Google Business Profile
What is a Google Business Profile?
A Google Business Profile is the free listing that puts a company into Google Search and Google Maps, with its address, opening hours, phone number, photographs and reviews. The owner creates it, verifies that the business really exists at that address, and then edits it straight from Search or Maps. The profile is a shop window, not a replacement for a website.
Example
A tyre service has a profile set up years ago by a former employee. The business name on it reads “Car Service Ruse — tyres, fitting, balancing”, the opening hours have never been changed for public holidays, and the newest photograph is from 2019. The profile itself reports 4,800 views, 210 visits to the website, 52 calls and 95 direction requests in a month.
Tidying it up means this: the name becomes exactly what is on the sign above the door; the primary category becomes “tyre shop”, with a second category for oil changes; holiday hours go in; twenty photographs of the actual workshop replace the stock images; the eighteen existing reviews get answers; and ownership moves back to an account the company controls.
The keyword-stuffed name is not a small liberty. It breaks Google’s rules on how a business may represent itself, and it is a common reason a profile is suspended after a competitor reports it.
Why it matters for a business
For a local business the profile is often seen more often than the website. It is where someone decides whether you are open, whether you are close and whether other people were satisfied. It also produces the most useful free numbers a small company gets: calls, direction requests and clicks through to the site.
It is not a website, though. Google closed the one-page sites that used to be built from the profile in 2024, and a profile cannot show prices, answer in depth or take an order. Its link should land on a landing page that delivers what the profile promised.
What to ask
- Which account owns the profile, and does the company have owner access to it?
- What is the primary category, and why that one?
- Who replies to reviews, and within what time?
- Are calls and direction requests in the monthly report?
- Where does the profile’s link go, and does that page answer the question that brought the visitor?
The profile, the map, reviews and consistent contact details are part of the SEO work we run.