How to add a booking button to your Google Business Profile.

Two ways to get a booking button

Google gives you two routes, and both put a booking button on your profile in Search and Maps:

• A booking link. You paste the address of your booking page, and Google sends customers there. It works with almost any booking tool, as long as the page lets people complete a booking.
• A booking partner. Some booking tools connect to Google directly, through what Google calls Reserve with Google. You choose the provider in your profile, and Google shows its booking button, often with a list of your services.

How they differ in practice:

• Setup: a link takes a few minutes. A partner needs your booking tool to work with Google in your country, and Google says the provider then shows on your profile within a week.
• Cost: Google does not charge for either, but it warns that a provider might charge you for bookings made through Google.
• Data: Google says performance data is not available for custom links. With a partner, bookings appear in your profile's Performance page.
• Where the booking finishes: on your booking tool's page for your business, either way. Google's current documentation for partner appointments describes customers finding you on Search or Maps, then being sent to the provider's page to complete the booking.

Start with the plain link. It costs nothing and it is under your control. Move to a partner if your booking tool offers the connection without an extra fee and you want the booking count in your profile.

Check that your category offers booking

Booking links depend on your primary category. Google's examples: health and beauty businesses can add a booking button and a list of services; restaurants can add links for menus, reservations and orders; hotels have booking features of their own. If you open your profile and find no booking option, your category probably does not offer one, or the profile is not verified yet.

Do not change your primary category to get a button. Google's rule is that the category describes what the business is, and a wrong one puts you in front of the wrong searches every day. Put your booking link on your website instead, and let customers reach it through the profile's website button.

Choosing the category is covered in how to set up a Google Business Profile.

Add a booking link

In Google Search, open your profile and select Booking. In the Google Maps app, choose Edit profile, then Booking. Select Add link, paste the address and save. Google does not let you add these links through its API or a bulk spreadsheet, so each profile is done by hand.

Which address you paste matters more than the steps. Google's rules for business links say a link must:

• Lead to a page for your business, and for the right location if you have several.
• Let the customer complete the action, which here means making a booking.
• Load fully, and open without a login, a CAPTCHA or a block on Google's own checks.
• Not be a social media page, a messaging link, an app store link or a shortened link.

Google allows one link per domain and rejects duplicates. It checks links regularly and may remove any that break its rules.

For a physiotherapy clinic, the right link is the clinic's own page in its booking tool, ideally opening on new patient appointments. The wrong ones are the clinic's home page, its contact form and the booking tool's general sign-in page.

Connect a booking partner

Check first whether your booking tool works with Google. Its help pages will say, and Google points businesses to Reserve with Google to find the providers available in their country. Google's own guide for service businesses suggests asking your provider to opt you in to its existing connection. Then, in your profile:

• Select Bookings.
• Select Get started.
• Choose your provider, then Done.

Google says the provider appears on your profile within a week. Its documentation for these connections asks for a physical location that it can match on Google Maps, so if your address is hidden, ask your provider whether the connection works for you, and use a plain link if it does not.

If you change booking tools later, switch the old provider off in the same place. A connection left running sends customers to a calendar nobody looks at.

What customers see on a phone

On a phone, the booking button sits with the profile's other buttons, such as Call, Directions and Website. Google's guide for service businesses calls it the Book online button. When several booking links exist, the one you mark as Business preferred comes first.

Test it the way a customer will. Search for your business on a phone, signed out, tap the button and check:

• It opens your booking page, for the right location.
• The page works on a small screen without zooming.
• A new customer can book without creating an account first.
• The services people search for are there, with the right durations and prices.
• The confirmation arrives.

Then cancel the test booking. Repeat the test whenever you change booking tools, services or prices. A broken link fails quietly: customers give up, and nobody tells you.

Match the services to your booking tool

Google's guide for service businesses says booking partners can show a list of bookable services on your profile as well as the button. Even with a plain link, health and beauty businesses can keep a services list on the profile. Either way, customers read that list before they tap.

Use the same service names in both places. If a salon lists "Balayage" on its profile and "Hand-painted colour" in its booking tool, a customer who taps through to book balayage cannot find it and gives up. Keep the durations consistent too, and remove from the profile any service you no longer offer, so nobody tries to book it.

