For queries that include a town name, the first thing a customer sees is a map with three businesses beside it. That is the business profile at work, not the website. For a service company in a small town it is the cheapest source of phone calls that exists — and the most commonly neglected.
Three decisions before you start
1. A business with an address or a service area?
If customers come to you (a shop, a workshop, a practice), the profile shows a visible address. If you travel to them, you choose a service area and the address stays hidden. This is not cosmetic — it decides the radius in which your business appears at all.
2. One primary category, a few secondary ones
The primary category carries the most weight. It should name what customers come for most often, not what sounds most professional. Pick secondary categories that match real services — not aspirational ones, because a blurred profile weakens relevance.
3. One name everywhere
Name, address and phone must look identical in the profile, on the site, in directories and on social media. Adding keywords to the name (“Computer Repair Nysa — the best”) breaks the guidelines and sometimes gets profiles suspended.
What to complete for the profile to work
| Element | What it affects | Practical note |
|---|---|---|
| Categories | Relevance to the query | Primary = most frequent service, not the most ambitious one |
| Service area | How far you appear | List the towns you actually travel to |
| Opening hours | Clicks and trust | Set holiday hours too — “closed” in results discourages |
| Photos | Views and clicks | Your own photos of equipment and work, not stock images |
| Business description | Context, little ranking effect | Say who you help and in which area |
| Reviews and replies | Ranking and the customer’s decision | Reply to all of them, calmly and concretely |
| Services and prices | Long-tail relevance | List services separately, in customer language |
Verification: where most people give up
Google confirms the business exists via a postcard code, a phone call, an email or a video. Video verification is often fastest but requires showing the workplace, the equipment and a business document in one uninterrupted take. Prepare before recording — a second attempt takes longer than the first.
Reviews without gaming the system
Copy the direct review link from the profile dashboard and send it after finishing a job, in the message where you thank the customer. A few things not to do: review yourself, offer a discount in exchange, or post a batch of reviews on a single day. All of these patterns are detectable and end in filtering.
Posts, questions and photos — what is actually worth doing
- Add five to ten of your own photos and refresh them every few months.
- Ask and answer three to five typical customer questions yourself — the section is public.
- Publish short posts when something changes: a new service, a holiday, different hours.
- Watch the insights: the number of calls and direction requests says more than views.
Signs something is wrong
- The profile appears only for the company name, never for a service name.
- A competitor on the same street has three times more reviews.
- The profile still shows an old number or a pre-move address.
- Someone suggested a data change and Google approved it without your knowledge.
The profile is free and completing it is an afternoon of work — the best effort-to-effect ratio in local marketing. To make the profile and the website support each other, see how I handle SEO and visibility in Google.