Google Business Profile categories: how to choose the right ones
How to pick your Google Business Profile primary and additional categories, why the primary matters most, and how to check what competitors use.
Read →Glossary
What is Google Business Profile?
Also called: GBP, Google My Business, GMB, Google Maps listing.
Your Google Business Profile is the box that appears on the right of Google (or at the top on a phone) when someone searches your business name, and the listing that shows in Google Maps. It used to be called Google My Business, and you will still hear people use the old name.
It is free to set up. Google verifies that you are a real business, then you control the details: your category, opening hours, service areas, phone number, website link, photos and posts. Customers leave reviews on it, and you can reply.
Businesses that work at customers' homes can hide their address and show a service area instead, which is what most mobile and home-visit businesses should do.
Why it matters for your business
For many local searches, people ring straight from the Google listing without ever visiting your website. A profile with the wrong hours, no photos or a handful of old reviews quietly loses you calls to the competitor listed above you. It is often the single most valuable free thing a local business can sort out.
Example. Someone searches ‘locksmith Plymouth’ at 11pm. Three businesses show on the map. One says ‘Open 24 hours’, has recent photos and forty reviews, and has a Call button. That one gets the call.
Related terms
Google Business Profile posts: what to post and how often
What Google Business Profile posts are, the three post types, what to write, how often to post and the rules that get posts rejected.
Read →Google Business Profile suspended? How to fix it and appeal
Why Google suspends Business Profiles, how to tell a suspended profile from a restricted account, and how to fix the cause and appeal with the right evidence.
Read →£299to set up
£99a month
3working days to launch
You approve it before anything goes live.
Designed from scratch, every word written for you, hosting and Google setup included. Or pay £1,795 once and £49 a month with no minimum term.
Let’s get your phone ringing.
£299 setup, then £99 a month. Live in 3 working days. Tell us what your business does - we reply the same working day.