For a lot of local businesses, the first real conversation with a potential customer happens without the business saying a word. Someone searches on Google, looks at a few listings, forms an impression and decides whether to call, click or keep scrolling. Quite often, all of that happens on your Google Business Profile before they’ve even looked at your website.
That’s a slightly uncomfortable thought when you consider how many profiles are set up once, usually in a hurry, and then barely looked at again. Everyone feels pleased for completing another piece of digital admin, ticks it off the list and gets back to running the business. Meanwhile, the profile keeps talking to potential customers every day, sometimes using information and photos that haven’t represented the business properly for years.
There’s still an assumption that the website is the main event and the Google Business Profile is something sitting beside it. For local searches, that’s often not how people experience your business at all.
When someone searches for a service nearby, Google can show them a selection of local businesses directly in the results and on Maps, complete with ratings, reviews, photos, opening hours, directions and ways to contact the business. Plenty of people will make their initial shortlist from that information alone without visiting every website.
That doesn’t make your website less important. The two simply have different jobs. Your Google Business Profile helps people discover you and make that first quick judgement, while your website gives them somewhere to learn more about the business, understand your services and build enough trust to take the next step. If the profile looks neglected or doesn’t explain what you actually do, some people will never make it as far as the website.
Most underperforming Google Business Profiles aren’t completely broken. They’re usually incomplete or have slowly become outdated as the business has changed.
The first thing I’d look at is the basic information. Are the services accurate? Does the description actually explain what the business does? Are the opening hours correct? Do the contact details and other information match what’s on your website? Each inconsistency might seem small, but together they can make a perfectly good business look less organised than it really is.
Photos are another area that gets forgotten. I’ve opened plenty of profiles with a couple of blurry images uploaded years ago and very little else. If your business, team, premises or work has improved since then, your profile should show it. Recent, good-quality photos help people understand the business they’re considering rather than showing them a version of it from several years ago.
Then there are reviews. Getting reviews is important, but responding to them matters too. You don’t need to write an essay every time someone leaves five stars, but acknowledging people and responding thoughtfully shows that there’s an active business behind the listing. The same applies to negative reviews. Ignoring them doesn’t make them disappear, however tempting that particular strategy may be.
This is probably the biggest trap with Google Business Profiles. The listing exists, so everyone assumes the job is done.
Your business doesn’t stand still, though, and neither does the information people use to find it. Services change, operating hours change, service areas change, new reviews arrive and better photos become available. Google also continues to assess the information it has about your business, so keeping that information accurate and useful matters.
That’s why I don’t really see a Google Business Profile as something you optimise once and forget. It needs checking occasionally to make sure it’s still telling the right story about the business.
If you haven’t looked at yours since it was created, you may not actually know what it’s currently telling people. Considering it can be one of the first things a potential customer sees, that’s probably worth fixing.
People tend to come to me about their Google Business Profile for a couple of reasons. Sometimes they’ve set it up themselves, done the best they could and never felt completely confident that everything was right. Other times, someone has worked on it purely from an SEO perspective without really taking the time to understand the business behind it.
When I review these profiles, the problems are rarely dramatic. The primary category might not be the best fit. Important services are missing. The description is generic or outdated. There haven’t been any new photos for a long time, and reviews have been sitting unanswered.
None of those things individually destroys a profile, which is exactly why they’re so easy to ignore.
My approach is to understand the business first and then work through the profile properly. That means looking at categories, services, descriptions, images, service areas and the other information Google and potential customers are using to understand what you do. There’s no secret trick involved. It’s mostly about making sure the profile accurately represents the business and gives people useful information when they’re deciding who to contact.
When a Google Business Profile is set up properly, the biggest improvement is that it becomes much easier for people to understand your business.
They can quickly see what you do, where you operate, when you’re available and what other customers think of you. Your photos give them a better sense of the business, your reviews provide social proof and your contact information makes it easy to take the next step.
It also gives Google clearer information about your business and the searches where you may be relevant. That doesn’t mean changing a few fields will suddenly put you at the top of every local search. Local visibility doesn’t work like that, despite the impressive number of people on the internet who would apparently like to sell you that promise.
What you’re doing is giving Google and your potential customers a clearer, more consistent picture of the business. Over time, that can make the profile a genuinely useful source of visibility and enquiries rather than another listing sitting forgotten online.
Once the profile is in good shape, keeping it that way doesn’t need to become a second job. It does need some ongoing attention.
New photos can be added as the business changes. Reviews can be encouraged and responded to. Services and business information can be updated when necessary, and occasional posts can help keep the profile current.
Some business owners are perfectly happy managing this themselves, particularly once everything has been set up properly. Others would rather have somebody monitor and maintain it so they know the information stays accurate and they don’t have another digital task sitting permanently at the bottom of their list.
Both approaches are perfectly reasonable. Setting it up once and assuming it will look after itself for the next five years is the one I’d probably avoid.
If you’re not sure how your own profile is performing, start by searching for your business and looking at the listing as though you’ve never seen it before. Don’t just check that your phone number is there and declare victory.
Read the description properly and check whether it still explains what you do. Look through the services, categories, opening hours and contact information. Have a look at the photos and ask whether they represent the business as it is today. Then read through the reviews and see whether people are getting responses.
I’d also search for the services you provide rather than your business name. That’s closer to how somebody who doesn’t already know you might search, and it gives you a much better sense of how your business appears alongside the local competition.
If what you find feels incomplete, outdated or slightly neglected, that’s useful information. Most of these problems are very fixable once somebody actually notices them.
Your Google Business Profile is probably doing more work than you give it credit for. It’s representing your business when you’re not there, answering basic questions, showing people what other customers think and helping them decide whether you’re worth contacting.
That’s why I think it deserves more than a one-off setup and a hopeful shrug.
If you’d like your profile set up properly, or you suspect the one you already have isn’t doing as much as it could, have a look at how I approach Google Business Profile setup and ongoing management, or book a discovery call and we’ll take an honest look at where it currently stands and what I’d improve first.
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