Setting up a Google Business Profile for a trade, step by step

Before you start: what you need to hand

Consistency matters. The name, address and phone number on your profile should match your website and every directory listing word for word. 'J Smith Electrical' and 'J. Smith Electrical Ltd' are two different businesses to a machine.

• A Google account used only for the business, not a personal Gmail
• Your trading name exactly as it appears on your van, invoices and website
• The address you operate from, even if customers never visit it
• A list of the towns or postcode districts you serve
• Your business phone number and website address
• Ten or more photos: van, team, completed jobs, tools
• Your opening hours, including how you handle emergency calls

Step 1: search before you create

Search Google Maps for your business name and your phone number. A profile may already exist, created automatically or by a previous owner or agency. If one does, claim it rather than creating a duplicate. Duplicates get suspended.

If an agency set up a profile for you in the past, check who the primary owner is. If it is the agency, request a transfer of ownership before doing anything else. This is one of the asset questions our guide to checking an agency is legitimate says to ask up front.

Step 2: create the profile as a service-area business

Go to business.google.com and add your business. When asked whether customers visit your location, most trades should answer no. This makes you a service-area business: your address is hidden and your service area is shown instead.

Enter your service area as a list of towns or postcode districts, not a single radius. Keep it honest. Google's guidance is that a service area should be within about two hours' drive of your base, and a list of 20 named towns performs better in practice than 'the whole of Yorkshire'.

Step 3: choose categories carefully

The primary category carries the most weight. Pick the one that matches your main income, not your widest skill set. 'Plumber' not 'Contractor'. 'Roofing contractor' not 'Construction company'. 'Electrician' not 'Electrical installation service', unless installation is genuinely the core.

Add secondary categories for the other services you want to be found for, up to the limit Google allows. A heating engineer might use 'Heating contractor' as primary and 'Boiler supplier', 'Plumber' and 'Gas installation service' as secondaries. Check what the top three results in your town use by looking at their profiles.

Step 4: verify

Google will ask you to prove the business is real. For service-area trades this is increasingly done by video: you film your van with signage, your tools, and the area you work from. Postcard verification still exists for some businesses. Follow whichever route is offered.

Verification can take a few days. Do not create a second profile while waiting.

Step 5: fill every field

Field	What to put	Why it matters
Description	Up to 750 characters: who you are, what you do, where, since when. No keyword stuffing.	Shown to searchers; helps Google match intent
Services	One entry per service with a short description and a from-price where you can	Matches specific searches like 'boiler repair'
Hours	Real hours, plus 'more hours' for emergency cover if you offer it	Wrong hours lose calls
Phone	Your main business line	The call button is the most-used feature
Website	Your homepage, or the service page most relevant to the primary category	Drives traffic you can measure
Attributes	Tick everything that applies: woman-owned, free estimates, and so on	Filters in Maps
Photos	Ten at launch, then a few every month	Profiles with recent photos get more clicks

Step 6: ask for reviews, properly

Google gives every profile a short review link. Save it. Send it to every customer within 24 hours of finishing a job, by text, with a one-line personal message. Reply to every review you get, good or bad, in a sentence or two.

Do not pay for reviews, do not review your own business, and do not run a 'leave a review for a discount' offer. All three breach Google's rules and can get a profile suspended. Several agencies in this directory sell review automation, which simply sends the link and the reminder for you. That is legitimate. Incentivised reviews are not.

If you have past customers who were happy but never reviewed you, a single polite text asking for one is fine. Expect perhaps one in five to respond.

Step 7: post something

Profiles have an updates feed. Post a photo of a completed job with two sentences about it, once a week or so. It takes two minutes from your phone. Some agencies, including Trustmark Trades in this directory, automate exactly this by posting completed jobs to the profile and to Facebook. You can do it manually.

What to do weekly, in ten minutes

• Reply to any new reviews
• Post one completed-job photo
• Check the Q&A section and answer anything new
• Glance at the performance tab: calls, website clicks, direction requests
• Fix any suggested edits Google has applied that are wrong

Common mistakes that get trades suspended

• Adding keywords to the business name, such as 'Smith Electrical Emergency Electrician Leeds'
• Using a virtual office or a PO Box as the address
• Creating a profile for each town you serve
• Showing a hidden address as a storefront
• Buying reviews or reviewing yourself

When to pay someone instead

Setup is a one-off task and most tradespeople can do it from this guide. Ongoing management is a different question. If you will not reply to reviews, post photos or send review requests, paying a monthly fee for someone to do it is reasonable. Our list of the cheapest fixed-fee trades agencies shows who bundles profile management into a low monthly price.

Where a profile has been suspended, or where a competitor is spamming your category with fake listings, a specialist earns their fee. Those situations need experience, not effort.

For locksmiths in particular, who face more profile spam than almost any other trade, the agencies in our locksmith marketing agency rankings deal with this regularly.

Frequently asked questions