Google Business Profile optimization checklist for contractors

Why the profile comes before paid marketing

Google ranks local results on three things: relevance (how well your profile matches the search), distance, and prominence. Prominence means how well-known you are, including how many reviews you have and how many websites link to you. Google also says there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.

Google's own list of tips is short: verify your business, keep your information up to date, respond to reviews, and add photos and videos. Most of this checklist is those four things done properly. If someone sells you "Google Business Profile optimization services," these are the same steps they'd take, in the same dashboard you already have.

Google Business Profile optimization, in priority order

Work from the top. The first three rows protect the profile. The rest help you show up and get the call.

Step 1: Verify it and keep ownership in your name

Search your business name on Google Maps first. If a profile already exists, claim it. Don't make a second one: Google's guidelines allow one profile per location.

Google picks the verification method, and you can't change it. It depends on your business type and region. Options include phone or text, email, a live video call, mail, or a recorded video. Reviews can take up to 5 business days. If you're verifying by mail, don't edit your name, address or category while you wait, or the code won't work.

Make yourself the primary owner. A profile can have several owners but only one primary owner. Managers can do almost everything else, but they can't add or remove users or delete the profile. If an office manager, a relative or a marketing company helps you, add them as a manager.

Step 2: Name, address and service area

These are the settings that can get your profile pulled, so set them before anything else.

• Use your real name. Enter it the way it appears on your signs and paperwork. Google says "Including unnecessary information in your business name isn't permitted, and could result in the suspension of your Business Profile". Its guidelines rule out service details, hours, phone numbers, taglines and location details in the name. "Rivera Plumbing" is fine. "Rivera Plumbing 24/7 Emergency Plumber Houston" is not.
• Hide your address if customers don't come to you. Google says service-area businesses should hide their address. If customers do visit, say at a showroom, you can show the address and set a service area too.
• Don't use a P.O. box or virtual office. Google doesn't accept them as a business address.
• Keep the service area realistic. You can add up to 20 service areas, by city, zip code or other places. Google says the whole area shouldn't stretch more than about 2 hours of driving from where your business is based.

If your profile is already suspended, use Google's appeal form. Have your business registration, license, tax certificate or a utility bill ready first. Once you open the evidence form, you have 60 minutes to submit it.

Step 3: Categories and services

Pick the most specific primary category that fits. Google's example is "Nail salon" instead of "Salon". Type your trade into the category box and choose the closest match. You can't create your own category, so if yours isn't listed, pick the closest general one.

You can add up to 9 more categories. Google says not to add one for every service you offer. Its test is that a category should finish the sentence "This business IS a," not "this business HAS a". Add a second category only if a customer would describe your business that way.

Then fill in Services. Google suggests services based on your business type, and you can add custom ones with a price and description. Google rejects custom services that break its policies, and it says to keep prices and phone numbers out of service names. Put the price in the price field. Name services the way people ask for them on the phone: water heater replacement, drain cleaning, panel upgrade.

Step 4: Hours, phone and links

• Hours. Choose "Open with main hours" and enter the hours you really take calls. You can split a day into two blocks, mark a day as 24 hours, and set special hours for short changes like holidays. Google's guidelines say businesses that operate only by appointment shouldn't list hours. If that's how you work, the setting is "Open with no main hours".
• Phone. Use a number your business controls. Google prefers a local number over a central call center. You can add up to 2 numbers besides your main one.
• Website. Enter the full address, starting with https://. Don't use a link that sends people to a page that isn't your business's own. Then tap the link on your phone and check that the site loads.
• Booking links. If you see the option, you can add up to 10 "Book an appointment" links and set one as the business preferred link. Outside booking providers can also add links to profiles on their own, so check what's showing on yours.

Check that link even if you set it up years ago. We looked at this in our research on 1,000 trade business websites (September 2026). About 1 in 5 website addresses listed for these businesses in public map data led nowhere useful: dead domains, error pages, sites that didn't respond, or parked for-sale pages. The details are in our State of American Trades Websites report.

Step 5: Photos from real jobs

Photos and videos are on Google's short list of ranking tips. For a trade business, the useful ones are photos only you can take: your truck, your crew, finished installs, and before-and-after shots from real jobs. Google's requirements:

• A logo and a cover photo, so people recognize you.
• Photos in JPG or PNG, between 10 KB and 5 MB. 720 by 720 pixels is recommended, 250 by 250 is the minimum.
• Videos up to 30 seconds and 75 MB, at 720p or higher.
• In focus, well lit, with no heavy filters or edits.

Photos are reviewed before they appear. Add a few whenever you finish a job worth showing.

Step 6: Ask for reviews the right way

Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking. Reviews are also what a homeowner reads before deciding who to call. To ask without breaking Google's rules:

1. On a computer, open your Business Profile, select Read reviews, then Get more reviews, and copy the link. The QR code can only be made in a computer browser.
2. Text or email the link when you finish a job. Print the QR code on invoices or receipts.
3. Ask every customer, not only the happy ones. Google's policy bans selectively asking for positive reviews and discouraging negative ones.
4. Never offer a discount, gift or payment for a review, or for changing or removing one. Google calls that fake engagement and strictly prohibits it.
5. Don't have employees, relatives or friends post reviews. Google's policy removes reviews based on a conflict of interest, including employment and family ties.
6. Reply to reviews, good and bad. Keep it specific to the job, and don't use replies to pitch deals.

What barely matters, and what to skip

Once the steps above are done, the rest is optional. None of these is on Google's list of local ranking tips.

• Posts. You can publish updates, offers and events. Posts older than 6 months are archived unless you set a date range, and a phone number in the post text might get it rejected. Post when you have something real, like a seasonal tune-up special. Nothing says you need a weekly schedule.
• Description. Up to 750 characters, with no links, and not focused on promotions or prices. Two or three plain sentences about what you do and where you work is enough.
• Q&A and chat. Google's help pages list both as available only in select regions, and Q&A only for select categories. If you don't see them on your profile, you haven't missed a step.
• Paid profile management. Nobody can buy you a higher spot. If you hire help anyway, add them as a manager and keep primary ownership yourself. Say no to anyone who wants to add keywords to your business name.

Next step: open your profile on a computer, work down the priority table in order, and copy your review link before you close the tab.