Several locations, several links

Each location has its own profile, and each profile needs its own booking link, opening on that location's calendar. Google's link rules ask for a page for the specific location when a business has several.

A link to a general page that asks people to pick a branch costs bookings twice: customers who pick the wrong one, and customers who give up at the extra step. If your booking tool gives each location its own address, use it, and test each profile's button separately.

When several booking links appear

Google works with booking and marketplace companies that can add links to profiles automatically, so your profile may show more than one way to book. Some links come from tools you use. Others may come from a marketplace that lists you, or from Google's automated data.

Choose which comes first. Select Booking, then Set preferred link, pick your own booking page and save. Google then shows it at the top, marked as Business preferred.

Remove a booking button you never added

A link you do not recognise, often to a marketplace that charges a fee per booking, can be removed:

• In Google Search: select Booking, then Remove Provider.
• In the Google Maps app: select Edit profile, then Booking, then Remove Provider.

Google says providers must remove their links within five days of receiving a removal request, and you can report a provider that does not. Contact the provider too, and close any listing you no longer use with them, so the link has no reason to return.

For food ordering there is a blunter switch. Turning off Accept orders on your profile hides every ordering option and link, your own and other companies'. Use it if third-party ordering links send customers to apps you do not want, and you have no ordering link of your own.

Restaurants: menus, reservations and orders

A restaurant gets more link types than most businesses:

• A menu link, to your menu page. Food and drink businesses can also enter menu items in the profile's own menu editor.
• Reservation links, to your booking system's page for the restaurant.
• Food ordering links, for collection or delivery.

Each type can hold more than one link, with one marked Business preferred. Ordering and reservation companies you work with may add links automatically, so check each type after you sign up with a new one. Google's waitlist feature is for restaurants only, and works through a reservation partner.

Put the menu on your website as text, and link to that page. A PDF of the printed menu is slow on a phone, hard to read and easy to forget when prices change.

Count the bookings it brings

Google does not report bookings from plain links, so measure them yourself. Ways to do it, simplest first:

• Ask. Add "How did you find us?" to the booking form, with Google Maps as one of the answers.
• Tag the link. Add campaign tags to the address you paste, for example ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=profile-booking. If the link goes to a page on your own website, your analytics shows these bookings as their own source. Booking tools differ in whether they record tags on their own pages, so check yours.
• Link the profile to Google Analytics. In Analytics, under Admin and Product links, Google Business Profile links lets an owner or manager of the profile connect it. Analytics then shows the profile's calls, direction requests, website clicks and bookings next to your website data.
• Use a partner. With a Reserve with Google provider, bookings show in the profile's Performance page.

Tag the profile's website link the same way, with a different campaign name, so you can tell people who booked straight from Google from people who read your site first.

If you confirm bookings by hand

Some businesses do not take instant bookings: a law firm offering first consultations, a clinic that needs to know the problem before it books, a venue that checks dates before it holds one. Google's link rules expect the customer to complete a booking, and a general contact form does not do that.

Use the website and call buttons instead, and make the request easy once people arrive: a short request form on the page for that service, or a booking chatbot that takes the request at any hour and passes it to your team to confirm.

Use the same booking route everywhere

The button on Google should lead where every other booking route leads: the same booking page as your website, your Instagram profile and your Apple Maps place card. One route means one set of availability, one confirmation message and one place to fix when something changes.

Keep the profile's hours in step with the booking calendar. If the calendar never offers Saturday slots, the profile should not show Saturday hours.

The website side of the booking route is covered in how to get more bookings from your website. Once bookings arrive, booking and calendar automation can copy them into your calendar and send reminders, where your booking tool's API allows.

Mistakes that lose bookings

• A booking link to the home page, so customers have to find booking all over again.
• A link to a booking tool you stopped paying for, or to the diary of someone who has left.
• A sign-in page in front of the calendar.
• A marketplace's Book button left in place, so it charges you for customers who already knew you.
• One link for every location, so customers book the wrong branch.
• Nobody testing the button on a phone after a change.

If you are still choosing a booking tool, booking software compared covers what matters for a small business.