How to set up a Google Business Profile, step by step.

The order that works

Most of a Business Profile can be fixed later. Three details are harder to change once Google has verified them: the name, the address and the primary category. Changing any of them can send the profile back through verification, so settle them first. Then work in this order:

• Sign in with a Google account the business owns.
• Check whether Google already has a listing for you, and claim it instead of starting a new one.
• Enter the name, the primary category, the address and the contact details.
• Verify the business with the method Google offers.
• Add opening hours, holiday hours and the hours for parts of the business that differ.
• Add services, a description and the facts customers ask about, such as parking and step-free access.
• Upload photos of the outside, the inside and the team.
• Add a booking, menu or order link if your category has one.
• Add a second owner from the business, then any agency as a manager.

This guide is for a business whose customers come to its premises: a shop, a clinic, a salon, a garage, a restaurant. If you travel to customers and nobody visits your address, the setup differs, and Google Business Profile for a business without a storefront covers it.

None of this costs anything. Google's rules for agencies even require them to tell clients that the Business Profile is free.

Use a Google account the business owns

The account you sign in with becomes the owner of the profile. Use one that belongs to the business, such as one made with your main business email address. It does not have to be a Gmail address. Avoid the personal account of whoever happens to be setting it up, and never use the account of an agency or web designer.

A profile held in someone else's account leaves with them. Getting it back takes requests, waiting and sometimes verification all over again, as how to get ownership of your Google Business Profile shows.

Google asks each person who works on the profile to use their own account, added as an owner or a manager, rather than sharing one login. Its security advice is to turn on 2-Step Verification for the accounts that manage a profile. Do both before you start.

Check whether you are already on the map

Google builds listings from more than owners: public websites, business data it licenses and people who add places to Maps. So your business may be on Google Maps already, unclaimed. Search Google Maps for the business name and town before you create anything.

• If you find it and nobody manages it, open it, choose Claim this business, then Manage now, and follow the steps. In Google Search the same link reads Own this business?
• If Google says someone else may manage the profile, do not make a second one. Request access instead.
• If you find two listings for your business, claim the right one and deal with the other. Google does not show a profile it marks as a duplicate on Search or Maps.
• If the previous business at your address still shows, open its listing, choose Suggest an edit and report that it has closed.

If you find nothing, go to business.google.com/add and add your business. You can also start in the Google Maps app: tap Contribute, then Add place, then Is this your business?

Use the name on your sign

Google's rule is that the profile name should be the name the business uses in the real world: on the sign over the door, the website and the stationery. Its guidelines list what must stay out, including taglines, phone numbers, web addresses, opening hours, store codes, and the services or places you would like to be found for. Words in capitals throughout and trademark symbols are out too. A legal ending such as Ltd belongs in the name only if you use it on your sign and paperwork.

• Right: Fade Lane Barbers.
• Wrong: Fade Lane Barbers | Skin Fades Manchester.
• Wrong: FADE LANE BARBERS, Walk-ins Welcome.

Google says extra words in the name can get the profile suspended. If your sign and your website use different names, decide which is right and change the other before you set up the profile. The name you choose here is the one to use everywhere else.

Choose the primary category with care

The primary category tells Google what the business is, and Google says the categories you choose affect your local ranking. It also decides which features your profile gets. Google's own examples: hotels can show their class and amenities, restaurants can add menu, reservation and order links, and health and beauty businesses can add a booking button and a list of services.

Google's advice on choosing, in our words:

• Pick the most specific category that fits the whole business. Google's example is Nail salon rather than Salon.
• Apply its test: the category completes the sentence "this business is a", not "this business has a". A gym with a pool is a gym.
• Use as few categories as you can. Google says not to add one for every product or service.
• You cannot invent a category. If nothing specific fits, choose the closest general one.

You get one primary category and up to nine more. The extra ones are for real parts of the business: a bakery with tables that sells coffee as a main line might add Coffee shop, and a dental practice that offers cosmetic treatment might add a cosmetic category if the list has one. Services belong in the services list, not in categories.

To find the words Google uses, start typing in the category box and read the suggestions. Then search for your main service on Google Maps and open the businesses that show first: the category appears under each name. Copy one only if it describes your business as well.

Get the name, address and primary category right before you verify. Google warns that editing a category may mean verifying again, and that changing any of the three while a postcard code is on its way stops the code working.

Enter the address and check the pin

Enter the full street address customers walk up to, with any unit or floor on the second address line. Google does not accept a PO box or a remote mailbox, and a virtual office is not a location. Its guidelines expect permanent signage with your name at the address, and staff there to receive customers during the hours you list.

Then look at the map. On a retail park, in a shopping centre or on a corner, the pin often lands on the wrong building or the wrong side of it. Correct it in the location settings so it sits on the entrance customers use, and check the walking directions on a phone.

If you also go out to customers, like a garage that offers roadside recovery, you can show the address and add a service area as well. Google calls that a hybrid business.

Google allows one profile per location. A business with two sites has two profiles, each with its own address, phone number and page on the website. A business that moves keeps its profile, edits the address and verifies again. It does not start a new one.

Phone, website and chat

• Phone: a number the business controls, ideally a local one rather than a central call centre. Google does not accept premium-rate numbers, or numbers that pass callers on to somewhere else. You can add up to two more numbers.
• Website: the page that represents this location, usually the home page, or the location's own page if you have several. Enter the full address, starting https, and make sure the page is not blocked to Google.
• Chat: verified profiles in some regions can add a WhatsApp or text number. Add one only if someone answers it during your hours.
• Social media: one link per platform, such as Facebook and Instagram.

