The Google Business Profile mistakes I see most often

I look at a lot of Google Business Profiles! Plumbers in Bottesford, salons in Radcliffe on Trent, a farm shop out towards Elton… And after a while you start seeing the same handful of Google Business Profile mistakes and problems over and over.

None of them are complicated. They’re mostly ten-minute fixes that nobody ever told the owner about, and this is costing them calls for years.

Here are the ones that come up most.

Nobody has claimed it

This is the big one. Google often creates a listing for a business automatically, from other data floating about online. So there’s a pin on the map with your name on it, and you’ve never touched it.

Which means the opening hours might be wrong, the phone number might be an old one, and anyone can suggest an edit to it. (You’d be amazed what strangers change!)

If you’ve never gone through the verification bit, where Google sends a code or asks for a video, it isn’t really yours yet. That’s the first job to fix!

The category is nearly right

Google asks you to pick a main category (and up to 9 sub-categories), and people pick the one that sounds nicest rather than the one that’s accurate.

A woman near Bingham had hers set to “shop” when she was a florist. Florist is a category. Google uses that main category more than almost anything else to decide who to show when somebody searches. Sounding vaguely right isn’t the same as being findable.

Pick the most specific category that genuinely describes the main thing you do, then add the others underneath as extra categories. And if a new one appears that fits better, switch.

Hours that aren’t true

Wrong hours are worse than no hours. Someone drives over from Newark, finds you shut, and that’s a customer you’ll never hear from.

The one people always forget is bank holidays. Google literally prompts you a week or two before, and most people scroll past it. Set the special hours. It takes about thirty seconds and it stops Google from showing that grey “hours might differ” note, which makes people ring elsewhere.

The service area is a fantasy

If you go out to customers rather than having a shop, you set a service area instead of an address. And the temptation is to draw a circle around half the East Midlands.

Don’t. A service area covering Nottingham, Grantham, Leicester and Derby tells Google you’re not especially relevant to any of them. Genuinely cover Whatton, Aslockton, Orston, Cropwell Bishop and Bingham? List those. Being clearly the local option in the Vale of Belvoir beats being a vague option everywhere.

The description is about you, not them

Most descriptions read like the opening of a wedding speech. “Established in 2009, we pride ourselves on quality and customer service.”

That could be anybody. Use the 750 characters to say what you actually do, who for, and where. Then say something specific and true that a competitor couldn’t copy. You do same-day emergency callouts. You’re the only one round here who works on that make of boiler. You do free quotes on a Saturday.

Photos from four years ago, or none at all

Profiles with recent photos get looked at more. Two things go wrong here.

One, the photos are all from the week the profile was set up, so it looks abandoned. Two, they’re stock images, and people can tell instantly.

You don’t need a photographer. Your phone is fine. A few pictures of real work, the actual van, the actual shopfront, and a face. Add a couple every month or so. I wrote a whole post on this if you want the detail.

Nothing ever gets posted

There’s an “Add update” box sitting in your profile that most people never touch. It’s free space on the thing that already shows up when somebody searches your name.

A short post once a week or fortnight is plenty. What you’ve been doing, a seasonal reminder, a change to your hours. It isn’t going to transform your business overnight, but it makes the profile look alive, and an alive profile gets picked over a dead one.

Reviews sat there unanswered

I’ve said this before so I’ll keep it brief: reply to reviews. All of them, good and bad. A wall of five-star reviews with no responses looks like nobody’s home.

The fix list

If you did nothing else this week: claim it, check the categories, sort your bank holiday hours, tighten the service area, and add three photos from your phone.

That’s most of a good profile right there. Not exciting, I know. But it’s the difference between the pin on the map being a proper shop window and being a scruffy notice nobody’s updated since 2022.