# What is Google Business Profile?

> A Google Business Profile is the free listing that shows your business on Google Maps and in local search results, with your phone number, hours, photos and reviews.

- Source: https://nerdsharks.com/glossary/google-business-profile
- Publisher: Nerdsharks (Exeter, Devon, UK)
- Updated: 2026-09-26

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 a small 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.