How to set up a Google Business Profile

Setting it up, step by step

These steps follow Google’s own help page, Sign up for Business Profile, as it read in October 2026. Google moves its buttons around now and then, so if a screen looks different, that page has the current version.

1. On a computer, sign in to a Google account or create one. If you create a new one, Google suggests signing up with your business email address.
2. Go to Google’s create a profile page and type your business name. You may be able to pick your business from the suggestions as you type. If Google tells you someone else has already verified it, see the part below on profiles that already exist.
3. Search for your business category and choose it. There is more on picking it further down.
4. Say whether you have a location customers can visit. Google means a storefront staffed during business hours. Answer yes and you enter the address or place a marker on the map. Answer no and you enter the cities, postal codes or other areas you serve.
5. Add your phone number and your website address, then finish.
6. Choose a verification option. You can leave it for later, but Google says customers can only find your profile once verification is complete, so start it straight away.

Verification, the step that takes the longest

Google decides which verification methods you are offered, based on things like your type of business, your region and your hours, and you cannot change them. Sometimes it asks for more than one. Its page on how to verify your business describes these:

• A phone call or text with a code. Google notes that automated phone menus will not receive it, so be ready to answer the business number yourself.
• An email with steps to follow.
• A live video call, held during your business hours. You show where you are, such as your sign or a street sign, the equipment or tools you work with, and something that proves you run the business, like keys that open the door.
• A video recording, which Google recommends if it is offered to you.
• A postcard with a code. Google says most arrive within 14 days and the code expires after 30. While you wait, leave your name, address and category alone and do not ask for a new code, because either one stops the code in the post from working.

When you have finished your part, Google reviews it. It says that takes up to five business days and occasionally longer, and you get a confirmation email once you are verified.

If a profile already exists

If someone set up a profile years ago and you no longer have the login, you can ask for it back. Google’s page on requesting ownership says to go to business.google.com/add, enter your business name and address, choose your business and select Request access. The current owner gets an email and has three days to answer. If they do not, you may be offered the option to claim the profile and verify it yourself.

Businesses with no shop are the exception. For a service-area business, Google says to contact its support team instead and give “Transfer ownership of listing” as the issue.

Setting up a Google Business Profile without a shop address

Plumbers, cleaners, painters and anyone else who works at the customer’s place fall under one rule: if customers do not come to your address, it comes off the profile. Google’s guidelines for representing your business use a plumber running the business from home as their example, and say to clear the address. The address on a profile is public, so this also keeps your home off the map.

At sign-up, answering no to the question about a location customers can visit makes you what Google calls a service-area business. You then list where you work by city, postal code or another kind of area. Google’s page on managing service areas allows up to 20 of them, does not accept a radius around your base, and asks that the whole area stay within about two hours’ drive of where you are based.

If your profile already shows an address you do not serve customers from, Google’s steps to hide it are: open your Business Profile, choose Edit profile and then Location, select Edit next to Business location, turn off Show business address to customers, and save. If you never entered a service area, Google picks a local area for you, so check what it chose.

A few more rules from the same pages. A service-area business gets one profile for the whole area it serves, and Google warns that duplicate profiles in the same metropolitan area can get the account suspended. A rented mailing address or virtual office does not count as a location. And if you have a workshop or office with a permanent sign, staffed and open to customers during set hours, you can show that address and a service area together, which Google calls a hybrid business.

The choices worth slowing down for

Your category

Google’s guidelines ask for the fewest categories that describe your core business, each as specific as the list allows. Its test is whether the category finishes the sentence “This business IS a” rather than “this business HAS a”. The category describes what the business is as a whole. It is not the place to list every service you offer, and Google says not to use categories as keywords.

Your name, with nothing added

Enter the name on your sign, your website and your invoices. Google’s name rules list what it must not include: marketing taglines, phone numbers or web addresses, opening hours, the services you offer and your location. Leave off Ltd or Inc as well, unless your signs and paperwork always carry it. Google says unnecessary information in the name can get the profile suspended.

