How to set up a Google Business Profile that shows up on Maps

For a local business, a Google Business Profile is often the first thing a customer sees, before your website and before your social pages. It is free, and when it is filled in properly it can bring in more calls than anything else you do online. Most profiles we look at are half-finished. Here is how to do it properly.

What is a Google Business Profile?

A Google Business Profile is the free listing that shows your business on Google Maps and in the local results box at the top of a search. It holds your name, address or service area, phone number, hours, photos, services and reviews. Google uses it to decide whether to show you when someone nearby searches for what you do.

How do you create or claim your profile?

1. Go to Google Business Profile and sign in with a Google account you control. Use one tied to your business email, not a staff member's personal account.
2. Search for your business name. If a listing already exists, claim it. If not, create a new one.
3. Choose whether customers visit you (a shop, office or clinic) or you visit them (a plumber, cleaner or mobile service). Service-area businesses can hide their home address.
4. Verify the profile. Google will offer a method, which may be a video recording, a phone call, an email or a postcard. You cannot appear properly in search until this is done.

Which details matter most for ranking?

Google ranks local results on relevance, distance and prominence. You cannot change distance, but you control the rest.

• Primary category. This is the single most important setting. Pick the most specific category that describes your main service, such as "Emergency dental service" rather than "Dentist" if that is what you do most.
• Secondary categories. Add the other services you genuinely offer.
• Business name. Use your real business name only. Adding keywords or locations to the name breaks Google's guidelines and can get the profile suspended.
• Name, address and phone. These must match your website and every other listing exactly, down to "Street" versus "St". Inconsistency makes Google less confident the listings are the same business.
• Services and description. List each service in plain words, and write a description that says what you do and where.
• Hours, including holidays. Wrong hours lose calls and earn bad reviews.

How do photos and reviews help?

Photos show customers what to expect and signal an active business. Add your logo, a cover image, the outside and inside of your premises if you have them, your team at work and examples of finished jobs. Add new photos regularly rather than all at once.

Reviews are one of the strongest signals for local ranking and for trust. Ask every happy customer, with a direct link to your review form. Reply to every review, good and bad, calmly and briefly. Never buy reviews or offer something in return for them; both break Google's rules.

How does your website connect to your profile?

Your profile and your website should support each other:

• Link the profile to your website, ideally to the page for your main service or location.
• Put the same name, address, phone and hours on your website, in the footer and on the contact page.
• Give each main service its own page, so Google can match a search for that service to your site and your listing.

If your site does not do this yet, small business website design covers the website, Google Business Profile, business email and social profiles as one setup, so they all tell the same story.

What are the most common mistakes?

• A profile created by a past employee or agency that the owner cannot log in to.
• An old phone number or address left on the profile after a move.
• A primary category that is too broad.
• No photos, or only the logo.
• Reviews left unanswered for months.

Fixing these takes an afternoon and costs nothing. If you are also wondering what a full website would cost alongside it, we break that down in how much a small business website costs in 2026.