Google Business Profile in 2026: The Complete Guide

A Google Business Profile is the free listing Google gives an eligible business to manage how it shows up on Google Search and Google Maps. In Google’s own words, a business can “manage how your business shows up on Maps and Search at no charge”. It is the box with the hours, the phone number, the photos, the reviews, and the directions button that appears when someone searches for your business — or for a business like yours — nearby. This guide explains the whole thing, end to end: who can have a profile, how to set one up and get it verified, how to fill it in properly, how local ranking actually works, and how to handle reviews, posts, photos, messaging, the new AI features, performance data, and suspensions. Every fact in it comes from Google’s own help pages, guidelines, developer documentation, or blog, read in full on 12 November 2026, and the honest limits are stated wherever Google itself is silent. Checked 12 November 2026.

The Short Answer: What a Google Business Profile Is — and What It Is Not

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A Google Business Profile is a free listing. That is the first and most important thing to understand, because much of the bad advice around it starts by pretending otherwise. Google never charges for a profile, for verification, for support, or for reinstatement, and it will never ask for a verification code. Anyone asking for a code, a PIN, a payment, or a password to “maintain” a profile is not Google. Ads are a separate, optional, paid product: a profile can point customers to a website, to social media, or to booking links, and location-based ads exist as a separate product on top. The profile itself costs nothing.

What the profile does is give a business control over the information Google shows about it. Without a profile, Google may still show information about a business — it draws on user reports and licensed content to update listings — but the business itself cannot edit it, reply to reviews, add photos, or see performance data. With a verified profile, the business can maintain accurate information (hours, website, phone, location), interact with customers (post photos and videos, collect and respond to reviews), and attract new customers (improve how the business appears, direct people to its website, social media, or booking links).

What it is not matters just as much. It is not a website: it does not replace one, and it has no pages of its own. It is not an ad: paying for ads is a separate product, and paying for ads does not improve a profile’s local ranking. It is not a social media page: it has no followers, no feed in the social sense, and its posts are announcements, offers, and events, not a timeline. And it is not something you can buy a better ranking for. Google’s local-ranking page states it plainly: “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.” That sentence is the single most useful sentence in this whole guide, because so much of what is sold to small businesses contradicts it.

Two gates govern everything that follows. The first is eligibility: a business must make in-person contact with customers during its stated hours. The second is verification: customers can only find a business profile on Google after verification is complete, and editing the profile, replying to reviews, and seeing performance data all require it. Everything in this guide sits behind one or both of those gates, and the next three sections take them in order.

One more framing note before the detail starts. Local results are part of Google Search ranking, and the ranking systems behind them are the same broad family of systems that rank everything else Google shows. For the full picture of how those systems work — core updates, spam updates, the reviews system, and what Google says about AI-generated content — our guide to Google algorithm updates explains each family in plain language. This guide stays focused on the profile itself and on what Google’s Business Profile documentation actually says.

Who Can Have One: Eligibility, Storefronts, and Service-Area Businesses

The eligibility rule is one sentence long, and it decides most cases on its own: “To qualify for a Business Profile, a business must make in-person contact with customers during its stated hours.” A shop that customers walk into qualifies. A plumber who drives to customers’ homes qualifies. A business that exists only online does not. The test is contact with real customers, in person, during the hours the profile claims.

That rule has a small set of exceptions. ATMs, video-rental kiosks, and express mail drop boxes can have profiles, but they must include contact information for customer help. Seasonal businesses qualify too — Google’s example is a winter-only ice-skating rink — provided they display permanent signage year-round. Delivery-only food services can qualify under conditions Google calls Virtual Food Brands. These are narrow carve-outs, not loopholes: each comes with its own conditions, and none of them removes the in-person-contact requirement for the business as a whole.

The ineligible list is longer and worth reading in full, because it is where most “can I have a profile?” questions get answered. Rental or for-sale properties are out — vacation homes, model homes, and vacant apartments cannot have profiles, although their sales or leasing offices can. An ongoing service, class, or meeting at a location the business does not own or does not have authority to represent is out. Lead-generation agents or companies are out. Brands, organisations, artists, and other online-only businesses are out: a brand with no physical location and no in-person customer contact cannot have a profile, however well known it is. Age-restricted businesses — alcohol, cannabis, weapons — cannot be service-area businesses without a storefront. And any business whose address is a P.O. box or a mailbox in a remote location is out: a P.O. box is not an address for a profile.

Eligible businesses come in two shapes, and the choice between them is one of the first decisions in setup. A storefront business has a physical location customers can visit, staffed during its business hours. A service-area business travels to its customers — a plumber, an electrician, a cleaning company — and serves a defined area rather than a single address. A business without a customer-facing storefront must hide its address: during setup there is a toggle, “Show business address to customers”, and it must be switched off, after which only the service area shows on the profile. This is the correct answer for a home-based business: a home address should not be published, and Google’s own flow provides the way to keep it private. What a service-area business must not do is list a home address as if it were a shop, or use a P.O. box or a mailbox service as a stand-in.

Finally, there is exactly one profile per business. Google’s guidelines say so directly: “There should only be one profile per business, as this can cause problems with how your information displays on Google Maps and Search.” Google’s sign-up page is blunter about the consequence: “Your Google account may be suspended if we find multiple profiles for the same business in the same metropolitan area.” A second profile for the same business in the same area is not a second chance at ranking — it is a suspension risk. If a duplicate already exists, the answer is to claim it and resolve the ownership, not to create another one. The troubleshooting section at the end of this guide covers that case.

Setup Checklist: Create or Claim Your Profile

Setting up a profile follows a fixed sequence on Google’s own sign-up page. It is worth doing in order, because each step depends on the one before it, and because a wrong turn early on — a wrong name, a wrong category, a second profile — is harder to fix later than it is to avoid now.

1. Sign in with a Google Account. A Google Account is required, and Google recommends using a business email domain rather than a personal address. This account becomes the owner of the profile, so it should be an account the business controls and will keep — ownership problems later usually start with a profile owned by an ex-employee’s personal account, or by an agency that never handed it back.

