Your profile, field by field

Chapter 2 set out what Google ranks local results on: relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is the one an owner can move this week, and most of it lives in one place, the business profile.

The best way to read this chapter is with your own profile open on a phone, in a private window, as though you were a customer who has never heard of the business. Each field is a question that customer is asking. The job is to answer it before they have to ask.

Before anything else: claim it

Every time we come across an unclaimed profile, we want to cry. When the business behind it is a good one, with loyal customers and years of honest work, we want to weep.

An unclaimed profile is a storefront with nobody behind the counter. Google often creates a profile on its own, from public information, and it stays open to anyone who wants to suggest a change. The hours can drift, a wrong phone number can creep in, a competitor or a stranger can propose a new category, and nobody who cares about the business gets a say. Reviews arrive and nobody answers them. Photos are whatever customers happened to upload.

Claiming the profile is free. It takes a verification step that Google sets and a little patience, and it is the first thing a local business should do, before any of the advice in this book. Nothing else in this chapter can be done without it.

And still, in South Brooklyn, 31% of jeweler profiles have not been claimed by their owners. Almost a third of the jewelers in one of the busiest shopping areas of New York are leaving their storefront on the map to chance. Among med spas the share is 7%, smaller and still too many. If you are not sure whether your own profile is claimed, find out today.

Once the profile is yours, check who else has access. A former employee, a relative or an agency with manager rights can change hours, categories and photos long after they stopped working for you. Remove access that is no longer needed, and keep the list short.

Business name

The name should be exactly what is on the sign. Google's guidelines ask for the real-world name of the business, without added keywords, locations or marketing phrases.

It helps to be honest about why owners are tempted. Words in the business name do seem to matter on the map. Google does not say so, but people who study local search have seen it year after year, and it is the reason so many profiles carry a neighborhood and three services after the shop's name. That is also why it is risky. Adding words that are not on the sign breaks Google's guidelines, competitors report such profiles, and Google can rename the business or suspend the profile. The customer notices too: if the sign says one thing and the profile another, they see it before they read anything else.

The honest route runs through the name itself. If you are naming a new business, or changing the name of an old one, choose a name that says what you do: Marina's Jewelry Repair rather than Marina's. Put it on the sign, the website, the receipts and the profile. Then the words are part of the real name, and nobody can object to them.

Whatever the map does with it, a clear name lowers the friction for a customer. A stranger scanning three results understands Marina's Jewelry Repair in a second and has to guess at Marina's. A brand built over years is worth a great deal, and a name that explains itself is worth something from the first day. The best names usually do both.

Where a legal name differs from the name on the sign, use the customer-facing name and keep the legal record where it belongs.

Primary category and additional categories

The primary category is the strongest single statement of what the business is, both for Google and for a person glancing at the profile. Choose the most specific category that is true. A general retail category is a weak signal for a jeweler if a jewelry category fits. A broad clinic category says less than the precise one that matches the work.

Additional categories cover the other things you genuinely do. A few that you would stand behind on a busy Tuesday are plenty. Categories for services you rarely perform, or hope to add next year, make the business look uncertain about what it is.

Review the categories once a year. They change when the work changes, not when an owner gets restless.

Services and products

This field is the one that most directly touches relevance, and the one most often left half empty.

List the services in the customer's words. If people ask for ring resizing, list ring resizing, not only the trade name your supplier uses. If they ask for HydraFacial, use that word. Where the profile lets you add a short description or a price to a service, use a price you will honor, and write the description the way you would say it on the phone.

Chapter 5 shows where the customer's words come from and how to collect them for your own trade. Chapter 7 shows how to use a handful of them for a seed.

Description

The description is your one chance to speak in full sentences. It runs to 750 characters, which is enough for a few short paragraphs and not enough for a catalog.

Say what the business does, for whom, and where. Say how long you have been doing it if that is worth knowing. Mention the parts of the work you are known for. Write it the way you would explain the business to someone at a bus stop: plain, specific, no adjectives doing the work of facts.

