Google Business Profile setup: a step-by-step guide

Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the panel people see for your business in Search and Maps: name, star rating, phone number, opening hours, photos and directions. For a plumber, a salon or a garage, it’s often where a new customer sees you first, before they ever open your website.

Google’s help pages say local results depend mainly on three things. Relevance is how well your profile matches the search. Distance is how far you are from the person searching. Prominence is how well known the business is, which includes how many reviews you have and your ratings. You can’t change distance. You can improve relevance, mostly by filling in the profile completely and accurately, and that’s what this Google Business Profile setup guide covers.

What to have ready before you start

Setting up a profile takes an hour or two. It goes faster with these to hand:

• A Google Account. It doesn’t have to be Gmail; Google lets you create one with any email address. Ideally the account belongs to the business, not to a part-time assistant or an agency.
• Your exact business name, as it appears on your signage, van, invoices and website.
• A decision on whether customers come to you or you go to them. That decides between an address and a service area.
• A phone number you control, with no redirects through someone else’s line.
• Opening hours and a list of your services.
• Five to ten real photos: premises, team, branded van, finished work.

Step 1: Create or claim your profile

First check whether your business is already on Google. A profile can exist without you, for example if a customer added your business to Maps. Search Google Maps for your business name and town.

• No profile exists: go to business.google.com/add, click Add your business to Google and follow the steps.
• A profile exists but nobody manages it: open it in Google Maps and select Claim this business, then Manage now. In the Google Maps app, the option is under the About tab.
• Someone else manages it (a former business partner, an agency, the previous owner): request ownership through Google’s help pages. Don’t create a duplicate profile. Google’s guidelines say not to create more than one page for each location, and duplicates can lead to suspension.

Step 2: How to verify your Google Business Profile

Until you verify, you can’t edit the profile and your photos won’t show. Google chooses the verification method from details about your business, including its type and location, and you can’t change it. Sometimes you’ll need more than one method.

The options you might see:

Method	How it works
Video recording	You record a continuous video of at least 30 seconds on your phone, inside the profile. Google recommends it when it’s available.
Live video call	You show your premises to a Google support representative. Only during your opening hours.
Phone or text	You get a code by call or SMS. An automated phone menu (IVR) won’t pick it up.
Email	A code or link goes to the address shown on the verification screen.
Postcard	A code by post. Most arrive within 14 days and they expire after 30. While you wait, don’t change your name, address or category, or the code stops working.

How to record a verification video

The video has to be recorded live, in one take, from your phone through the profile. You can’t upload something you filmed earlier. Google wants to see three things:

1. Where you are. Street signs, the building number, neighbouring shops. A service-area business run from home can film landmarks and signs in the immediate neighbourhood.
2. That the business exists. For premises, a permanent sign with the same name as the profile. For a tradesperson, tools, equipment, business cards or branded workwear.
3. That you run it. Open the till, the stockroom or the staff area. A tradesperson can open a branded van, or show an invoice or utility bill with the same name as the profile.

Keep bank account numbers, tax or ID numbers, other people’s private details and other people’s faces out of shot. Plan the route before you press record so you don’t have to film it three times.

After you submit, Google takes up to five working days to review, occasionally longer. If your website is verified in Google Search Console, verification can happen instantly. One more thing from Google’s help page: Google will never ask you for your verification code, so don’t read it out to anyone who calls.

Step 3: A business name without keywords

This is where many owners go wrong. Your profile name should match what customers know you as: the sign, the website, the invoices. Google’s guidelines ban marketing taglines, service information, location information, opening hours and phone numbers in the name. Legal terms such as “Ltd” are allowed only if you can show real-world proof, like signage or invoices, that you use them as part of the name.

An example for a plumber:

• Right: Hughes Plumbing
• Wrong: Hughes Plumbing – 24/7 Emergency Plumber Leeds

The second version looks like a clever way to rank for “emergency plumber Leeds”. It breaks the guidelines and can get the profile suspended. What you do and where you work belong in the category, services, service area and description.

Step 4: A category that says what the business is

Google says categories help connect your business with customers searching for your services. How to choose:

• Be as specific as possible. Google’s own example: choose “Nail salon”, not “Salon”. If the exact category isn’t on the list, pick a more general one. You can’t create your own.
• Use the “is a” test. Google’s guidelines say to pick categories that complete the statement “This business IS a”, not “this business HAS a”. A garage that also fits tyres is a car repair business. Tyre fitting can be an additional category, but not the primary one.
• Use as few categories as possible. Additional categories aren’t a list of services. Services have their own section.

One warning about later changes: if you add or edit a category, Google may ask you to verify the business again.

Step 5: Address or service area?

The question that decides it: do customers visit you at your address?

Yes, they come to you (salon, clinic, garage with a workshop). Enter your exact address. If you set a service area as well, Google expects the location to be staffed and able to receive customers during your stated hours.

No, you go to them (plumber, cleaning company, painter and decorator). Google calls this a service-area business, and its guidelines say you should hide your address from customers. The typical case is a tradesperson running the business from home. Google still uses the address for verification, but customers don’t see it. You set the service area under Edit profile:

• add up to 20 service areas by town, city, postcode or other area (you can no longer set a radius around your address),
• the overall area shouldn’t extend more than about two hours’ driving time from where the business is based,
• keep one profile for the whole area, not one per town.

Both (a garage with a recovery truck, a café that delivers) makes you a hybrid business, which shows the address and the service area.

Some addresses don’t qualify. A virtual office, meaning an address you rent for post but don’t work from, isn’t eligible. PO boxes aren’t acceptable either. A co-working space only counts if the office has clear signage, receives customers during opening hours and is staffed by your own people during those hours. So if your registered office at Companies House is an accountant’s or a formation agent’s address, it doesn’t belong on your profile.

