Short answer: For local businesses the Google Business Profile is the most valuable free visibility channel there is. What matters is a narrow primary category, individually listed services, real photos, accurate opening hours and answered reviews. Maintain those five monthly and you appear in the local pack more often.
Plenty of companies invest in their website and overlook the space Google gives them for free. Search for a tiler, a tax adviser or a physiotherapist with a place name attached and the first thing you get is a map with three entries. Those entries do not come from a website, they come from the business profile. And now that AI assistants produce local recommendations, the same data feeds them too. A well-kept profile works in two places at once.
Why the profile matters more in 2026
Two developments reinforce each other. First, search engines answer local questions directly in the results, so fewer people open a website at all. Second, AI assistants lean on structured details for recommendations, because free-flowing website prose rarely states opening hours, catchment area and services unambiguously. If those facts only exist as sentences on your contact page, you supply worse raw material than a competitor with a complete profile.
None of this replaces a website. It reorders the sequence: first you have to make the shortlist, then the website can convince. What the website side of that job looks like is covered in Getting found in Google and AI search as an SME.
The fields that actually matter
Name, category, address
The name has to match the one you actually trade under. Additions such as best prices or a town name in the name field breach Google guidelines for representing your business on Google and can get the profile suspended. The primary category is the strongest lever in the whole profile: pick the narrowest category that captures your core business and add the rest as secondary categories.
Opening hours and special hours
Wrong hours are the most common cause of bad reviews that have nothing to do with your work. Enter public holidays and shutdown periods in advance.
Services and description
List every service separately instead of burying them in prose. Those individual entries are exactly what can be quoted back in an answer.
Photos
Real shots of the team, the van, the shop floor. Everyone recognises stock imagery, and it creates no sense of proximity.
A typical profile against a maintained one
| Area | Typical profile | Maintained profile | Why it counts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category | One broad category | Narrow primary plus two or three secondary | Decides which searches you appear in at all |
| Services | Not filled in | Ten to twenty services listed individually | Supplies quotable facts for search and AI answers |
| Photos | Two or three, over a year old | Added monthly, genuine subjects | Recency signals an active business |
| Reviews | Unanswered | All answered inside 72 hours | Visibly shapes the decision |
| Opening hours | Standard hours, no holidays | Special hours included | Prevents wasted trips and annoyance |
| Upkeep | Once, at setup | About 45 minutes per month | The difference is routine, not talent |
A worked example: what upkeep is worth
A painting contractor gets 400 profile views a month. Six percent lead to a call, so 24 calls. After three months of upkeep, views run at 520 and the call rate at nine percent, so 47 calls.
- Additional calls: 47 minus 24 equals 23 per month.
- At a 30 percent close rate that is roughly 7 extra jobs.
- At 350 euros contribution margin per job, that is 2,450 euros per month.
- Effort: 45 minutes a month at a 60 euro hourly rate, so 45 euros, plus 900 euros once for a proper initial setup.
- The one-off cost is covered within the first month.
The percentages are a model, not a promise. Substitute your own figures, since views and calls are both in the profile statistics. How to make assistant traffic visible on top of that is covered in Measuring AI traffic.
Reviews: the underrated discipline
Ask for reviews actively, but never in exchange for anything. Reply to every review, including the good ones, and answer criticism factually rather than defensively. Two or three sentences are enough. A fixed slot works best, for example ten minutes every Monday morning.
Where a review is clearly false or abusive you can request removal. The route is the reporting function in the profile, not a reply. Whether a review is legally impermissible is worth checking in case of doubt [check legally].
What Google will not tolerate
Google states in its guidelines that repeated violations can restrict access and suspend all connected profiles. The most common mistakes in smaller companies:
- Keywords in the business name.
- An address where nobody can be reached, such as a mailbox-only location.
- Several profiles for one location in order to cover two categories.
- Reviews written by staff or relatives.
The same principle applies to the website: Google explains in its documentation on creating helpful, reliable, people-first content that content should be made for people rather than rankings. Run the profile honestly and you do less work on both sides.
Posts, questions and the link to your website
Three features go unused in almost every profile, although they cost little time.
Posts. Short notices about offers, new services or holiday closures show up directly in the profile. One a month is enough. What matters is that it offers a concrete next step, such as booking an appointment, rather than general self-description.
Questions and answers. Anyone can post a question on a profile, and anyone can answer it, including strangers. Post the five questions your customers ask daily yourself and answer them from the business account. That way you occupy the space before someone else fills it incorrectly.
Linking to the website. Do not just store the homepage, store the matching subpage for each service. Someone who clicks facade renovation and lands on your homepage bounces more often. Make sure name, address and phone number on the website match the profile exactly, down to street spelling and legal form. That consistency is one of the few areas where effort and effect are clearly related.
With multiple locations, create one profile per location and one page per location on the website. Umbrella terms such as southern region help neither search engines nor customers.
Your 30-day plan
- Days 1 to 3: Verify ownership, check core data, sharpen the category.
- Days 4 to 10: Add every service individually, rewrite the description, upload ten current photos.
- Days 11 to 20: Answer every open review and define a process for new ones.
- Days 21 to 30: Enter special hours for the next six months and record your baseline figures.
If you want to know how your profile compares with the local competition, our visibility check gives you a sober assessment. For getting cited in AI answers beyond that, see GEO and AEO. Questions are welcome through the contact form.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a shop to have a business profile?
Not necessarily. Businesses that travel to customers can state a service area instead of an address. Purely online businesses without in-person contact are not eligible according to Google.
How quickly do profile changes take effect?
Core data is usually applied within a few days, sometimes after a review. Effects on visibility can only be judged seriously after four to eight weeks.
Does adding many categories hurt?
No, as long as they genuinely apply. What hurts is choosing categories for services you do not offer, because the resulting enquiries go nowhere and poor reviews follow.
Do I have to reply to every negative review?
Yes, factually and without case details. Other prospects mainly read how you handle criticism, not who was right in a particular instance.
Does the profile replace a website?
No. The profile gets you onto the shortlist, the website decides whether the enquiry arrives. Together they are far more effective than either alone.
