Google Business Profile setup: create, verify and optimise your profile

A Google Business Profile, called Google My Business until November 2021, is the listing that shows your business on Google Maps and in Google’s local results: name, category, hours, photos, reviews and a button to call you. For a plumber, a cleaner or a heating engineer, it is often the first thing a customer sees, before the website.

This Google Business Profile setup tutorial takes the steps in order: gather the information, claim or create the profile, verify it, fill in every section, then start collecting reviews. Menu names are those of the English interface at the time of writing (October 2026). Google moves its buttons around often, so if a label differs, look for the nearest match.

It is part of my guide to small business SEO, where the profile is one step among others, not a replacement for a website.

What a Google Business Profile shows, and what changed since Google My Business

Your profile appears in three places: the map pack (usually three businesses under a map, for searches such as “plumber Croydon”), Google Maps itself, and the panel that opens when someone searches your business name. It can show your phone number, website, address or service area, opening hours, services, photos and reviews.

Older tutorials describe features that no longer exist. Here is what changed:

Before you start: gather everything in one go

When I build a profile for a client, what slows everything down is having to chase them for the information. Collect all of this before you open the form:

• A Google account the business keeps, linked to an address you control: not a former employee’s or a freelancer’s personal account.
• Your business name exactly as customers see it on your sign, van and invoices. Google’s guidelines do not allow extra keywords or a town in the name (“Smith Plumbing”, not “Smith Plumbing Emergency Plumber Croydon”), and breaking them can get the profile suspended.
• Your address, or the areas you cover if you travel to customers.
• A phone number answered during opening hours, and your website address.
• Your opening hours, plus the days you close: bank holidays, the Christmas break.
• Your services, each with a sentence or two in the words customers use.
• A description of up to 750 characters (step 6).
• Photos: logo, cover photo, premises or van, the team at work, finished jobs.

Step 1: find, claim or create your profile

Your business may already have a profile you never created: Google can build one from public information or from a customer’s suggestion. Search before you create, so you do not end up with a duplicate.

1. Open Google Maps and search for your business name and town.
2. If your business appears, open it and look for a link such as Claim this business or Own this business?. Follow it and sign in with the business’s Google account.
3. If nothing appears, go to business.google.com, start adding a business and type its name. If Google suggests your business, select it; if not, create a new profile.
4. Answer the questions that follow: name, primary category, whether customers can visit you at an address, the areas you serve, phone number and website.

If someone else already manages the profile, Google shows part of their email address and lets you request access. It is often a former web designer, an employee who has left or the previous owner of the business, so contact them as well and ask them to add you as an owner before it turns into a dispute. Google gives the current owner three days to respond. If they refuse, Google tells you by email and you can appeal; if they do not answer, sign in at business.google.com or open the link in Google’s confirmation email to see where your request stands.

Step 2: verify your business (most often by video)

Verification proves that you run the business. Until it is done, Google does not publish your changes, and a new profile may not appear at all.

Google picks the methods it offers for each business, based on its category, location and history, so you only see yours after step 1. Most new profiles get a video recording. Some are offered a phone call, a text or an email, and a few a live video call with Google’s support team. Postcards have become rare.

For video verification, film one continuous clip on your phone, with no cuts or edits, that shows three things:

1. Where you are: the street name sign, your shopfront or the neighbouring businesses. If you work from home or from a van, film your street, then your vehicle.
2. The business itself: your equipment, stock, tools or the signwriting on your van.
3. That you run it: something only staff can reach, such as opening the door with your keys, the back office or the till.

Send it from the verification screen. Google usually reviews it within a few working days.

Step 3: choose your primary and additional categories

Categories tell Google which searches your profile matches, and the primary category shows under your name. It is the field to get right first. You will find it under Edit profile, in the About tab.

• Primary category: the one that describes the business as a whole. Type what you do and pick from Google’s list; you cannot make up your own. A plumber who also fits boilers starts with Plumber, not with a category for one of the jobs.
• Additional categories: a few, for real parts of the business. Google’s advice is to add them for distinct departments or services, not one for every product or service you sell.
• Your competitors’ choices: search your main service and your town in Google Maps and look at the businesses at the top. The category under each name is their primary category.

Step 4: set your address or your service area

Your answer depends on where you meet customers.

List only the areas you really cover. Google accepts up to 20 service areas and recommends keeping the whole area within about two hours’ drive of where your business is based (Google’s service area help). Distance is one of the three things Google weighs, so a long list of far-away towns will not make you appear there; it only confuses customers about where you work.