Step 6: Opening hours and bank holidays

Enter your normal customer-facing hours. For bank holidays and the Christmas break, set special hours; otherwise a customer turns up to a locked door and writes a review about it. A seasonal business can mark the profile as temporarily closed during the off-season.

An exception few people know: Google’s guidelines say businesses that operate only by appointment shouldn’t provide opening hours.

Step 7: Phone, website and description

Phone. It should connect directly to your business and be under your direct control. Google prefers a local number to a central call-centre line, and it doesn’t accept premium-rate numbers at all.

Website. Link to your own business website. Google’s guidelines rule out URLs that redirect people to other pages, including pages on social media sites.

Description. The limit is 750 characters. Say what you do, for whom, where, and how long you’ve been trading if that helps. Google’s help page says not to include URLs or HTML, and to focus on the business rather than promotions, prices or sales. An example opening: “We fix leaks, blocked drains and boilers for homes across Leeds and Bradford, and we take emergency call-outs at weekends.”

Step 8: Services

In many service categories you’ll find Edit services in the profile. Google suggests services based on your category (a plumbing business might see “Install tap” or “Repair toilet”) and you can add custom ones. You can add a description to each service. Google automatically rejects custom service names that contain prices, phone numbers, personal information or gibberish.

Name services the way a customer would search for them. “Boiler replacement” works better than “Complete heating solutions”.

Step 9: Photos and video

Photos and videos only show on Google after the profile is verified. Google’s technical requirements:

• Photos: JPG or PNG, between 10 KB and 5 MB, recommended 720 × 720 px, minimum 250 × 250 px. In focus, well lit, without heavy edits or filters.
• Video: up to 30 seconds, up to 75 MB, 720p or higher.

Add a logo and a cover photo. Google warns that setting a cover photo doesn’t guarantee it shows first. After that, add what a customer actually wants to see: the entrance from the street so they know where to go, the inside, the team at work and finished jobs. Stock photos don’t help anyone, because customers want to see you.

Posts: updates, offers and events

You can publish three types of post on your profile. Updates have a description, photo or video and a button with a link. Offers need a title and dates, and can include a coupon code and terms. Events have start and end dates and times. On mobile, posts appear in the Updates or Overview tabs; on a computer, in the “From the owner” section.

Two practical points from Google’s help page:

• posts older than six months are archived unless you set a date range,
• a post with a phone number in it may be rejected if Google can’t confirm the number belongs to the business.

Google doesn’t claim that posts improve your position in Maps. They’re for people who open your profile and want to see that the business is active. One post every few weeks with a photo of a real job is enough.

Features that have gone: chat, call history and Q&A

Older guides still recommend features that no longer work:

• Chat and call history ended on 31 July 2024. You can’t message customers through your Business Profile any more, though calls from the profile still come through.
• Questions and answers is being replaced. On 3 December 2025, a Google employee announced in the Business Profile community that customers would ask questions directly in Google Maps and get an instant answer based on the owner’s answers and relevant reviews. Owners could still answer existing questions in the Q&A section of the profile. Google discontinued the Q&A API on 3 November 2025, and the section has since been disappearing from profiles gradually, so you may not see it at all.

Whatever form the answers take on your profile, the practical step is the same: put answers to common questions (parking, card payments, whether you work weekends) in your description, services and attributes, and on your website, where Google can find them.

Your review link

A finished profile needs reviews. You’ll find the direct link and QR code under Read reviews → Get more reviews. We cover the steps in how to create a Google review link and QR code, and how to ask without breaking Google’s rules or UK law in how to get Google reviews. If you’d like the request to go out automatically after every job, see our Google reviews service.

Why Google suspends profiles, and how to avoid it

Google can suspend or disable profiles that don’t follow its guidelines. These causes come straight from those guidelines:

• keywords, a town or a tagline in the business name,
• an address the business doesn’t operate from: a virtual office, a PO box, a co-working desk without signage or staff,
• more than one profile for the same business, such as one for each town in the service area,
• a phone number or website that redirects somewhere other than the business itself,
• fake or paid reviews and rewards for ratings (covered in the reviews guide),
• a service area much larger than where the business really works.

If it happens to you

1. Don’t create a new profile for the same business while the appeal is under review. Google says this explicitly.
2. Go through the profile against the guidelines and fix anything that doesn’t match.
3. Open the Google Business Profile appeals tool (linked from Google’s help page on suspended profiles), select the profile and submit the appeal. The tool shows the reason for the action and the policy involved.
4. Add evidence when prompted: business registration, a business licence, tax certificates, or a utility bill for electricity, phone, water or internet. The name and address on the documents must match the profile. Once you open the evidence form, you have 60 minutes to submit it.
5. Google emails you the decision.

If the appeal is refused, you can request an additional review and add evidence you didn’t include the first time. Businesses in the European Economic Area may have further redress options under the EU Digital Services Act, according to Google’s help page. The UK isn’t in the EEA, so UK businesses should start with the appeal and the additional review.

Google Business Profile checklist

• The profile is verified and owned by the business’s own account, not an agency or former employee
• The name matches your signage and invoices, with no keywords or town
• The primary category is as specific as possible, with only a few additional ones
• A business without premises has its address hidden and a service area within about two hours’ drive
• Opening hours are correct and bank holidays have special hours
• Phone and website lead straight to the business
• Description under 750 characters, with no links or prices
• Services named in your customers’ words
• Real photos: entrance, interior, team, finished work
• Every customer gets your review link
• Name, address and phone are the same on your website, invoices and other directories

If you’re not sure how your profile measures up, run it through our free Google profile check.