Google Business Profile: the free thing most businesses get wrong

Google Business Profile is the listing that shows your business on Maps and in the block of three results that sits above the normal links. Google renamed it from Google My Business in 2022, which is why half the internet still calls it GMB.

For a plumber, a physio or a dentist in Sydney, that listing is frequently the first and only thing a customer looks at. Here is what usually goes wrong with it.

1. The primary category is wrong

This is the highest-leverage field in the entire listing and most people pick it in four seconds during setup. Your primary category largely decides which searches you are eligible to appear for at all.

A business listed as “Contractor” will struggle to appear for “electrician near me” no matter what else it does. Look at the three businesses ranking above you for the search you want, check what they use, and match it.

2. Services are blank, or there are two of them

The Services section lets you list every individual thing you do, each with a description. Most listings have one or two entries, or none.

Every service you add is another phrase Google can match you against. If you do fifteen things, list fifteen. This is twenty minutes of typing for a permanent gain.

3. The service area is not set

If you travel to customers rather than having a shopfront, you should hide your address and set a service area instead. Businesses that leave a home address visible look wrong to customers and limit their own radius.

List the suburbs you genuinely service. Do not list all of Greater Sydney if you will not drive to Penrith — it dilutes relevance and generates calls you will turn down.

4. There are no recent photos

Photos are one of the few things you can add weekly that costs nothing. Listings with regular, real photos get more engagement, and engagement feeds ranking.

Stock images do the opposite. A slightly crooked photo of an actual job you finished in Marrickville is worth more than a polished image of someone else’s work.

• Take two photos on every job — before and after.
• Upload a few each week rather than fifty at once.
• Include your van, your team, and the finished work.
• Keep the logo and cover image current but stop treating them as the job.

5. Nobody replies to reviews

Unanswered reviews, especially bad ones, are the clearest signal that nobody is minding the business. A reader scrolling your reviews is looking for exactly this.

Reply to everything. For a bad review, a short, calm, non-defensive reply that offers to sort it out converts better than any five-star review above it, because it shows what happens when something goes wrong.

6. The Q&A section is empty

Almost nobody knows you can ask and answer your own questions here. You can, and you should — it is one of the few places you control the words that appear on the listing.

Seed it with the five questions you get on the phone every week. Do you charge for quotes. Do you work weekends. How quickly can you come out. Are you licensed.

7. Hours are wrong, or there are no holiday hours

Wrong hours cost you calls directly and quietly: someone searches at 7pm, sees Closed, and calls the next listing. Public holiday hours matter more than people think, because that is exactly when emergency work pays best.

8. Posts stopped eighteen months ago

Posts appear on your listing and signal activity. They do not need to be clever — a finished job, a seasonal reminder, a note that you have availability this week.

Every few weeks is enough. An abandoned Posts section is worse than none, because the date is visible.

9. The listing and the website disagree

If your listing says one phone number and your website says another, or the business name has “Pty Ltd” in one place and not the other, you are asking Google to work out which is right.

Pick one exact version of your name, address and phone. Use it identically everywhere, including the punctuation.

The honest limits

Two things nobody can do for you here. You cannot rank in a suburb you have no genuine connection to — proximity is a real ranking factor and there is no trick around it. And you cannot buy your way up; there is no paid tier for the map pack.

What you can do is be the most completely filled-in business in your area, with the most recent photos and the most reviews. That is usually enough, because most of your competitors have not bothered.