Use the same phone number on the profile, the website and the sign, so customers and Google see one business, not three that look alike.

Verify, and wait without editing

Google chooses the verification methods for each profile, and you cannot change them. It may offer a call or text to the business phone, an email, a live video call with its support team, a postcard or a video you record. You may need more than one.

• Phone or text: someone must be able to answer the business line or read texts on it. An automated phone menu cannot receive the code.
• Postcard: Google says most codes arrive within 14 days and expire after 30. Do not ask for a new code while one is on its way, because that cancels the first.
• Live video call: offered during your business hours, and not to every business.
• Video recording: Google recommends it whenever it is offered.

For a recorded video, plan the shots before you press record. Google asks for one continuous, unedited take of at least 30 seconds, recorded live through the Business Profile on a phone. For premises, it wants to see:

• Where you are: street signs, the building number or the businesses next door.
• That the business exists: the shopfront or sign, with your name on a permanent fixture, the same name as on the profile.
• That you run it: something only staff can reach, such as the till, the kitchen, the stock room or the back office.

Keep bank, tax and ID numbers, private papers and other people's faces out of shot. Google says reviews take up to five business days. If it rejects the video, open Review issues on the profile and record a new one with everything from the first plus whatever was missing.

Sometimes Google verifies at once, for example when the website is already verified in Google Search Console. Either way, your photos do not show publicly until verification is done.

Hours, holiday hours and more hours

Enter the hours customers can walk in or call. A seasonal business uses the current season's hours as its regular hours, and marks the profile temporarily closed in the off season.

Then plan the exceptions. Google's rules:

• Special hours cover a holiday, an event or a closure of up to six days in a row.
• Closed for seven days or more, or for an unknown time: mark the business temporarily closed, and set the hours back when you reopen.
• Google suggests confirming your hours for official holidays even when they are normal, so customers can see they are current.
• More hours describe parts of the business with their own times, such as a restaurant's takeaway or delivery hours, and should generally fall inside your main hours.

Hours are where profiles most often go wrong after launch, because customers and Google can change them. Why Google changed your business hours explains how to spot those edits and undo them.

Services, description and attributes

Services: pick from the services Google suggests for your category, and add your own where they are missing, each with a line on what it includes. Google rejects custom services that contain prices, phone numbers or personal details in the name, so keep those out.

Description: up to 750 characters, with no links or HTML. Google asks you to describe the business rather than offers, prices or sales: what you offer, what sets you apart and how long you have been open. In some regions Google can suggest a description for you. Read every word before you use it, because it may repeat something out of date.

A plain example for a hair salon: "A six-chair salon on Kirkgate, open since 2012, for cuts, colour and blow-dries. Several of our stylists specialise in curly hair, and we do skin tests 48 hours before any first colour. Late opening on Thursdays until 8pm."

Attributes: answer the factual ones your category offers, such as a wheelchair-accessible entrance, parking or the ways customers can pay. Opening date: if you have not opened yet, Google lets you set an opening date up to a year ahead, and shows it from 90 days before.

Photos that show what customers will find

Photos help people recognise the door when they arrive. Google's suggestions are at least three photos of the outside, taken from each direction people approach, three of the inside, three of the team at work and three of the team. Add your logo and a cover photo too, though Google does not promise the cover will show first.

Google's requirements: JPG or PNG files between 10 KB and 5 MB, ideally 720 by 720 pixels or larger. Videos can run up to 30 seconds and 75 MB. Photos should be in focus and well lit, without heavy filters or AI changes, and should show things as they are. Google reviews each upload, and approved photos can take a day or two to appear.

A phone in daylight is enough. Shoot the sign from across the street, the entrance as someone arrives, the reception or counter, a room or chair as a customer sees it, and your team doing the work. Stock photos do not help here: people want to know what they are walking into.

Booking, menu and order links

Depending on the category, the profile can carry links for booking, reservations, a menu or orders. Each link has to open a page for your business where the customer can finish the job, and Google does not accept social media pages, messaging links, app store links or shortened links there. How to add a booking button to your Google Business Profile covers the options, including booking tools that connect to Google directly.

Add campaign tags to the website link too, such as utm_source=google and utm_medium=organic, so visits from the profile show as their own source in your analytics.

Edits that cause trouble in the first weeks

Google reviews every edit to a verified profile. It says most are checked within minutes and some take up to 30 days. Each change can send the profile back for checks, so a new profile does best with few edits, made only when something is wrong. These are the ones to avoid:

• Adding a town, a service or a slogan to the name. It breaks the name rule and can get the profile suspended.
• Changing the name, address or primary category soon after verifying, which can mean verifying again.
• Creating a second profile for the same location, for example one per service. Google says to list services on the one profile.
• Moving the address to a virtual office or a mailbox to look closer to the town centre.
• Letting several people or tools edit at once, so nobody knows which change caused a problem.

If the profile does get suspended, Google Business Profile suspended: how to get it back covers the appeal.

Once it is live

Add a second owner from the business, so the profile survives one person leaving. Add any agency or web designer as a manager, not an owner. Google's rules say representatives must hand ownership to the business whenever it asks.

Then look at it the way a customer will: search for the business on a phone, signed out of your account, and check the name, the pin, the hours, the phone number and the website link. Tap every button.

Ask every customer for a review in the same way, and reply to what they write. How to ask for Google reviews without breaking the rules covers what Google allows. Once a month, open the profile's Performance page to see the searches people used to find you, and look for changes Google made.

We set up or tidy the Business Profile with every website we build, and the accounts stay in your name, as the prices page lists.