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Google Business Profile fields that get you rung

Getting found 7 min read

A plain walk through the Google Business Profile fields that decide whether a stranger taps your number, and the ones you can safely ignore.

Somebody two streets away has your trade typed into their phone. Your listing is on the screen in front of them, and within a few seconds they will either tap the number or scroll to the next one. About six fields decide that. The rest of the profile is housekeeping.

Setting one up is free and takes an afternoon.

The phone number is the field doing the most work

On a phone, the number on a listing is a button. Tapping it dials. There is no page to load and no form to fill in, which makes it the easiest thing on the profile for somebody to act on.

So the number in that field has to be the one you answer. If the shop line rings out in an empty room three days a week, the listing should carry the cell phone you keep in your pocket, and the shop line can live on the website. If the number changes, change it on the listing the same day. A number that rings nowhere reads to a stranger like a business that has closed, and nothing else on the profile makes up for that.

Your category decides which searches you are even in

The primary category is the most consequential choice in the whole profile. Google uses it to work out which searches you belong in, and the categories are narrower than they look. Plumber and drainage service are two different ones. Hair salon, barber shop and nail salon are three.

Pick the primary category that matches the majority of the work you want more of, not the one that describes the whole of you. Then add secondary categories for the other things you genuinely do, and stop when you run out of true ones. Every category you add is a promise somebody may call you about.

If you want to see what the businesses above you have chosen, a listing shows its primary category and nothing else. The secondary ones are hidden from the public, so short of a third-party tool or a dig through the page source, you are seeing one of their choices and not the rest of them.

The name field is not a place to put keywords

Use the name on your van, your invoices and your door, not that name with your town and "24/7 emergency" bolted on the end.

Google's guidelines ask for your real-world name, listings that stuff that field can be edited by other people or suspended outright, and a reader can tell in a glance. If your sign genuinely says "Miller Plumbing and Heating", then that is your name and all of it goes in. The test is whether it is painted on something.

An address, or a service area, and the difference matters

If customers come to you, you have an address and it should be exact, down to the unit number and the floor. If you go to them, you can hide the address and set a service area instead. If you work out of a house, hide it. A service area is the honest description of that business and you do not want your home address published.

Set the service area to the towns you would actually drive to on an ordinary Tuesday. There is a cap on how many you can add, and filling it with everywhere inside two hours does not put you in front of everyone inside two hours.

The default is your homepage, and the homepage is often not the best answer. If most people arriving from the listing want one particular thing looked at, send them to the page that says what happens when they call, with the number at the top of it.

Then check the link properly. Copy it out of the field, paste it into a phone browser, and watch it load. Listings pointing at a site that moved, a certificate that lapsed or a host that went quiet are common, and nobody sends you a letter when it happens. It is not something you were supposed to have noticed.

The services list is the field almost nobody fills in

You can list your services with a line of description each. The list is the plain answer to "do you do this", which is the question the reader is holding.

Write them in the words a customer would use. Blocked drain, not drainage remediation. Gel nails. Water heater service. Chipped tooth. Fifteen honest lines is a good afternoon's work. There is a price box on each service, and it is better left empty than filled with a figure you would not honor once you had seen the job.

The description is read by a person, not by a machine

You get 750 characters, and they sit below the part everybody sees, so treat the description as the paragraph somebody reads when they are already half decided.

Say who you are, how long you have been doing it, what you do, what you do not do, and what happens after they call. Keep links and offers out of it, which the guidelines ask for anyway. A description with your trade and your town repeated six times reads exactly like a description with your trade and your town repeated six times.

The buttons you can switch on, and the one that went away

Google switched Business Profile chat and call history off on July 31, 2024. There is no message button on a listing now and no inbox in the profile, so there is nothing here to turn on or leave off. If somebody has told you to answer your Google messages, that is why you cannot find them.

Some accounts, in some countries, get a link in its place that opens a text message or a WhatsApp chat to you. The old rule still applies to that: only add it if you will answer it. An unanswered message is worse than no message button, because the person waited before giving up on you. The difference now is that it lands on the phone in your pocket rather than in a Google screen you never open.

Booking links and menu links are worth having when they point at something that works on a phone. A request a quote button is no longer one of the choices, because it went with the messaging. Attributes are the small true facts: free parking, wheelchair accessible, appointment required, women owned. Some of them are filters people use. Tick the ones that are true and leave the rest alone.

Hours, photographs and reviews sit on this same profile, and each of them is a subject of its own.

A short checklist

Questions people ask

How long does it take to set up a Google Business Profile

An afternoon for the fields, then a wait for verification, which may be a video call, a postcard or a code by phone depending on the trade. The waiting is the long part and there is no way to hurry it.

Do I need a website to have a Google Business Profile

No. A listing with a working number, honest hours and a few real photographs stands on its own, and for some trades that is enough for a while. Get the listing right first and decide about a website afterwards.

Can I put my town and my trade in the business name

Not unless they are part of the name on your signage. It is against the guidelines, other people can suggest edits that strip it out, and in the worst case the listing is suspended.

Somebody else set up my listing and I cannot get into it

That happens often, because Google generates listings from other sources and old staff or old agencies claim them. You can request access, and Google emails whoever holds it and gives them three days to answer. Ignore the request and you can usually go on to claim and verify the listing yourself. Refuse it and there is an appeal. None of it is quick.

Can customers message me through my listing

Not any more. Google turned chat off on July 31, 2024, and it has not come back. Some accounts can offer a link that opens a text message or WhatsApp to you instead, and the old test still holds: only put it there if you will read it daily. A trade that answers the phone and ignores a chat window is better off without the chat window.

How often does the profile need touching

When something changes, such as a new number, a new service or different hours. Read it over every few months as well, because anyone can suggest an edit to a listing, verified or not, and some of those edits go live without you agreeing to them. Beyond that there is no benefit in fiddling with it weekly, and anybody telling you otherwise is selling you the fiddling.

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