Your Google Business Profile Is Now an AI Data Source. Treat It Like One.

Google Business Profile used to be the thing that put a pin on the map. It still does that. But it's also the structured record Google's own AI products reach for first when someone asks a local question, and it's a high-authority source for every other engine building an entity picture of you. Most profiles we audit were set up once, years ago, with the minimum fields filled in. Here's the pass we do on every client account.

Primary Category and Services

Your primary category is the single strongest signal of what you are. Choose the most specific one that's true. "Marketing Agency" is weaker than "Internet Marketing Service" if that's what you do, and both are wrong if you're actually a web developer. Then fill the Services section completely, using Google's predefined services where they exist and custom ones where they don't, each with a description. When Gemini answers "who does X near me," this list is one of the things it's matching against.

The Description

You have 750 characters. Use the one-paragraph version of your canonical record: what you do, who for, where, and what makes you different, in plain sentences. No keyword stuffing, no all caps, no "#1 rated." This paragraph gets read by machines far more often than by humans, and machines penalize hype by ignoring it.

Questions and Answers

The Q&A section is public and anyone can post to it, which is why most businesses have either nothing there or a random question from 2022 that nobody answered. Seed it yourself. Post the eight questions prospects actually ask, and answer each one in two or three specific sentences. This is FAQ content in a place Google treats as its own data, and it's one of the least-used fields on the entire platform.

Products, Hours, and Attributes

If you sell defined packages, list them as Products with prices. Engines answer pricing questions constantly and a published price beats "contact us" every time. Keep hours exact and update holiday hours in advance; a profile marked open when you're closed is a correctness signal against you. Fill every attribute that applies (women-owned, online appointments, wheelchair access, and so on) because attributes are structured facts engines can use to answer filtered questions.

Reviews and Responses

Reply to every review, including the good ones, and use the reply to restate the specific service delivered: "Glad the Keap rebuild is saving your team time." That turns a vague five-star review into a corroborated, specific one, in your own words, on Google's domain. Ask for reviews steadily rather than in bursts, and ask reviewers to mention what you did rather than just how they felt.

Photos With Context

Upload real photos of the work, the team, and the office, and name the files sensibly before you upload. Google's image understanding is good enough now that a photo of a completed roof, captioned as such, is a small piece of evidence that you replace roofs.

Keep It Alive

Post an update at least twice a month. Not because Posts drive much traffic, but because a profile with recent activity reads as a current, operating business, and a dormant one reads as a maybe. Check the profile monthly for edits Google or the public have suggested, because those get applied silently and can undo your work. Treat it like a page on your site that a lot of important readers see, because that's what it is.