The Google Business Profile (the old 'Google My Business') is your business's first salesperson: it is what the customer searching for you sees, before your site, before your storefront. Setting it up takes 20 minutes. Setting it up well is this guide.
1. Create the listing (or claim it)
Before creating one, search for your business on Google Maps: in most cases, the listing already exists, generated automatically. If so, click 'Claim this business'. Otherwise, head to google.com/business, 'Add your business', with the exact name on your storefront: no keywords added to the name, Google suspends listings that cheat.
2. Get it verified by Google
Google needs to prove you really are the owner: verification by video (film the storefront and the inside, the fastest in 2026), by phone or by postal mail (5 to 14 days). Until the listing is verified, your changes stay invisible: do this step first, the rest can wait until tomorrow.
3. Fill it in to get found
In order of impact: the primary category (it decides which searches you appear in, choose the most precise one), the hours (including public holidays), the phone and the website, the description (750 characters, write the way you speak, your specialties first), the photos (about ten, recent, taken on a phone in daylight), and the attributes (terrace, wheelchair access, contactless payment: these are search filters).
The Developer creates or claims the listing, gets through verification and fills in each field in the right order. The morning report tells you what has been filled in and what is missing (often: three photos to take).
4. Keep it alive (or it dies)
A listing that is filled in then abandoned slips down the ranking: Google favors active businesses. The bare minimum: three photos a month, one post a week (dish of the day, job delivered, something new), reviews answered within 48 hours. On that last point, we have written the complete Google reviews guide.
To see where your listing stands today (and what a customer searching for you really sees), the audit scores it point by point:
