shows a map with three businesses: the local pack. According to Google, which businesses appear there depends on relevance, distance and prominence. A complete and actively managed profile helps above all with the first and last of those. That makes it a cornerstone of local SEO.

AI search is paying attention too. Google AI Overviews and AI Mode draw on Google Maps data for local questions. Other assistants such as ChatGPT and Perplexity use their own sources, but consistent business details across the web make it easier for every system to recognise and recommend you correctly.

What belongs in a strong profile?

• The right primary category and relevant additional categories.
• Correct NAP data: name, address and phone number, exactly as on your website.
• Up-to-date opening hours, including special hours around bank holidays and annual closures.
• Answers to frequently asked questions and regular updates, for example about a new service, an offer or a change in how you work.
• A short, factual description of what you do and for whom.
• Recent, genuine photos of your premises, team and work.
• An overview of your services or products.
• A link to the most relevant page on your website.

A practical example

A bike repair shop in Bristol has a profile, but the opening hours have been wrong for two years and it shows three photos from 2019. Customers call on Mondays in vain and leave a negative review about it. By correcting the hours, adding new photos of the workshop and listing repairs and e-bike servicing as services, the owner immediately gives searchers an accurate picture. He also actively asks happy customers for a review and responds to every comment, including the critical ones. On top of that, he occasionally posts an update about seasonal servicing, so the profile visibly stays current for anyone looking at it.

Common mistakes

• Adding keywords to your business name. Google explicitly asks you to use your real name.
• Writing your address or phone number differently from your website and other listings.
• Not responding to reviews, which makes your profile seem passive.
• Filling in the profile once and never looking at it again.

Not sure whether your profile, website and other listings match up properly? A visibility audit of your local and AI presence quickly maps out where things go wrong and what to tackle first.