How to create a Google Business Profile, step by step

Before you create a Business Profile

A Business Profile is your listing on Google Search and Google Maps. Google allows one only for businesses that meet customers in person. That can be a shop, a practice or a tradesperson who travels to the customer. A business that only sells online does not get a profile.

The address has to be real too. A P.O. box is not enough. Google also rejects a rented mailing address where you do not work.

Next, search Google Maps for your business name and town. Sometimes the listing is already there although you never made it. In that case do not create a second profile. Take over the existing one with “Claim this business”. Google wants one profile per business, because duplicates cause problems with how you show up on Search and Maps.

Sources: Google Help: Guidelines for representing your business · Google Help: Add or claim your Business Profile

Create the Business Profile: the details you need

You need a Google Account. Your business email address will do; you do not need a Gmail address. Go to business.google.com/add, choose “Add your business to Google” and follow the steps.

Write the name as it appears on your sign and your invoices. Town, services and slogans do not belong in it. Google can suspend a profile for that.

Pick a few categories that describe your main business precisely. If customers come to you, enter your address. If you travel to customers and work from home, hide the address and set a service area.

If you have a website, add it at the end.

Sources: Google Help: Get started with Business Profile · Google Help: Guidelines for representing your business

Verify the Business Profile

Only after verification can you edit your details and reply to reviews. Google decides how you verify: phone call or text, email, video call or postcard. You cannot change the options, and sometimes Google asks for more than one.

On a video call you use your phone camera to show where the business is, what you work with and that you run it. The street sign and the door you unlock yourself are good evidence.

If the code comes by postcard, wait. Do not change the name, address or category in the meantime, or the code stops working. Do not request a second one either, because that cancels the first.

After the last step Google reviews your details. Google says this takes up to five business days, in rare cases longer.

Source: Google Help: Verify your business on Google

What comes after verification

Now fill the profile. Enter your opening hours and upload real photos of your business and your work. Ask customers for an honest review and reply to it.

Look in every few weeks. Google changes details on its own too, for example after reports from users. You should know what your profile says.

What else matters for search in your area is in our local SEO checklist. You will find it at the end of this page.

Source: Google Help: Get started with Business Profile

What the profile costs and who owns it

The profile itself costs nothing, whether you create it or claim it. Only help costs money: someone setting the profile up for you or looking after it month by month.

Create the profile in your own Google Account, even if an agency does the work. Add the agency as a manager. When the work ends, remove the access. The profile and its reviews stay with you.

If your profile already sits in a provider's account, that can be changed. They add you as an owner and then transfer ownership to you.

Ask anyone who is going to look after your profile:

• Which Google Account holds the profile?
• Am I listed there as an owner?
• What exactly do you maintain each month?
• Who replies to reviews?

Sources: Google Help: Add or claim your Business Profile · Google Help: Get started with Business Profile · Google Help: Guidelines for representing your business