Google Business Profile

The Google Business Profile is the box that appears beside the results when someone searches for your company name — with a phone number, opening hours, photos and reviews. The same listing is the basis for appearing in Google Maps. It costs nothing, used to be called Google My Business, and is maintained directly in Search today.

The precondition is a verifiable place. Either an address where customers can find you, or a named service area if you travel to the customer — for a heating engineer, the district for instance. Google then verifies the business, by postcard, phone or video depending on the case. There is no profile without this step, and a profile at an address where nothing is can be removed.

The profile holds the category, opening hours, services, photos, posts and questions from other users. The category has considerable influence on which searches the listing appears for at all — it is not a label but a set of points on the track. Google prescribes the list of these categories; you cannot add to it yourself.

It is exactly there that we run into a limit we name openly, because it affects us too: for search engine optimisation there is no category of its own in that list. So we are not listed there as an SEO agency, and nobody can be. Anyone promising you a top spot in Google Maps for such searches is describing something that does not exist in that form. Where an activity has no category, you pick the nearest one and explain the rest in the text.

Reviews are the part that moves the most — and the legally most sensitive. Invented or bought reviews are unlawful under section 5b subsection 3 of the German Act against Unfair Competition, and Google removes patterns it detects. The permissible route is plain: ask for one once the work is done, without anything in return, without pre-selecting the satisfied. What that looks like day to day is set out in the guide to Google reviews.

One point often overlooked is the consistency of your details. Company name, address and phone number should read word for word the same on the website, in the profile and in directories — not "St." in one place and "Street" in another. Deviations raise doubts about whether it is the same company. We have described the setup in detail in the guide to the business profile.

Where the limits lie belongs here too: the profile does not replace a website. The content sits on somebody else's platform, the presentation changes without your involvement, and you can neither take the listing with you nor export it. It is a very useful channel, but not one that belongs to you — the same dependency we describe under vendor lock-in.

For you that means: if customers come to you or you serve a fixed catchment area, the profile is one of the few levers that cost nothing but care. We ourselves sit in Valencia and work mostly remotely; for us the listing therefore carries less than for a business with a shop in its own town. We say so, rather than advertising a channel we hardly live off ourselves.