Google Business Profile for trades

Type "electrician Preston" into Google on a phone and you get three businesses on a map before you get a single website. Those three get most of the calls. Your Google Business Profile is the thing that decides whether you are one of them. It is free, it takes an afternoon to set up properly and it goes stale quickly if left alone.

Older tradesmen still call it Google My Business, or GMB. Same thing. This page is the overview, and each post it links to goes deep on one problem.

What decides the map ranking

Google has said local results lean on relevance, distance and prominence. In practice for a tradesman:

• Relevance is your categories, services and the words on the profile matching the search.
• Distance is how close you are to the searcher, or to the area they typed. You cannot change this, but you can stop claiming places you do not work in.
• Prominence is how well known you look: reviews, rating, website, mentions elsewhere.

Our post on ranking higher on Google Maps works through each of those for a small firm.

The setup that matters

1. Pick the right main category. A heating engineer who chooses "Plumber" because it is more common may lose out on the searches that match the real job. See best categories for trades.
2. Mark yourself as a service area business if customers never visit you. Hide the home address, then list the towns and postcodes you actually cover.
3. Add services one by one, each with a sentence in plain words.
4. Use the name on your van. Not the name plus "24hr Cheap Boiler Repair Bolton". Google's guidelines prohibit adding keywords or extra descriptors to your business name.
5. Add opening hours, including bank holidays and any emergency cover.

If you have not got a profile yet, how to add your business to Google walks through it. If you inherited one from a previous owner or a former partner, see editing, transferring or deleting a profile.

Verification

Google usually wants proof that you are a real business at the address you gave. That can be a video, a postcard code or a call. Do it as instructed, with a real van and real equipment in shot. Rushing it or sending the wrong thing is how people end up stuck, and verification help covers the usual snags.

Not showing up at all

Before blaming Google, check three things: verified, not suspended, and the right category. The post on why your business is not showing up on Google is a quick checklist. If the profile is suspended, stop making new ones. Suspended profiles explains how to read the reason and appeal.

Posts and photos

Google gives you space for posts, offers and photos. Most tradesmen use it once and stop. A boiler install in Chorley, a before and after of a loft conversion in Sale, a photo of the finished tiling: those are plenty. The post what to post on your Google Business Profile has a list. Add the photos too, because customers do scroll through them.

Reviews and replies

Reviews belong to the profile, so everything in the Google reviews overview feeds this page. Reply to each one. It is a public conversation that future customers read.

Check your own work

Once or twice a year, go through the profile as a stranger would. Does the phone number ring? Are the hours right for the Easter weekend? Does the website link work? If you want a structured pass, the optimisation checklist and the audit guide do that, and a free Google Business Profile audit tool is coming soon to the free tools page.

Keeping the details the same elsewhere

Yell, Checkatrade, TrustATrader and your own site should show the same name, phone number and service area as the profile. Different spellings make you look less established. Keep a one-line note of how each is written so a quick check takes minutes.