The same name, address and phone as your website

Google asks you to represent the business the way it appears in the real world, consistently across signage, stationery and the rest of your branding. Your website is part of that. If the profile shows one phone number and the site another, a customer has to guess which to ring, and Google says it can also pick up information about your business from your website.

For the phone, the guidelines ask for a number that reaches this business directly and is under your control. A local number is preferred over a central call centre, and the number should not send callers on to someone else’s line.

Droom makes this check on every website build: the Business Profile is set up and verified before launch, with the same name, address and phone as the site. While you are looking at your own site, take two minutes to see whether it turns AI assistants away too. Our guide to whether your website blocks AI crawlers shows where to look.

Hours, holidays included

Enter the hours customers can reach you. For a holiday or a short closure, Google has special hours, which cover up to six days in a row without changing your regular hours. It also suggests confirming your hours for official holidays even when they stay the same. Set them a week or two ahead rather than on the morning. One exception: the guidelines say businesses that work only by appointment should not list hours at all.

Photos and updates

Google’s photo tips ask for pictures that are in focus and well lit, without heavy filters, big edits or AI, and put it in one line: the image should represent reality. They suggest at least three of each kind that suits your business, and for a business that does jobs, that means photos of the work and of the people doing it. Google’s standards are JPG or PNG, between 10 KB and 5 MB, at a recommended 720 pixels square. They show only once the profile is verified.

The rules Droom works to on a profile go a little further:

• Real photos only. No stock images, and no promotional graphics covered in text.
• A few new photos every week or two, instead of one big batch on day one and nothing after.
• Holiday hours set well before the holiday.
• Every review answered, the bad ones included.
• Updates kept to a line or three, with a button.

Updates are short posts on the profile. Google’s update post takes a description, a photo or video, and a button that links to where the customer can act, such as booking. Use the button rather than typing a phone number into the text: Google may remove posts with contact details it cannot verify, and offers a Call now button that uses your verified number. Posts older than six months are archived unless you give them a date range.

Treat all of this as housekeeping. It keeps the profile accurate for the person deciding whether to call you, and Droom makes no claim about what it does for where you appear.

Asking for reviews, and answering them

Your profile comes with a review link and QR code. Open your Business Profile, choose Read reviews and then Get more reviews, and copy the link. The QR code can only be made on a computer, not on a phone. Google suggests putting the link on receipts and in thank-you emails, and printing the QR code for your counter. For a business that goes to the customer, the simple version is a text with the link on the day the job is done.

Do not offer anything in return for a review. Google says that offering incentives, like free or discounted goods or services, in exchange for posting, changing or removing reviews counts as fake engagement and is strictly prohibited. A discount on the next job for a review is exactly that.

Answer every review, the bad ones included. Google’s tips on replies say to keep them short and polite, to leave promotions out, and to write something specific to that review rather than the same thank-you each time. With a bad one, apologise where you got it wrong, explain what you can and cannot do, and never share the customer’s private details. If it needs sorting out, ask them to phone or email you. Replies are public, they appear under the business name rather than yours, and the reviewer is told when you reply.

If you would rather not have to remember to ask, Droom’s $449 plan asks every customer for a Google review after the job.

What setting it up costs

Nothing. Google’s Business Profile page says that creating a profile and listing your business on Google is free. Its help pages also say there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking, so treat anyone selling you a guaranteed spot with suspicion.

Droom sets up and verifies the profile as part of every website build, from $999 for up to five pages, with no separate charge for it. After launch, the photos, updates and review replies are yours to keep up, and the habits above are the ones to keep.

The next step

If you have a website, send it for the free Field Test. The checks show on screen straight away, and the full report follows by email with a fixed price if anything needs fixing. If you have no website yet, the Field Test looks at your Google Business Profile instead. Our guide to the free website audit has a checklist you can run yourself first.