Google Business Profile

A Google Business Profile is the free listing Google keeps for your business, which decides what appears in Google Maps and in the block of local results above ordinary search results. It holds your name, category, location or service area, hours, photos, services and reviews. For any business whose customers are nearby, it is usually the single most valuable thing you control online, and it is not part of your website at all.

In short

• It is free, and it is what puts you in Maps and the local results.
• Google ranks it on relevance, distance and prominence, not on your website alone.
• Reviews and completeness move it more than anything else you can do.
• Keywords in the business name are the fastest way to get it suspended.

Where the profile actually shows up

The listing is not one thing in one place. It feeds several surfaces, and knowing which is which explains why the profile matters even to businesses with a good website.

• Google Maps. Somebody opens Maps and searches for what you do near where they are. Your listing is the entire result. No website is involved.
• The map pack. On a normal search with local intent, a block of three businesses appears above the ordinary results. It is drawn from profiles rather than from websites, which is why a business with a weaker website can sit above one with a stronger one.
• The knowledge panel. When somebody searches your business by name, the panel on the side or top of the results is your profile. For many people this is the first impression of your business, and it is assembled from what you filled in.

That last point is worth sitting with. Even a customer who was recommended to you by a friend will usually search your name first, and what they see is the profile rather than the home page you paid for.

What goes in the profile

Most listings are half filled. Each field below either helps somebody decide or helps Google understand you.

• Name. Exactly what you trade under. Nothing else.
• Primary category. The single most influential field in the whole profile. It tells Google what kind of business you are, and it decides which searches you are eligible for at all. Secondary categories add reach but never override it.
• Address or service area. An address if customers visit you, a set of service areas if you travel to them. A service area business can hide the address.
• Hours, including special hours for holidays. Wrong hours generate the angriest reviews you will ever receive.
• Photos. Real ones, of the premises, the team and finished work. Stock images do the opposite of what they are meant to do here, because the visitor is checking whether you exist.
• Services or products, listed individually. This is where you can be specific about what you actually do.
• Attributes, such as whether you accept GCash, have parking, or are wheelchair accessible.
• Questions and answers, which anybody can post on your listing and anybody can answer. Left unattended, a competitor or a confused stranger answers for you.
• Messaging, if you want inquiries to arrive that way and somebody is there to reply.

How Google decides which businesses to show

Google describes three factors, relevance, distance and prominence, and they are set out on the map pack entry. What matters here is which of them your profile can actually move.

• Relevance is the one this page is mostly about. Category and services do the work, and they are settings you control.
• Distance you cannot touch. Somebody searching in Makati is shown businesses near Makati, and no amount of work will place you in a city you have no presence in.
• Prominence is how well known and well regarded the business appears to be. Reviews, mentions across the web, links to your website and general off-page signals all feed it.

The practical reading is that you compete inside a radius. A business in Cebu City is competing with other businesses in Cebu City, and the ones that win are the ones with the most complete profile and the strongest review history.

Reviews, and how they actually work

Reviews are the part most owners underuse and the part that moves the listing most.

Four things matter, roughly in this order. How many you have compared with the businesses beside you. How recent they are, because forty reviews from three years ago read as a business that has stopped. What the average is, though a perfect five with six reviews persuades less than a 4.6 with two hundred. And whether you reply, because replies are visible to everyone deciding after the fact.

The way to get them is to ask, immediately after the work is finished and the customer is pleased. Not by incentive, which is against Google’s policies and usually obvious to readers anyway.

Replying to a bad review is not for the reviewer. It is for the next person, who will judge how you handle a complaint far more than they judge the complaint itself.

The mistakes that keep businesses out of the map pack

• Keywords in the business name. The single most common suspension cause. Your name is your name.
• Inconsistent details elsewhere. If your name, address and phone number appear differently across your website, Facebook page and directory listings, Google gets conflicting evidence about who you are. Pick one exact version and use it everywhere.
• The wrong primary category. A category chosen carelessly on day one can hold a listing back for years without anybody noticing.
• Duplicate listings, splitting reviews between two profiles.
• An unverified listing, which limits what Google will show.
• Silence. No new photos, no replies, no updates, hours never corrected. The profile still exists. It just looks abandoned to both Google and the reader.

Words you will hear, and what they mean

• Map pack. The block of three local businesses shown above ordinary results. Also called the local pack or the three pack.
• NAP. Name, address, phone number. The three details that must match everywhere your business is listed.
• Citation. A mention of your business details on another site, such as a directory. Consistency across citations supports prominence.
• Knowledge panel. The information box shown when somebody searches your business by name.
• Service area business. A business that travels to customers and lists areas rather than showing a street address.
• Verification. Proving to Google that the business is real and yours, by postcard, phone, email or video.
• Suspension. Google removing the listing, usually for a policy breach. Recovery is possible and slow.
• UTM tagging. Adding parameters to the website link on your profile so that tracking can tell you how much traffic the listing sends.

What to check every month

Five minutes, and it prevents most of the problems above.

Are the hours right, including any coming holiday. Have new reviews arrived, and have they been answered. Has anyone posted a question on the listing. Are there new photos from the last month’s work. And has anybody suggested an edit to your information, which Google sometimes accepts from the public without telling you loudly.

The listing rewards steady attention far more than it rewards a single good setup, which is the opposite of how most businesses treat it.