How to appear on Google Maps: the Business Profile explained

When someone types “bakery Roubaix” or “osteopath Villeneuve-d’Ascq” on their phone, Google first shows a map with three businesses, before any website. To be on it, you do not need a website, you need a Business Profile. It is free, it takes an hour to fill in, and it is the most profitable lever a local business can pull.

What the Business Profile is

The Google Business Profile, formerly Google My Business, is your company’s identity card at Google. It feeds Google Maps, the local block in search results and the panel that appears on the right when someone searches for your name. It holds your address, opening hours, phone number, photos, reviews and a link to your website.

It is managed from the company’s Google account, at business.google.com. If a profile already exists that you never claimed, because Google created it from directories, start by taking control of it rather than creating a second one.

Creating the profile and getting it verified

Creation takes ten minutes: company name, category, address or service area, phone, website. Then Google asks for verification. Depending on the case, it happens through a code sent by post to the declared address, through a short video of your premises and equipment, or more rarely by phone. Video has become the most common method for tradespeople without a shopfront.

Until the profile is verified, it does not appear. This is the step many people abandon along the way, and it is a shame, because a verified profile with twenty photos and ten reviews often does more for a local business than a ten-page website.

The three criteria that decide the ranking

Google itself explains how it ranks local results. Three factors, in this order:

1. Relevance. Does your profile match what is being searched? The primary category, the listed services and the description count here.
2. Distance. Is your business close to the person searching, or to the place they specified? You cannot act on this, except by correctly declaring your service area.
3. Prominence. Is your business known? Google looks at the number and quality of reviews, mentions of your business on other sites, and the consistency of your information across the web.

Everything that follows serves one of these three criteria.

Filling in the profile seriously

The primary category is the most important setting. “Plumber” and “Heating contractor” do not come up for the same searches. Choose the category that describes your main activity, then add the secondary ones.

The service area replaces the address for those who travel to the customer. Declare the real towns, not the whole region: too wide an area dilutes distance.

Opening hours must be accurate, public holidays included. A profile showing “closed” on a Saturday when you work is a customer calling the competitor.

Photos make the difference when relevance is equal. Shopfront, interior, team, completed work, equipment. About ten to start with, then a few each month. Photos you take yourself, with a decent phone, are worth more than stock images.

The description says what you do, for whom, and where, in normal language. No list of towns, no stacked keywords.

Services and products are listed one by one, with a price when possible. Each service added is one more search you can appear on.

Reviews: ask, reply, never buy

Reviews weigh on prominence and on the customer’s decision. Ask for one after each successful job, with the direct link Google provides in the management area. A message sent the same day is enough: most satisfied customers agree, but very few do it unprompted.

Reply to every review, including the bad ones, calmly and factually. A composed reply to a negative review reassures more than a profile with no criticism at all.

Never buy reviews and never write them yourself. Google detects them better and better, and a profile suspended for fraudulent reviews takes weeks to come back.

The link with your website

The profile and the website reinforce each other. The website gives Google the context: your detailed services, your work, your story. The profile gives the local proof: address, reviews, photos.

Two rules for the whole thing to work. First, the name, address and phone number must be written exactly the same way on the profile, on the website and in directories. “15 av. des Nations Unies” on one side and “15 avenue des Nations-Unies” on the other is an inconsistency Google notices. Second, the profile’s link should point to the page of your site that talks about what you do in that town, not to an empty homepage.

That is why a website for tradespeople or a restaurant website is built with this information in the right place from the start, and with the structured data that lets Google link the profile and the site. I had already covered this profile-and-site pairing in why a tradesperson in the Lille area needs a website.

What gets a profile suspended

• Adding keywords or a town to the company name (“Dupont Plumbing Lille 24h Emergency” when the company is called Dupont Plumbing).
• Declaring an address where the business is not actually located, such as a PO box or a registered office service.
• Creating several profiles for a single business to cover several towns.
• Changing category or address too often.

Google suspends these profiles without notice. Reinstatement goes through a review form, with supporting documents, and takes from a few days to several weeks.

The routine that keeps the ranking

To see at a glance what is in place and what is missing, I gathered these points in a free local SEO checklist, with a score out of fifteen.

Once the profile is in place, half an hour a month is enough: add three or four photos, publish an update, reply to reviews, check the hours before a public holiday. Google favours living profiles. An abandoned profile slowly sinks, even if it was well filled in at the start.

Let’s talk about your local presence

You have a profile that does not show up, or a website that sends you no customers? Describe your situation. I look at the consistency between your profile, your site and your directories, and tell you what is blocking, with no commitment.