2. Go to the create-a-profile page. New profiles are created at business.google.com. This is the only starting point for a new profile; do not create a profile from inside Google Maps by adding a place, because that route creates an unverified listing that still has to be claimed and verified, and it is easy to end up with a duplicate.

3. Enter the business name — or select it from the suggestions. If the business already appears in Google’s suggestions, select it rather than typing a new entry: that is the claim path, and it avoids creating a duplicate. The name must be the business’s real-world name as customers know it, exactly as it appears on the storefront, the website, and stationery. Adding extra information or keywords to the name is not permitted and can result in suspension. If someone else has already verified the profile, do not create a new one — request ownership instead, which the ownership section later in this guide explains.

4. Search for a business category. Categories come from Google’s list, and the choice here shapes how the profile matches searches. The full rules for choosing a category are in the next section; at setup, pick the single most specific category that describes the core business.

5. Choose whether customers can visit a location. If the business has a storefront staffed during business hours, the answer is yes. Otherwise it is no, and the business becomes a service-area business that hides its address.

6. Enter the service area. A service-area business can list up to 20 service areas, based on cities, postal codes, or other areas. Google’s tip is practical: do not extend the boundaries farther than about 2 hours’ driving time from where the business is based. A service area that covers half the country is not a service area; it is a claim the business cannot honour, and it will not help the profile match the searches that matter.

7. Enter the phone number and website. Use the business’s own number — ideally the individual phone number or store page for each location — not a remote call centre. The number customers call should be the number that reaches the business.

8. Finish, then verify. After the details are entered, the final step is verification. Google offers “Verify now” from a red banner, or “Verify later” if the business wants to finish the details first. But remember the gate: customers can only find the profile after verification is complete, so “verify later” is a delay, not an alternative. The next section covers verification in full.

Claiming an existing listing follows the same logic from the other direction. If a business already appears on Maps or Search as an unverified listing — which is common, because Google creates listings from user reports and licensed content — the owner should claim it rather than create a new one. From Maps or Search, the route is “Claim this business” and then “Manage now”. Claiming starts the same verification process, and the same rule applies: if someone else has already verified the listing, the owner requests ownership rather than creating a duplicate. A claimed profile and a new profile are the same thing once verified; the difference is only in how the business gets there, and the wrong choice — creating a second listing — is the one that causes trouble.

Verification: The Methods Google Offers, the Wait, and Re-Verification

Verification is the gate to everything. Before verification, a business cannot edit its information, cannot reply to reviews, cannot add photos that show publicly, and cannot see performance data — and, most importantly, customers cannot find the profile at all. Google’s sign-up page states it without qualification: “Customers can only find your business profile on Google after you complete verification.” Verification is also what gives the business ownership of the profile. It is the single most important step in this guide, and it is the step where the most common mistakes happen.

The first thing to understand is that the business does not choose its verification method. “Verification methods are automatically determined by Google and can’t be changed.” Which methods are offered depends on the business type, the public information available about it, its region, and its opening hours. Sometimes more than one method is required. There is no way to request a different method, and no way to skip verification — any service offering to verify a profile for a fee is not Google, and Google never charges for verification.

The methods Google offers are five. Video recording is the method Google recommends where it is offered: the business records a video through the profile on a mobile device, showing the location and proof that it operates there. Phone or text sends a code to the business’s phone number — but an IVR system cannot receive the code, so the number must reach a person or a phone that can receive a text. Email sends a code to the business’s email address. Live video call is a real-time call with Google, available only within the location’s business hours and not for all businesses: on the call the business shows its outside signs or street sign, the business itself or its equipment, and proof of management, such as access to employee-only areas, the cash register, the kitchen, storage, non-sensitive documents, or keys. Mail, or postcard, sends a physical card with a code to the business address, and is not available for all businesses.

The postcard method has the most rules, and they are worth following exactly. Most codes arrive within 14 days. The code is five digits. Verification codes expire after 30 days. While waiting for the card, do not edit the business name, address, or category — if those change, the code will not work. And do not request a new code while one is in the post: requesting a second code invalidates the one already mailed. If the card never arrives, the correct response is to check the address on the profile, wait out the 14 days, and then request a replacement through the normal flow — not to create a new profile.

After the verification steps are completed, Google reviews the information. “Verification reviews take up to 5 business days. On rare occasions, reviews may take longer.” That five-business-day figure is the only timing Google publishes for verification, and it belongs to verification alone — it is not a timeframe for anything else in this guide, and it should not be quoted for appeals or for review removals, where Google gives no timeframe at all.

Two faster routes exist for businesses that qualify. Instant verification is possible when the business’s website is already verified in Google Search Console — Google can match the website to the profile and skip the manual steps. Bulk verification is available for businesses with ten or more locations, allowing many profiles to be verified together rather than one at a time. Neither route is available to every business, and neither can be requested as an alternative to the methods Google offers: they appear when the business qualifies, and not otherwise.

One warning runs through all of this, and Google states it in the same terms on the verification page and the eligibility page: “Google will never ask for your verification code.” The code must be kept secure and not shared — not even with profile managers. Anyone who asks for the code, whether by phone, email, or message, is running a scam, and the correct response is to refuse and report it. The same applies to anyone offering to verify, reinstate, or “maintain” a profile for a fee: Google never charges for any of those things.

Finally, verification is not always a one-time event. If the “Get verified” button reappears on a profile that was already verified, Google could not completely verify the business, and the business should re-verify. If a video verification is rejected with “Review issues”, follow the on-screen instructions rather than submitting the same video again. And if Google asks for additional information, it is likely because the business details were recently updated — a name change, an address change, or a category change can trigger a fresh verification request. That is normal, and it is the reason the postcard rules warn against editing the name, address, or category while a code is in transit.

Completing the Profile: The Fields That Matter

Verification opens the door; completion is what makes the profile useful. Google’s own local-ranking guidance is the reason this section exists: “Businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results. If your business info isn’t accurate, your Business Profile might not show up for relevant searches in your area.” Every field below has a rule from Google’s guidelines, and the rules are stricter than most business owners expect.

Name. The business name must be the business’s real-world name — the name as it is consistently represented and recognised in the real world across signage, stationery, and other branding, and as customers know it. Including unnecessary information in the name is not permitted and could result in suspension. That means no keywords stuffed into the name (“Joe’s Plumbing — Best Plumber in Chicago, 24/7 Emergency”), no slogans, no locations, and no services. The name on the profile is the name on the shopfront. If the shopfront says “Joe’s Plumbing”, the profile says “Joe’s Plumbing”.

Category. Categories come from Google’s list, and a business cannot create its own. Google’s guidelines give three rules that together answer almost every category question. First, choose the fewest number of categories it takes to describe the overall core business — one category is often enough, and more is not better. Second, choose categories that are as specific as possible but representative of the main business, and use the “this business IS a” test: select categories that complete the sentence “this business IS a…” rather than “this business HAS a…”. A restaurant IS a restaurant; it HAS a bar, but “Bar” is not its category. Third, a specific category implicitly includes the more general ones above it, so redundant categories can be skipped: choosing “Golf Resort” already covers the more general categories it sits under. If no exact category exists, choose a more general one rather than the closest-sounding wrong one, and do not use categories solely as keywords or to describe attributes. A business with several locations should keep its names and categories consistent across all of them.

Address or service area. A storefront business lists its full, accurate address. A service-area business lists its service area — up to 20 areas — and hides its address, as described in the eligibility section. Either way, the rule is the same: “Make sure your address and/or service area is accurate and precise.” An imprecise address is worse than a missing one, because it sends customers to the wrong place and tells Google the wrong thing about where the business is.

Phone and website. The phone number should be the business’s own number, not a call centre, and ideally the individual number for that location. The website should be the business’s own site, or the store page for that location. Both are contact points that customers actually use, and both are fields Google checks when it matches a profile against the real world.

Hours, including special hours. Regular hours and special hours — holidays, seasonal changes, one-off closures — both belong on the profile, and both should be kept current. Hours are one of the first things a customer checks before visiting or calling, and they are also one of the fields Google uses to decide whether a profile is actively maintained. A profile that still shows last year’s holiday hours is a profile telling customers the wrong thing.

Attributes. Attributes are the extra details Google lists for a business: parking availability, Wi-Fi, wheelchair access, outdoor seating, and others depending on the category. They are small facts, but they are the facts customers filter on — someone searching for a restaurant with outdoor seating, or a shop with parking, is filtering on attributes. Fill in every attribute that is true, and leave blank every attribute that is not.

Description. The description should be accurate and complete: what the business does, in its own words, without invented claims and without keyword stuffing. Google’s guidelines do not state a character limit on any page read for this guide, so none is given here — the description should be as long as it needs to be to describe the business accurately, and no longer.

Services, products, and menus. Services are the list of what the business does, and for service businesses they matter twice over: a reviewer may be asked to choose the specific service provided from the business’s list. In-store products are available only for retail businesses in eligible countries or regions, and they may appear in local search results — a product listed on the profile can surface when someone searches for that product nearby. Menus work the same way for food businesses. The rule for all three is the same: list what the business actually offers, accurately, and keep the list current.

Two habits make the difference between a profile that is complete once and a profile that stays complete. The first is to check the profile regularly, because Google itself updates profiles from user reports and licensed content — information on a profile can change without the owner touching it, and the owner is the one who has to correct it. The second is to treat every field as a promise to a customer: a wrong phone number, a wrong address, or wrong hours is not a minor error, it is a customer sent to the wrong place at the wrong time.

How Local Ranking Works: Relevance, Distance, and Prominence

Local results — the businesses that appear on Google Maps and in Search when a customer looks for a business or a place near their location — rest on three factors that Google names itself: relevance, distance, and prominence. Understanding what each one means, and what each one does not mean, is the whole of local ranking. There is no fourth factor in Google’s own account, and there is no secret factor that the documentation leaves out.

Relevance is “how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for”. Complete and detailed information helps Google match a profile to a search: the category, the services, the attributes, the description, and the products all give Google the material to judge whether this business is what the searcher is looking for. This is why completion matters for ranking as well as for customers — a profile with a vague category and no services listed gives Google little to match against, and a profile that describes its business precisely gives Google a lot. Relevance is the factor the business controls most directly, and it is controlled by accuracy: the right category, the real services, the true attributes.

Distance is “how far each business is from the customer who’s searching”. If the customer does not share a location, Google uses what it knows about their location. Distance is the factor the business cannot change. A business cannot move closer to a searcher, and it cannot make Google think it is closer than it is — the address and the service area on the profile are facts, and the service area should reflect where the business actually works, not where it wishes its customers were. The practical consequence is that a business competes most directly with the businesses near its customers, and the honest strategy is to be the best match for the searches that happen near where the business actually is.

Prominence is “how well-known a business is. Prominent places are more likely to show up in search results.” Google says prominence is also based on information like how many websites link to the business and how many reviews it has, and that “more reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking”. Links and reviews are the two inputs Google names. That is the entire list Google publishes — and it is worth saying plainly what Google does not publish. It publishes no weights for relevance, distance, and prominence, no ranking of the optimisation levers by impact, and no review-count threshold. The local-ranking page lists the levers in this order — verify the business, keep information up to date, respond to reviews, add photos and videos, add in-store products — but it never says that order is an impact ranking, and it must not be read as one. Any third-party “ranking factor” study that claims to know the weights is not Google’s position.

The levers Google itself lists are worth taking in that order, as actions rather than as a ranking. Verify the business: verification tells Google the owner is authorised, so the profile is more likely to show. Keep business information up to date: complete and accurate information — full address where customers can visit, hours including special hours, category, and details such as parking or Wi-Fi — makes a profile more likely to show for relevant searches. Respond to reviews: replying shows the business values feedback, and “positive reviews and helpful replies can help your business stand out”. Add photos and videos to show what the business offers. And add in-store products, where the business is a retail business in an eligible country or region, because products might show in local search results.

The hard line sits at the end of Google’s own page, and it deserves to be quoted in full: “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google. We do our best to keep the search algorithm details confidential to make the ranking system as fair as possible for everyone.” That is the answer to every offer a business will receive. Anyone selling a better local ranking, selling verification, selling reinstatement, or selling a guaranteed position is not Google, and the service being sold does not exist. Google never charges for the profile, verification, support, or reinstatement, and will never ask for a verification code. The only ranking work that exists is the work Google lists: a verified profile, complete and accurate information, replies to reviews, photos, and products. Everything else is either a scam or a waste of money.

That framing also separates genuine search work from the “hacks” that are sold alongside it. For readers who want the wider picture of what search optimisation actually is — and what the newer labels around AI search really mean — our AEO vs GEO vs SEO guide separates genuine SEO work from sold shortcuts. And for the generative-answer side, where AI summaries now sit above local results, our GEO explainer on getting content cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews covers the citation-earning work that sits on top of the ranking systems described here. Neither of those replaces the profile work in this guide; they are the companions to it.

Photos and Videos: What to Add and the Rules That Govern Them

Photos and videos are the part of the profile customers look at first and the part owners most often neglect. Google’s own guidance treats them as a ranking lever as well as a customer-facing one: adding photos and videos shows what the business offers, and the local-ranking page lists them alongside verification, complete information, and review replies. But they are governed by rules, and the rules are specific.

The first rule is timing. “Your photos and videos show up on Google only after you verify your Business Profile.” Photos added before verification do not appear, and that is not a bug — it is the gate working as designed. The second rule is patience: “It can take up to 24–48 hours before your photos and videos show on your Business Profile.” A photo that does not appear immediately has not necessarily failed; it may simply still be in that window. Wait the full two days before assuming something is wrong.

What to photograph is straightforward: the storefront, the products, and the services. The storefront photo tells a customer what to look for when they arrive. Product photos tell a customer what the business sells. Service photos — the work being done, the team at work, the result — tell a customer what the business does. A profile with no photos is a profile asking customers to trust a business they cannot see.

There are two special photo types, and they behave differently from the rest. The logo helps customers recognise the business on Google. The cover photo sits at the top of the profile and should be the image that best represents the business. But the cover photo is not guaranteed to show first: Google’s own page says that setting a cover photo “doesn’t guarantee the cover photo will show up as the first image for your business”. And there is a quality rule attached to it: “If the cover photo you select is low-quality or if other sources suggest that it’s not the best photo to represent your business, a user-submitted photo may be selected instead.” A blurry, dark, or poorly framed cover photo can be replaced by a customer’s photo — which is another reason to choose the cover carefully and to keep it current.

Videos have hard limits, and these are the only size and duration figures in this guide, because they are the only ones Google’s pages verify. A video must be up to 30 seconds long, up to 75 MB in size, and 720p or higher in resolution. Anything longer, larger, or lower-resolution does not meet the specification. For photos, no minimum dimensions were confirmed on any Google page read for this guide, so none are stated here — the practical standard is a clear, well-lit, honest photo of the real business, not a stock image of someone else’s.

Two more rules complete the picture. Customer photo updates — photos customers add to the profile themselves — are a normal part of a profile’s life: owners can reply to them, and Google states that “photo updates don’t impact your review score”, so a customer’s photo is not a rating and should not be treated as one. And businesses with ten or more locations can bulk upload photos through a spreadsheet, which is the only scaled route Google offers — there is no bulk upload for a single-location business, and no shortcut around adding photos one at a time for a small business.

The honest summary of this section is short. Add real photos of the real business, after verification, and give them up to two days to appear. Choose the logo and the cover photo carefully, because the cover can be replaced if it is poor. Keep videos within the 30-second, 75 MB, 720p limits. And keep adding photos as the business changes — a profile whose newest photo is three years old is telling customers the business has not changed in three years, whether or not that is true.

Posts: Updates, Offers, and Events

Posts are the profile’s announcement board. Google’s posts page states their purpose plainly: “You can post updates on your Business Profile to share announcements, offers, updates, and event details directly with your customers on Search and Maps. When customers find your latest business updates on your Business Profile, it helps them decide to visit your business.” That sentence is also the limit of what Google claims for posts. It says posts help customers decide to visit. It never says posts affect ranking, and this guide does not claim that they do. Posts are for customers, not for the algorithm.

There are three post types, and each has its own requirements. Updates are the general-purpose type: a description, a photo or video, and an action button with a link — and the button should lead to a website where the customer can complete the action, such as making a booking, ordering online, or learning more. Offers promote a sale or a special: they require a title, dates, and a time, and automatically include a “View Offer” button; they can also include a description, a photo or video, a coupon code, a link, and terms and conditions. Events announce something happening: they require a title and start and end dates and times — and without times, an event shows as lasting 24 hours on the event dates — plus a description, a photo or video, and an action button.

Where posts appear depends on the device. On mobile, customers find them in the “Updates” or “Overview” tabs on Search and Maps, and featured posts can be added directly to the profile. On desktop, they appear in the “From the owner” section. There is one more route worth knowing: posts about events, deals, or specials may automatically show from the business’s social media channels, such as Facebook and Instagram, or from profile posts — currently available in English for single-location food and drink businesses in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Where that automatic showing is available, featured posts appear in place of reviews on mobile, although reviews remain reachable through the star rating or the Reviews tab.

Posts can be scheduled and repeated. Scheduling works by turning on “Schedule this post” and picking a date and time. Repeating works from the “Repeats” menu, on a weekly, monthly, or custom schedule. A post can also be published across multiple Business Profiles at once, which is the route for a business with several locations announcing the same thing. And a post can be edited or deleted after publishing, so a mistake is not permanent.

Two time rules govern a post’s life. The first is the archive rule: “Posts older than 6 months are archived unless a date range is set.” A post without a date range disappears from the profile after six months. The second is the review rule: after publishing, Google reviews the post against the posts content policy, and its visibility depends on its status. Live means the post is public and shows on Search and Maps. Pending means it does not show — it is still being uploaded or processed, or the profile is unverified. Not approved means it does not show, and the question mark next to the status indicates which content policy it violates.

There are traps, and the most common one is the phone number. “Posts that include a phone number in the post description might get rejected if they cannot be verified as being connected to the business.” A phone number in a post is not a shortcut to a call — the profile already has a call button — and if Google cannot verify that the number belongs to the business, the post can be rejected outright. Leave the number out of the post and let the profile’s own contact details do the work.

The content rules are the same ones that govern the profile as a whole: keep posts professional (no misspellings, extra characters, valueless text, auto-generated or distracting content), respectful, and family-friendly; only link to websites the business trusts, with no malware, viruses, phishing, or pornographic material; and remember that regulated goods and services may use posts but must not include content about the products themselves — the list covers adult services, alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceutical products, recreational drugs, health and medical devices, gambling, fireworks, weapons, and financial services. A post that breaks those rules is a post that will not show.

A practical posting rhythm follows from all of this rather than from any rule Google states. Post when there is something to say — a new product, a seasonal offer, an event, a change in hours, a genuine announcement — and say it once, clearly, with a photo and a link that lets the customer act. Posting for the sake of posting fills the profile with noise, and a profile full of noise is a profile customers stop reading. Readers who want to control what they themselves see in search while their profile is being found through it — including switching AI Overviews on or off — can find those controls in our guide to turning off AI on Google Search.

Reviews: Asking for Them the Right Way

Reviews are the most valuable and the most mishandled part of a profile. They are the part customers trust most, the part Google counts toward prominence, and the part where the rules are strictest. Google’s own reviews page states the starting point: “Customer reviews can give helpful feedback about your business. When you reply to their reviews, you show them that you value their feedback.” The rules that follow exist to protect one principle: a review must reflect a genuine experience at the business.

Asking for reviews is allowed, and Google provides the tools for it. The business can share a review-request link or a QR code, and customers who follow it can leave a review. That is the legitimate route, and it is the only route a business needs. What Google allows is specific: merchants may solicit or encourage the posting of content that does represent a genuine experience, without offering incentives to do so and without attempting to influence the rating or the contents of the review. Ask every customer, with nothing attached, and accept whatever they write.

What Google bans is equally specific, and it is worth listing in full, because each item on the list is a practice that is still sold to businesses as a service. Fake engagement “is not allowed and will be removed”. That includes content not based on a real experience, reviews or ratings paid for directly or in kind, content posted from multiple accounts by or at the request of one person, and content posted using an emulator, device tampering, a modified operating system, or another method to mimic genuine engagement. Merchants must not offer incentives — payment, discounts, free goods or services — in exchange for posting any review, or for revising or removing a negative one. Merchants must not discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews. Merchants must not require or pressure users to leave ratings or write reviews while on the premises, and must not request that specific content be included — including asking staff to solicit a certain number of reviews, or asking for reviews that include specific content, including content that identifies a staff member. Rating manipulation is banned, including content posted because of an incentive, content showing unusual volumes or patterns of contributions indicating manipulation, and content based on a conflict of interest — current or former employment, a contractual or consultancy relationship, or other professional or personal affiliations such as industry competitors or family relationships. And merchants must not post content on a competitor’s place or business to undermine its reputation.

Read that list again as a set of tests for any “review service” a business is offered. A service that pays for reviews, that offers customers a discount for a five-star review, that asks only happy customers, that stations someone by the door asking for reviews on the spot, that tells customers what to write or which staff member to name, or that writes reviews for the business’s own staff and family — every one of those is a violation, and the reviews it produces will be removed. Worse, the pattern itself can be detected: unusual volumes or patterns of review contributions are themselves listed as evidence of manipulation.

Three honest limits belong in this section too. First, reviews are only available in certain countries or regions and for certain business categories, and Google says availability may change over time to match how people search. Second, Google publishes no review-count threshold for ranking — it says more reviews and positive ratings “can help” local ranking, and no minimum number is published, so none is stated here. Third, a profile may also show reviews from trusted, non-Google sources, such as travel or local review sites, which the business does not control and cannot remove through the profile. The reviews on a profile are not all written on Google, and the business does not own the whole picture.

The right approach, in one paragraph, is this: verify the profile, put the review-request link or QR code where customers naturally see it — on a receipt, at the counter, in a follow-up message — and ask every customer, every time, with nothing attached and no script for what they should say. Then reply to what comes back, which is the subject of the next section.

Replying to Reviews and Handling the Bad Ones

Replying to reviews is where a profile stops being a listing and starts being a conversation — and it is also where Google’s own guidance is most practical. The first requirement is verification: before replying, the business must be verified. The route is simple: go to the Business Profile, choose “Read reviews”, choose Reply, enter the reply, and choose Reply again. For service businesses, a reviewer may be asked to choose the specific service provided from the business’s list of services, which is one more reason to keep that list accurate.

What happens to a reply is less obvious, and it surprises owners. Google reviews replies for policy compliance before they appear. “If your reply isn’t approved to be posted, you’ll be asked to edit it. Replies usually take up to 10 minutes to review, but sometimes a review can take up to 30 days.” A reply that does not appear immediately has not necessarily been rejected; it may still be in review, and the wait can be as long as a month. An approved reply is publicly posted as the business, with no personal name shown — the reply speaks for the business, not for the person who typed it. The reviewer is notified when the business replies. Replies can be edited or deleted afterwards, and customers can still change their review after a reply, with the review date changing to the latest update. A direct link to a customer’s review can also be shared from Google Maps, from Reviews, then More, then Share review, then Send a link.

How to handle a negative review is the question owners ask most, and Google’s documentation answers it by what it allows rather than by what it forbids. Reply publicly and professionally. Thank the reviewer, address the specific problem they describe, and say what the business will do about it — without arguing, without personal details, and without asking the reviewer to take the review down. The reply is read by every future customer who reads the review, not only by the reviewer, and a calm, specific reply to a bad review does more for a business than a dozen unanswered five-star reviews. The reviewer can still update their review after the reply, and a genuine fix followed by an updated review is the best outcome a bad review can have.

What never works is trying to remove a review that is honest but unflattering. Only reviews that violate Google’s policies are eligible for removal, and a negative but honest review stays. A review that violates the policies — fake, incentivised, posted by a competitor, containing personal information or abuse — can be flagged from the profile. Flagging is the route; paying for removal is not, and threatening a reviewer is not, and neither will work. Google’s own policy is the test, and the business does not get to decide what the policy says.

There is one more honest complication, and it is worth stating because owners run into it and assume the system is broken. Review appeals — the process of asking Google to reconsider a review that was reported but not removed — are delayed. This site’s own reporting covers it: Google says review appeals for Business Profiles and Maps are delayed with no timeframe. That is this site’s reporting of the situation, not a statement from Google’s help pages, and it is cited as such. The practical consequence is that a flagged review may sit for a long time without a decision, and there is no timeframe Google gives for the appeal. The correct response is to flag it once, reply to it professionally in the meantime, and move on — not to flag it repeatedly, and not to pay anyone who promises to remove it faster.

Q&A and Messaging: What Still Exists and What Ended

This is the section where the most common advice about Business Profiles is out of date, because two features owners remember no longer exist in the form they remember. Getting this section right matters more than getting any other section right, because a business that builds a workflow around a feature that ended will waste time and miss customers.

Q&A still exists — with limits. Customers can ask questions about a place, and owners or managers answer in the profile’s Q&A section. But availability is limited to select categories and regions, and Google says the feature’s appearance and functionality may change. That is the whole of what Google’s help documents say about the feature in the material read for this guide, and this guide does not go beyond it: there is no management workflow described here — no notifications, no dashboard steps — because Google’s own help does not describe one in the material read, and the official Q&A help page was not located in this research run. What is certain is the API side: the Q&A API was discontinued on 3 November 2025, with support ending on 15 September 2025, and there is no replacement. There is no API route to manage Q&A at scale, and any tool claiming to offer one is offering something Google ended.

Messaging, as owners remember it, ended. Google’s built-in Business Profile chat and call history ended on 31 July 2024, according to Google’s help page on changes to Business Profile chat and call history. There is no inbox inside the profile any more, and there is no chat workflow to describe: a business cannot receive and answer customer messages from inside its profile, and any guide that still describes that workflow is describing a feature that no longer exists.

What exists now is a contact option, not an inbox. Eligible claimed-and-verified profiles can add a WhatsApp or text-message chat option, which routes the customer to SMS or WhatsApp — the conversation happens in the customer’s own messaging app, not inside the profile. That is the whole of what was verified about the option on Google’s own pages in this run: the regions, dates, and limits that secondary summaries report were not read on Google’s own pages, so they are not stated here.

Two reported changes belong in this section as reports, not as Google announcements, and they are labelled as such. First, the Message button now sits beside the Call button on Maps for eligible listings — a placement change reported in November 2026, which this site reported as Google Maps putting business messaging beside the call button. Second, Messenger links may be added to profiles automatically — reported by Search Engine Roundtable from one owner’s email screenshot in October 2026, and covered in this site’s report on Google adding Messenger chats to Business Profiles. Both are reports of changes owners are seeing, not announcements from Google, and they should be treated as what is happening on profiles now rather than as a documented feature with published rules.

The practical advice that follows from all of this is short. Answer the questions in the Q&A section where the feature is available to the business. Do not build a customer-service workflow around a profile inbox, because there is not one. If the business wants customers to message it, add the WhatsApp or text-message contact option where eligible, and staff the WhatsApp number or the phone that receives the texts — because a contact option that nobody answers is worse than no contact option at all.

AI Features: Review Summaries and Ask Maps — and How to Influence Them

Two AI features now sit on top of the profile, and both change what a customer sees before they ever read a single review or open the profile itself. Neither can be bought, neither can be switched off by the business, and both are fed by the same material the rest of this guide covers: accurate profile data and genuine reviews.

Review summaries are AI-generated summaries of a place based solely on user reviews. Google’s developer documentation describes them plainly: “AI-powered review summaries are AI-generated summaries of places based solely on user reviews. By synthesizing key elements of user reviews, such as place attributes and reviewer sentiment, review summaries provide high-level insights and help users make informed decisions.” The summary is disclosed as “Summarized with Gemini”, and that disclosure must be incorporated in attributions, with a link to the place’s reviews on Google Maps. In English, review summaries cover the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Japan, and fourteen other countries; Japanese summaries are available in Japan, Portuguese in Brazil, and Spanish in fifteen countries. Google has since announced the general availability and regional expansion of AI-powered summaries in the Places API — three types, place, review, and area summaries, powered by Gemini — with review summaries described as encapsulating the top themes from user reviews.

What feeds a review summary is the key question for a business, and the answer is in the definition: the summary is based solely on user reviews. The themes, the attributes, and the sentiment in the summary come from what customers actually wrote. That means the business controls the inputs, not the output: accurate profile data, complete attributes, and genuine, detailed reviews are what the summary is built from. A business with thin, generic reviews gets a thin, generic summary. A business whose customers write detailed reviews about specific things — the food, the service, the atmosphere, the prices — gets a summary that reflects those things. There is no way to edit a summary, and no way to pay for a better one. The work is the same work the reviews sections of this guide describe, done well and done consistently.

Ask Maps is the larger change. Launched on 12 March 2026, it is a conversational experience in Google Maps that answers complex, real-world questions a map could never answer before — Google’s own examples are “My phone is dying — where can I charge it without having to wait in a long line for coffee?” and “Is there a public tennis court with lights on that I can play at tonight?” Answers are conversational, with a customised map to help visualise the options, personalised from places the user has searched for or saved, and they can turn plans into action: “You can book restaurant reservations, save places to a list or share them with friends. Get directions and navigate to your destination with just a few taps.” To build those answers, “Maps analyzes information from over 300 million places, including reviews from our community of more than 500 million contributors.” Ask Maps started rolling out in the US and India on Android and iOS, with desktop coming soon. Google’s own launch post says only that — the US and India at launch — so no wider rollout is stated here.

For a business, Ask Maps matters because it can book, save, and share — and because the answers are built from the information Maps holds about a place. Accurate hours, accurate services, complete attributes, and genuine reviews are the inputs to those answers, just as they are the inputs to a review summary. There is no way to pay for a place in an AI answer, just as there is no way to pay for a better local ranking. And the honest limit is the same as the ranking limit: Google has published no explanation of how Ask Maps chooses which businesses to name in an answer. The business can make its information accurate and complete; it cannot see inside the selection.

Immersive Navigation arrived the same day, and it belongs in this section in one paragraph because it changes how customers arrive, not because it is a profile feature. It is a 3D view of the drive — buildings, overpasses, and terrain, with lanes, crosswalks, traffic lights, and stop signs highlighted — which Google called its biggest transformation of the navigation experience in over a decade. Every second, Maps incorporates over 5 million updates to traffic around the world, and the community provides more than 10 million driving contributions every single day. Immersive Navigation started rolling out across the US, expanding to eligible iOS and Android devices, CarPlay, Android Auto, and cars with Google built-in. A business cannot do anything to its profile to affect Immersive Navigation, and it does not need to: the feature changes the journey, and the profile’s job is to make the destination worth arriving at.

For the full tour of Gemini inside Maps from the user’s side — Ask Maps, review summaries, and navigation together — our guide to what Gemini adds to Google Maps covers the features as a customer experiences them. And for the AI search features that sit around Maps — AI Overviews and AI Mode, which run on the same core ranking systems as local search — our guide to using Google’s AI search features without losing the classic web results covers that side of the experience. This guide’s point is the narrower one: the AI features read the profile, so the profile has to be right.

Performance and Insights: Measuring What Works

Performance data is available only for verified Business Profiles. That is the gate again, and it is the reason verification comes first in this guide: an unverified profile has no performance data at all, and a business that has not verified cannot measure anything. For a verified profile, the data shows how people discover the profile and what actions they take, for an individual profile or for multiple profiles together, over a set date range. It covers organic search results and Google Ads together — the two are not separated in the report — and it can be downloaded as a spreadsheet, including for multiple profiles at once.

Each metric is defined in Google’s own terms, and the definitions matter, because several of them do not mean what their names suggest. Interactions is a summary of all total interactions. Searches shows the search terms people used to find the business — updated at the start of each month, and it can take up to five days for new terms to show up — and it is worth knowing that search queries show up whenever the profile appears for a certain search, and that the business cannot directly manage those queries. Views counts how many people viewed the profile on Search and Maps — unique visitors, counted once per day, with a person counted a limited number of times across devices and platforms — and it counts profile views only, not overall views of the business on Google. Directions counts direction requests, with adjustments for multiple taps, cancellations, and spam. Calls counts the number of times a customer clicked on the call button on the profile — button clicks, not completed calls, and not conversations. Website clicks counts clicks through to the website. Messages counts the number of different conversations through messages. Bookings counts the number of bookings people completed — but only when the bookings are managed through a booking provider, because bookings show on the profile through a provider. Booking clicks counts hotel booking-link clicks only, and applies to hotels. Products counts views of products sold at the profile’s location, not products sold online. Menus counts clicks on menu content per user, per day — menu photos, menu links, and structured menu data. Offers counts views and clicks on offers. Only the metrics that apply to the business appear; not all metrics are available to every profile.

Insights is the second half of the picture, and it is not available to everyone. “The Insights feature may not be available for all Business Profiles.” Where it is available, it gives data-driven recommendations, created from public, location-based information such as customer reviews, photos, and local search trends, and it is “often updated so check them regularly”. Insights is a recommendation feed built from public information about the business and its area, not a report on the business’s own data — and it is the part of the performance picture most owners never look at, because it sits apart from the metrics.

How to use the numbers is a matter of choosing the right ones. Compare date ranges rather than single days: a week against the previous week, a month against the previous month, the same month last year where the business has the history. Watch directions, calls, and website clicks as the action metrics — they are the counts of customers doing something, rather than merely seeing something. And do not treat views as customers: a view is a unique visitor counted once a day, and a person can view a profile many times without ever visiting, calling, or buying. Views are the top of the funnel, not the bottom, and a profile with rising views and flat directions, calls, and website clicks has an awareness problem in reverse — people are finding it and not acting, which usually means the information they see is incomplete, out of date, or unconvincing.

One more note belongs here, because owners ask about it: Google has tested new Business Profile reports, and this site reported on Google testing new Business Profile reports. That is a test of a reporting change, covered as news, not a change to the metrics defined above — and the metrics in this section are the ones Google’s performance help page documents, which is what a business should measure against until Google publishes something new.

Troubleshooting and Your First-30-Days Checklist

Most profile problems fall into a small set of failures, and Google’s own documentation gives the fix for each one. Work through them in the order below before assuming something unusual has happened.

The profile is suspended. Google may suspend or disable profiles that do not follow its guidelines. If the owner believes the profile should be reinstated, the route is an appeal through Google’s appeals tool — and the appeal can only be submitted once, so it should not be rushed. Before appealing, make sure the profile follows all the guidelines, and gather supporting evidence whose business name and address match the profile: official business registration, a business licence, tax certificates, and utility bills for the business, such as electricity, phone, water, or internet. The appeals tool shows the date of the initial decision, the reason, a link to the violated policy, whether the decision can be appealed, and its status; evidence can be attached as multiple files, with an explanation in the text box of why the profile should be reinstated, and a confirmation box that all evidence is attached. After submission, Google reviews the appeal and sends an email with a decision — and Google’s appeals page gives no timeframe for that decision, so none is stated here. Do not create a new Business Profile for the same business while appealing: a second profile is a second violation, not a workaround. If a reinstatement request is denied, an additional review may be requested, with additional evidence not added with the original appeal, and businesses in the European Economic Area may have additional redress options. Appeal statuses are Submitted, Approved, Not Approved, Can’t be appealed, and Eligible for appeal. A suspended profile is hidden from the public until it is reinstated, and if a profile is removed, the public cannot go to it and the owner and managers cannot act on it — although the owner and managers can ask Google to reinstate it, and Google reinstates both the profile and its owner and managers.

