Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business): how to create and optimise it

Google Business Profile is the free business listing that Google shows in Maps and the search results, with your address, opening hours, reviews, photos and buttons to call you or plan a route. Until 2021 it was called Google My Business. In short: log in with a Google account, register your business, choose the right primary category, verify your location and then fill in every field completely. In this guide you will read how to do that step by step, what you see on each screen, which settings make the difference, how to use reviews, photos and posts, and what to do if Google suspends your profile.

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What is Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business)?

A Google Business Profile (known until the end of 2021 as Google My Business) is a free Google tool that lets you manage how your business appears in Google Search and Google Maps. When someone searches for a product or service you offer, or for your business name, your profile can show up with your location, opening hours, reviews, photos and more.

The name changed, search behaviour did not: plenty of people still type “Google My Business” rather than “Google Business Profile”. Both terms refer to the same product. A separate app no longer exists: you manage your profile directly in Google Search (search for your business name while logged in) or in the Google Maps app.

Think of it as your digital business card on Google, but with buttons to call you, visit your website or plan a route. For SEO, the profile is a cornerstone of your local visibility: it is often the first thing a customer sees of you before they ever click through to your website.

Who needs a Google Business Profile?

Every business that serves customers in a region. That covers the classic local businesses (dentists, physiotherapists, garages, installers, restaurants, estate agents, gyms, opticians), but also B2B service providers: anyone looking for an accountant, an IT partner or a printer often searches close by first. The benefits at a glance:

• More visibility: your business becomes findable in Search and Maps when people look for what you do.
• Stronger local SEO: a fully completed profile increases your chances of appearing in the map block (the Map Pack), the three businesses at the top of the local results. That lines up with Google’s guidelines for managing your business profile, which ask for accurate, complete business information.
• More trust: a complete profile with genuine reviews and correct details radiates credibility.
• Direct contact: customers can call, visit your website or plan a route straight from your profile.
• Insights: Google shows you how people find you and what actions they take.

It costs nothing. If you want a broader understanding of how regional visibility works, also read our guide on local SEO.

How does Google decide who ranks at the top of Maps?

Before you start filling things in, it helps to know what Google ranks on. Google itself names three factors for local ranking:

Google states explicitly that you cannot request or pay for a better local ranking. That is good news for anyone who puts in the work: a complete, active profile is the only real lever. How to climb specifically in the map, you can read in rank higher on Google Maps.

How do you create a Google Business Profile?

Setting up a profile is not rocket science, but the details determine the result. Work through these steps calmly.

Step 1: sign up and search for your business

You need a Google account. Preferably use an account on your company domain that is not tied to one employee, so your profile does not disappear when that person leaves. Go to business.google.com and choose “Create profile” (on screen: an input field “Business name” with suggestions below it). Start typing your business name. If your business already appears in the suggestions, a profile already exists: select it and request ownership instead of creating a second profile. Duplicate profiles are a classic cause of problems.

Step 2: business name and category

Type your name exactly as it appears on your shopfront, letterhead and website. Google’s guidelines are strict here: no keywords, cities, taglines or phone numbers in the name. “Linden Dental Practice” is fine, “Linden Dentist London Emergency and Implants” is not.

Next, choose your primary category from Google’s list. This is the setting with the biggest impact on which searches you appear for. Google recommends using as few categories as possible and choosing what your business is, not what it has. A hotel with a restaurant picks “Hotel” as its primary category; a garage that also sells tyres picks “Auto repair shop” and may add “Tyre shop” as an additional category.

Step 3: address or service area

On the screen “Do you want to add a location customers can visit?” you choose Yes or No.

• Customers come to you (practice, shop, showroom): enter your exact address and move the marker on the map if it is not on your entrance. A PO box or virtual office is not allowed.
• You go to the customer (installer, cleaning company, mobile service): hide your address and specify a service area with cities, towns or regions. You can add up to 20 areas. A rule of thumb: keep your working area within roughly two hours’ drive of your base.

Step 4: contact details and website

Add a local phone number rather than a central call centre number, plus your website URL. If you have multiple locations, link each profile to the page for that location, not to your homepage. That location page works best when it is genuinely built around the local area, see how to create a local landing page.

Step 5: verify your business

To confirm authenticity, Google asks for verification. First check all your details once more. Google itself decides which verification method you get, based on your business type, public information, region and opening hours, and you cannot change that choice. Possible methods:

After you submit, Google reviews your verification, which according to Google can take up to 5 business days.

How do you optimise your Google Business Profile?

Creating it is the beginning; optimising it makes the difference. In your profile, go to “Edit profile”: you will see tabs for about, hours, contact, location and more. Work through them one by one.

Description

You have a maximum of 750 characters, but in practice only the first 250 or so are visible straight away. Use those first sentences to say what you do, for whom and where, in plain language. No links, no price promotions and no lists of keywords: descriptions like that get rejected.

Services and products

List what you offer per category, with a short description per service. Google often suggests services based on your category already; tick what is correct and add what is missing yourself. This feeds the relevance factor from the table above.

Opening hours and special hours

Fill in your regular hours and set special hours for public holidays and holiday closures. A customer who stands in front of a closed door while Google showed “open” rarely leaves a friendly review.

Attributes

Attributes are the features under “Edit profile” > “More”, such as a wheelchair-accessible entrance, parking, Wi-Fi, payment methods or “online appointments”. Some you fill in yourself with Yes or No, others Google adds based on what visitors report. Go through all of them: they are shown to searchers who, for example, filter on accessibility. An edit is usually reviewed within 10 minutes, but it can take up to 30 days.

Photos and videos

Profiles with real, recent photos look more alive and give customers a picture in advance. Google’s technical requirements are simple:

Upload your logo, a cover photo, the exterior (so people recognise your entrance), the interior, your team at work and your products or results. No stock images and no heavy filters. Add a few new photos every month rather than fifty at once.