Step 5: add your services and opening hours

Services. Google suggests services that match your category. Tick the ones you offer, then add your own, each with a short description in the words customers type: “boiler repair”, “air conditioning installation”, “end-of-tenancy cleaning”.

Opening hours. Set your regular hours for each day, then special hours for bank holidays and closures, a few days ahead. Wrong hours cost you twice: the customer who finds the door shut, and the review they write afterwards.

Step 6: write the description and link your website

The description holds up to 750 characters, and on many screens only the first lines show before a “More” link. Put what you do and where at the start, in plain words. Here is one for a fictional plumber:

Smith Plumbing is a plumbing and heating business based in Croydon,
working across south London. We repair and replace boilers, fix leaks
and fit bathrooms for homeowners and landlords. All our engineers are
Gas Safe registered.

Leave offers and prices out of it: they date quickly, and posts are the place for them.

For the website field, link the page that matches the profile: your home page, or the page for that branch if you have several locations. Add tracking parameters so you can tell these visits apart in your analytics:

https://www.yourbusiness.co.uk/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=business-profile

In Google Analytics, these visits then carry the campaign name business-profile. A profile links to one website only, so if your business runs several, as Pilotech does, running several websites for one business explains how the others can still show your reviews.

Step 7: add real photos

Add at least:

• your logo and a cover photo;
• the outside as customers see it when they arrive, or your van;
• the inside: shop, office, waiting area;
• the team at work, with the customer’s permission if they appear;
• finished jobs, before and after.

For a website, when a client has no pictures, I generate or buy them. A Business Profile needs real ones: people look at these photos to check that you exist, and they compare them with the van that turns up. Customers can add their own photos too, so add a few of yours every month to keep the gallery current.

Step 8: get reviews within Google’s rules and the law

Click Ask for reviews on your profile to copy the short link to your review form. Send it by text or email right after the job, add it to your invoices, and print it as a QR code for your counter or your van.

Ask every customer, not only the happy ones. Google’s review policy forbids:

• offering anything in exchange for a review: a discount, a gift, a prize draw;
• asking only the customers you expect to be pleased;
• reviews written by you, your staff or your family, or bought from anyone.

UK law has followed the same logic since 6 April 2025. Under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, writing or commissioning fake reviews, hiding that a review was incentivised and presenting reviews in a misleading way, for example by hiding the negative ones, are banned in all circumstances (Schedule 20). The Competition and Markets Authority can now fine businesses directly, without going to court.

Reply to every review, good or bad. Thank people and mention the job; to a negative review, answer the facts calmly and offer to sort it out by phone. Future customers read your replies too.

Reviews belong to the profile, but you can show them on your website too. On the Toshiba site I built for Pilotech, the Google rating, 5.0 from 82 reviews when the project page was written, appears in the header of every page.

What makes a profile rank, on Maps and in AI answers

Google ranks local results on three things, as Google explains:

A profile also works best when it points to a site that answers the search. For Pilotech, the SEO work went in this order: pages, then content, then the Business Profile, then technical fixes. The Pilotech SEO case study tells the full story, and my guide to local SEO covers town pages and directory listings.

AI assistants lean on the same kind of proof: they tend to recommend businesses whose details they find confirmed on several sites. Make your name, address, phone number and services identical on your profile, your website and your directory listings. My guide on how to get recommended by ChatGPT goes further.

After set-up: keep the profile alive

A profile is not a one-off job. Once a month:

1. Reply to new reviews and send your review link to recent customers.
2. Add a few photos of recent jobs.
3. Check your special hours before the next bank holiday.
4. Publish an update about a recent job, a seasonal service or an event. My guide to Google Business Profile posts covers what to post and how often.
5. Open Performance to see how many people called, asked for directions or clicked through to your site.

Compared with Instagram, TikTok or Facebook, where you have to keep begging to be seen, I find the profile much nicer to work with: the people who see it are already looking for what you do.

Your Google Business Profile setup checklist

1. Business name exactly as on your sign, with no added keywords.
2. One profile per location, owned by a Google account the business controls.
3. Verified, with a video that shows the place, the business and proof that you run it.
4. A precise primary category, plus a few additional ones.
5. Address shown, or hidden with a service area that matches where you really work.
6. Services listed in your customers’ words; regular and special hours set.
7. Description written; website linked with tracking parameters.
8. Real photos: logo, cover, outside, inside, team, finished jobs.
9. Review link sent to every customer, and every review answered.
10. A monthly round: reviews, photos, hours, one update, Performance.

Most owners can do all of this themselves: what takes time is gathering the information and waiting for verification. If you would rather hand it over, the profile is part of my SEO service, together with the pages it points to.