A description built from a list of keywords reads like a list of keywords, and it uses up the space where a real sentence could have answered a real question.

Address, service area and hours

The address has to be exact, and it has to match the sign, the website and every directory that lists the business. If the pin on the map sits at the wrong end of the block, fix it before you do anything else, because everything about distance is measured from it.

If you travel to customers instead, set a service area and keep it honest. The neighborhoods you actually reach in a normal week are the ones to name. A service area drawn wide to look bigger does not create reach, and it brings you customers who then find out how far away you are.

Hours are the field customers check most and the one that costs most when it is wrong. Keep regular hours current, set special hours for holidays and one-off closures, and do not leave a placeholder in place while you decide. A customer who drives to a closed door does not come back to see who was right.

Phone, website and booking links

Use one phone number, and use the one you answer. A number that goes to voicemail at lunch is still better than a number that rings nowhere. If the front desk number changes, change it here the same week.

The website link should go to a page about this business, not to a booking platform that hides who you are or to the home page of a group. Where the profile offers a separate link for booking or for a service, point it at the page for that service if you have one.

Check every link on a phone once a month. Links break quietly, and a dead link is worse than no link, because it looks like the business has closed.

Attributes

Where the profile offers attributes, such as accessibility, payment methods or amenities, fill in the ones that are true. They are small facts that decide whether a person can use the business at all: whether there is a step at the door, whether a card is accepted, whether there is parking.

A customer who arrives and finds an attribute untrue rarely gives the business a second chance.

Photos

Photos answer the question a stranger cannot ask over the phone: what is this place, and what does the work look like.

Take four kinds. The work itself, close enough to see the finish. The outside, so people recognize the door when they arrive. The inside, so they know what to expect when they walk in. The team, where that suits the business and everyone is willing. For a jeweler, a piece before and after a repair, or a finished engraving, tells a customer more than any paragraph. A med spa can show the treatment room, the equipment used for an appointment and the products on the shelf, and describe the appointment rather than what a treatment will do.

Jewelers have one strict rule about what never goes in a photo, set out in chapter 10.

Fresh photos matter more than many. A handful of new ones each month, of the work you are doing now, keeps the profile looking like a business that is open.

Posts

Posts are short updates that appear on the profile. One or two a month is a steady pace: a service you want people to know about, a finished piece, a change of hours, a seasonal note.

Keep them tied to the work and written in the same plain voice as the rest of the profile. A post does not need a graphic or a campaign behind it. A photo and two sentences are enough.

Reviews and replies

Reviews are the field you do not write, and the one customers read most closely. They do two jobs. They tell a stranger whether to trust the business, and they tell Google what the business does and how it treats people.

Ask when the work is done, while the experience is fresh. Ask everyone, not only the customers you expect to be pleased. Do not offer a reward, a discount or a prize, and do not filter out the people who might have something critical to say. Read the platform's rules on reviews before you start asking, and check anything you are unsure about with your own counsel.

Reply to all of them, the good ones included. Reply to a bad one calmly, in public, with the facts and an offer to sort it out offline. Never argue. A defensive reply is read by every future customer, not just the one who wrote it. Chapter 10 goes further into reviews and photos, which are the two things customers check most.

Reply to the review you would rather delete. That reply is written for the next customer.

The order to do it in

Done all at once, this list feels like a rebrand, and most owners close the tab. None of it needs to happen in a week.

An order that works: claim the profile, then name, categories, hours, phone and links, then services and description, then photos, then the review habit. Claiming, the name, the hours and the contact details are facts, and facts are quick to fix. Services and description take an afternoon. Photos become a habit. Reviews take as long as they take.

That order also matches what a stranger checks. They see the name, the category, the rating, the hours and the distance before anything else. Get those right and the rest of the profile has a chance to be read.

Once the profile is in reasonable order, the question becomes where to spend the effort. The profile covers the whole business, while the map is won one search at a time. Chapter 4 explains why the biggest search in your trade is the hardest place to start, and where the smaller ones leave room.