Posts

With posts you share updates, offers or events directly on your profile, with a photo or video and a button (Call, Learn more, Book). In your profile, click “Add update” and choose the type. Posts older than six months are archived unless you set a date range. One post every two weeks about a finished project, a new service or a seasonal offer keeps your profile current. A post first gets the status “Pending” and then “Live” or “Not approved”.

What has disappeared: questions and answers and chat

Two features from older guides no longer exist. The chat feature stopped on 31 July 2024; Google confirms that chat and call history have not been available since. And the Questions and answers section was phased out in autumn 2025: Google retired the API and the questions block disappeared from profiles, while an AI-powered button for asking questions appeared in the Maps app, as Whitespark has documented. That AI takes its answers from your profile, your photos, your reviews and your website. The lesson: put the answers to the questions customers really ask (parking, how prices are built up, waiting times, languages) in your description, your attributes and an FAQ on your site, so the AI can find them.

How do you use reviews to win customers?

For most local businesses, reviews are the difference between getting the call and being skipped. Google itself says that more reviews, positive ratings and helpful replies can help your local ranking. Three habits make the difference:

• Reply to every review, positive and negative, within a few days. Example replies for every situation are in should you respond to Google reviews: yes, and here is how.
• Ask for reviews systematically with your own review link or QR code, at the right moment. How to do that without breaking Google’s rules, you can read in how to ask for Google reviews.
• Know what you can get removed. A review you do not like stays; a review that breaks Google’s policy can be reported. The step-by-step plan is in how to remove or report negative Google reviews.

Genuine reviews also strengthen the signals around experience and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) that Google weighs up, and they are increasingly a source for AI answers about local providers.

What do you do if your profile is suspended?

A suspension usually comes out of the blue: your profile disappears from Maps or you see a notice in your dashboard that the profile is suspended or restricted. The cause is almost always a breach of the guidelines. The most common ones:

• keywords or cities added to the business name;
• an address that is not a real, staffed location (virtual office, coworking space without signage, PO box);
• a service-area business that still shows an address where customers are not welcome;
• multiple profiles for the same location;
• suspicious review patterns, such as a sudden wave of five-star reviews.

This is how you handle it, following Google’s own procedure:

1. Read the reason in the notice and fix your profile first: remove keywords from the name, correct the address or service area.
2. Open the appeals tool for Business Profiles, select the suspended profile and review the violation.
3. Gather evidence on which your business name and address exactly match the profile: a company register extract (e.g. Companies House, KBO), a licence, a tax document or an energy, phone or internet bill. Photos of your shopfront with signage also help.
4. Submit the appeal. Note: once you open the evidence form, you have 60 minutes to submit it, otherwise it is not attached to your appeal. So prepare everything in advance.
5. If your appeal is rejected, you can request another review with additional evidence.

Checklist: is your profile complete?

Filling in your profile works best alongside strong landing pages and solid internal structure on your site, see our guide on on-page SEO. If your website moves or is rebuilt, check your profile too: see your Google Business Profile when a new website goes live.

How do you measure whether your profile really delivers?

Google Business Profile has built-in performance figures. In your profile, click “Performance” and you will see, among other things:

• Searches: which terms people use to find you.
• Views: whether people saw you via Search or via Maps, on mobile or desktop.
• Customer actions: calls, direction requests and website clicks.
• Bookings: if you use a booking integration.

This is where our rule of thumb comes in: steer on numbers that mean a customer, not on vanity figures. Hundreds of views without calls or enquiries do not move you forward. Add a UTM parameter to your website link, so you can see in Google Analytics what visitors from your profile do next. If you want this channel to really pay off, connect it to a well-considered SEO strategy instead of letting it run on its own.

And let us be honest: a business profile is not equally valuable for everyone. If you sell purely nationally or internationally without any regional tie, local optimisation delivers less. For businesses with a location or a working area, however, the profile is one of the cheapest ways to attract purchase-ready traffic.

Frequently asked questions about Google Business Profile

Is Google My Business the same as Google Business Profile? Yes. Google renamed Google My Business to Google Business Profile at the end of 2021. The product, your existing details and your reviews all stayed in place.

Is a Google Business Profile free? Yes. Creating and managing it is completely free, and Google states explicitly that you cannot buy a better local ranking. Google Ads can give you extra visibility, but it is separate from your profile.

How do I find my Google Business Profile again? Log in with the Google account that manages the profile and search for your business name in Google Search or Maps. Your management panel then appears at the top. If you cannot find it, go to business.google.com and check which account the profile sits under.

How long does verification take? Google reviews a verification within up to 5 business days. With verification by mail, the postcard usually arrives within 14 days and the code expires after 30 days.

Can I have multiple business profiles? Yes, one per real location. A service-area business that does not receive customers has one profile for its central office with a service area. Multiple profiles for the same location are not allowed.

Why has my profile been suspended? Almost always because of a breach of the guidelines: keywords in the name, an address that is not a real location, or duplicate profiles. Fix the error and submit an appeal with evidence through the appeals tool.

How often should I update my profile? Keep your core information up to date at all times. On top of that, publish a post or new photo every few weeks and reply to reviews within a few days.

Need help with your local visibility?

Setting up a Google Business Profile is something you can do yourself, but really making it pay off takes the right choices and follow-up: categories, review flow, replies, local pages and measurement. That is exactly what we do in our local SEO and review management service. We are a small team that moves fast, steers on customers and revenue instead of vanity numbers, and tells you honestly when something is not worth the effort.

Want a direct review link and QR code for your profile right away? Create them for free with our Google review link generator, which also puts your reviews next to the local top 3.

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