Ask a local business owner where their online presence lives and they will point at their website. It is the thing they paid for, argued about, and redesigned twice. Now ask when they last opened their Google Business Profile. The usual answer is a long pause, then something like “we set that up years ago.”
That is backwards, and it is expensive. When somebody searches for a plumber, a dentist, or an IT company near them, what appears first is not a row of homepages. It is a map with business listings attached, each showing hours, a star rating, photos, and a phone number. Most people get what they need right there and never click through to anybody’s site. That listing is your storefront window, and for many businesses it gets seen more than any page they actually own.
Claim It, Verify It, and Actually Hold the Keys
A listing can exist for your business whether or not you created it. Google builds profiles from various sources, so there may already be one showing your address, possibly an old one, possibly with hours nobody at your company chose. Until you verify ownership, you cannot fix any of it.
Google’s help documentation is direct: to edit your business info on Google, such as business name or business hours, and interact with customers, you need to verify your business. It frames verification as ownership, noting that when you verify, you gain ownership of your Business Profile and can make sure your business info is accurate. Documented verification options include phone or text, email, live video call, video recording, and postcard, with available methods depending on the business.
Two practical warnings. First, verify under an account the company controls, not a personal Gmail belonging to whoever sat at the desk that day. We have spent real hours helping clients recover profiles verified by a former employee who is not returning calls. Second, deal with any duplicate listing for an old address, because stale listings split your reviews and send people to a door that no longer opens.
Hours, Categories, and Getting the Basics Exactly Right
The unglamorous fields do the heaviest lifting, because they answer the questions people actually have: are you open, are you close, and do you do the thing I need.
- Hours, including holiday hours. Google’s guidelines ask businesses to provide regular customer facing hours of operation. Special hours matter more than regular ones, because someone who drives to a business Google says is open on a holiday remembers that trip. Set them ahead of the calendar, not the morning of.
- Categories, chosen carefully. Google’s guidelines advise selecting as few categories as possible to describe your overall core business, and offer a useful test: a category should complete “this business IS a,” not “this business HAS a.” The guidelines also say not to use categories as keywords.
- Your name as it really is. Google asks that your name accurately represent your business name and match the real world name used consistently on your storefront, website, and stationery. Stuffing service keywords into the name field is discouraged.
- Services and description. List what you sell in plain terms customers would use. This is where specific work goes that does not belong in a category.
- Address or service area. Google’s guidelines require a precise, accurate address at a real location and state that P.O. boxes or mailboxes at remote locations are not acceptable. If you travel to customers instead, set a service area.
One nuance: Google’s guidelines note that certain business types, including hotels, schools, movie theaters, and transportation services, should not provide hours. Most local service businesses should.
Photos and the Questions Section Nobody Watches
Photos matter more than owners expect, for a simple reason. A listing with real photos of a real place feels like a business that exists. A listing with one blurry logo feels like a business that might have closed. You do not need a photographer. You need a recent phone, decent daylight, and pictures of what people are trying to confirm: the front of the building, where to park, the reception area, your team, and the work you do.
Then there is the questions and answers section, the most overlooked part of the whole listing. Anyone can post a question about your business there. Anyone can also answer it, including people who do not work for you and do not know. We have seen wrong parking directions, wrong pricing, and confidently incorrect statements about what a business does, sitting publicly on a profile the owner had not opened in a year.
Get ahead of it. Write down the ten questions your front desk answers every week, then post and answer them yourself so accurate information is already there. Check back periodically. Nobody sends you a bill for a wrong answer. They just quietly go somewhere else.
Reviews, Responses, and What Happens Next
Reviews are the part owners think about most and manage least well. Google’s documentation states that reviews can help your business stand out and give potential customers helpful info, and encourages businesses to reply, framing it as showing customers that their feedback matters.
Asking is allowed. Google’s guidance notes you can ask customers to visit a Google link or scan a QR code to leave a review. Buying them is not. Google’s policy states that offering incentives such as free or discounted goods or services in exchange for customers posting, changing, or removing reviews is considered fake and misleading content and is strictly prohibited. So build the ask into your normal process: a line in the invoice email, a card at checkout, a link in your technician’s follow up.
On negative reviews, the contrarian advice is the right advice. A wall of nothing but perfect five star ratings reads as suspicious to experienced shoppers, and Google’s own guidance observes that a mix of positive and negative feedback often feels more trustworthy. What matters is the response. Reply calmly, factually, without arguing the customer’s feelings, and make clear how to reach you to resolve it. That reply is not for the angry reviewer. It is for the next twenty people reading it while deciding whether to call you.
Posts, Updates, and Making This a Habit
Your profile supports short updates that appear on the listing and give it a pulse. Nobody needs to post daily. Once or twice a month is plenty: a seasonal reminder, a new service, holiday hours, a note that you are hiring. It signals an active business and fills space that would otherwise sit blank.
Make this a recurring fifteen minute task with a named owner. Confirm hours and upcoming holidays, answer new questions, respond to reviews, add a photo or short update, and glance at the profile’s performance information to see what people searched to find you. That last one is quietly the most useful data most local businesses never look at. Fifteen minutes a month on your most viewed page beats most marketing spend, the same logic behind our argument that saving time beats saving money.
The Bottom Line
Your Google Business Profile is free, it is often the only thing a local customer sees, and almost nobody maintains it. Claim it under a company controlled account. Get hours, categories, and address exactly right. Put real photos on it. Answer the questions before a stranger does. Ask for reviews the legitimate way and respond to all of them. Then check it monthly. This is the rare marketing task where effort is small, cost is zero, and neglect is nearly universal, which makes doing it properly a genuine advantage.
If you are not certain who controls your listing, whether a duplicate is floating around, or what your profile currently says about your hours, that is worth an hour of attention. We help businesses across Denton County sort out ownership of their online presence and keep the details accurate. Contact us today.
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