The Google Account itself is restricted. If the account that manages the profile is restricted, the profiles it manages are suspended and no other profiles can be created or claimed. The fix is in the other order: lift the restriction first, through an appeal on the My accounts page, and then appeal the profile suspension. Appealing the profile while the account is still restricted will not work.

There are duplicate profiles. Resolve the ownership rather than creating another profile. Claim the existing listing, request ownership where someone else verified it, and let Google’s ownership process sort out which profile survives. Creating a second profile for the same business in the same metropolitan area can get the Google account suspended, and a duplicate created during a suspension appeal makes the appeal harder, not easier.

The information on the profile is wrong. Google sources updates from user reports and licensed content, so information on a profile can change without the owner touching it. The fix is to correct it in the profile — and then to check the profile regularly, because the same thing can happen again. A profile is not a document that is finished once; it is a listing that other people and other systems can change.

Reviews are missing or delayed. Flag only the reviews that violate Google’s policies, and remember that review appeals are delayed with no timeframe — this site’s own reporting covers that delay, and it is cited as the site’s reporting in the reviews section above. A review that is honest but negative is not missing and not delayed; it is a review, and the answer to it is a reply, not a removal request.

A review appeal was denied. One additional review may be requested, with additional evidence not added with the original appeal. That is the second chance, and it is the last one the process offers — so it should be used with new evidence, not with the same evidence resubmitted.

With the failures covered, here is the first-30-days checklist — the work, in order, for a business setting up a profile now.

1. Verify. Complete verification first, because nothing else works until it is done: customers cannot find the profile, and the business cannot edit it, reply to reviews, or see performance data. Keep the verification code secure, and remember Google will never ask for it.

2. Complete every field. Real-world name, the fewest and most specific categories, accurate address or service area, the business’s own phone and website, hours including special hours, every true attribute, an accurate description, and the real services, products, and menus. Check each field against the real world, not against what the business wishes were true.

3. Add the logo, the cover photo, and photos of the business. The storefront, the products, the services — real photos of the real business. Give them up to 48 hours to appear, and choose the cover photo as if it were the shopfront itself, because it can be replaced by a customer photo if it is poor.

4. Publish the first post. An update, an offer, or an event — something real, with a photo and a link that lets the customer act. No phone number in the description, and nothing the business would not want a customer to see.

5. Set up the review link and ask every customer. Put the review-request link or QR code where customers naturally see it, and ask every customer, every time, with nothing attached and no script for what they should say. Then reply to what comes back.

6. Answer the Q&A. Where the feature is available to the business, answer the questions customers have asked in the profile’s Q&A section — and keep answering them as new ones arrive.

7. Check Performance weekly. Compare date ranges, watch directions, calls, and website clicks as the action metrics, and do not treat views as customers. If the numbers move, ask which field changed first.

8. Re-check the profile monthly for Google-sourced changes. Google updates profiles from user reports and licensed content, so the profile the business set up is not necessarily the profile that is showing a month later. Check it, correct it, and keep it correct. A profile is a living listing, and the businesses that treat it as one are the businesses whose profiles customers trust.

Sources

All facts in this guide were checked against Google’s own help pages, guidelines, developer documentation, and blog. Checked 12 November 2026. No competitor page was used as a source. Two pages were verified from the full text surfaced by search rather than by opening the page directly in this run: the photos and videos help page (answer/6103862) and the Google Maps Platform Blog post on AI-powered summaries. Everything else was read in full on Google’s own pages on 12 November 2026.

• Google Business Profile Help, “Get started with Google Business Profile” — what a profile is, what it lets a business do, storefront and service-area sign-up, online-only businesses pointed to Google Ads; checked 12 November 2026
• Google Business Profile Help, “Sign up for Business Profile” — the setup flow, the 20 service areas, the 2-hours’ driving tip, one profile per metropolitan area, hiding a storefront address; checked 12 November 2026
• Google Business Profile Help, “Verify your business on Google” — verification methods, the 5-business-day review, postcard rules, the 14-day and 30-day figures, instant and bulk verification, code security; checked 12 November 2026
• Google Business Profile Help, “Business eligibility and ownership guidelines” — the in-person-contact rule, exceptions, the ineligible list, ownership revocation, representative rules; checked 12 November 2026
• Google Business Profile Help, “Guidelines for representing your business on Google” — name and category rules, one profile per business, accuracy, suspension for violations; checked 12 November 2026
• Google Business Profile Help, “Tips to improve your local ranking on Google” — relevance, distance, and prominence, the levers Google lists, “no way to request or pay for a better local ranking”; checked 12 November 2026
• Google Business Profile Help, “Manage customer reviews” — replying to reviews, the review-request link and QR code, reply review times, third-party reviews, photo updates; checked 12 November 2026
• Google Business Profile Help, “Prohibited & restricted content” — fake engagement, incentives, selective solicitation, conflicts of interest, what merchants may and may not do; checked 12 November 2026
• Google Business Profile Help, “Create & manage posts on your Business Profile” — Updates, Offers, and Events, scheduling and repeating, the 6-month archive rule, Live/Pending/Not approved statuses; checked 12 November 2026
• Google Business Profile Help, “Manage your Business Profile photos & videos” — photos after verification, the 24–48-hour window, video limits, logo and cover photo, bulk upload; verified from the search-result full text, 12 November 2026
• Google Business Profile Help, “Understand your Business Profile performance & insights” — metrics definitions, verified-only availability, organic and Ads together, Insights availability; checked 12 November 2026
• Google Business Profile Help, “Fix suspended or disabled profiles” — appeals, evidence, one appeal only, no timeframe, account restrictions, removal; checked 12 November 2026
• Google, The Keyword, “Ask Maps and Immersive Navigation: New AI features in Google Maps” (12 Mar 2026) — Ask Maps launch, 300 million+ places, 500 million+ contributors, Immersive Navigation; checked 12 November 2026
• Google for Developers, “AI-powered review summaries” (Places API) — summaries based solely on user reviews, “Summarized with Gemini”, language and country coverage; checked 12 November 2026
• Google Maps Platform Blog, “AI-powered summaries for places, areas, and reviews are now Generally Available” — general availability of place, review, and area summaries; verified from the search-result full text, 12 November 2026