The Google Business Profile Checklist

A Google Business Profile that ranks has a few things done right: verified ownership, the most specific primary category, your real business name, complete hours and services, real photos added over time, and reviews you reply to. Category comes first because it decides which searches you can show up for at all.

Most businesses fill the profile out once, halfway, and never come back. Here is the full checklist in order of impact, with the source for each rule.

The checklist, in order of impact

1. Verify the profile. Google says verification “tells Google that you’re authorized to represent the business, so it’s more likely to show up in search results.” Nothing below matters much until this is done.
2. Set the primary category. The 2026 Whitespark Local Search Ranking Factors survey ranks primary category the number one factor for the map pack. Google’s guidelines say to “use as few categories as possible” and to choose categories that finish the sentence “This business IS a,” not “This business HAS a.” Pick the most specific match for your core service: “Mexican restaurant,” not “restaurant.” Then add secondary categories only for other things you really are.
3. Use your real business name. Google’s guidelines do not permit marketing taglines, service information or location information in the name. The same Whitespark survey ranks keywords in the name third, which is why people try it, but Google “reserves the right to suspend access” for profiles that break its guidelines. “Ace Plumbing” stays “Ace Plumbing.”
4. Show your address, or hide it and set a service area. If customers come to you, show the address. If you go to them, Google’s rule is to hide the address and list the areas you serve, no farther than about two hours of driving from your base. A rented mailing address you don’t operate from “isn’t eligible for a Business Profile,” per Google.
5. Enter accurate hours, including holiday hours. Whitespark’s survey puts “business is open at time of search” in its top five map pack factors. Wrong hours also send customers to a locked door, which is how one-star reviews get written.
6. List your services in the words customers use. “Drain cleaning,” not “hydro-jetting solutions.” Then write a plain description of what you do and where, the way you would say it on the phone.
7. Fill in every attribute that applies. Online estimates, accessibility, payment types, languages. Each one answers a question a customer has before they call. Google’s own line: “Businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results.”
8. Add real photos and videos, and keep adding them. Google lists photos and videos among its tips for improving local ranking. Finished jobs, your team, your vehicle or storefront, work in progress. Skip stock images; customers can tell.
9. Link to a website page that matches the profile. Same services, same area, same name, address and phone, fast on a phone. If you serve one main service, link that service page rather than a generic homepage.
10. Ask for reviews and reply to every one. Google says “more reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking,” and that replies show “that you value their feedback.” How to get more Google reviews has the ask, and the Google Review Calculator shows how many five-star reviews it takes to reach the rating you want.

Google’s quotes above come from its help page on local ranking and its guidelines for representing your business, both checked October 6, 2026.

Questions and answers are gone

Older checklists, including an earlier version of this one, told you to seed the questions and answers section with your own questions. That section no longer exists in the same form. Google retired the Q&A API on November 3, 2025 and began removing Q&A from profiles that December, replacing it with an AI Ask feature in Maps that answers questions from your profile, your reviews and your website.

The practical change: the answers have to live somewhere the AI reads. Put your service list, service area, pricing approach and hours in the profile, and answer the common questions on your website, plainly, one question per heading. The same habits that get you cited by ChatGPT now feed Google’s own answers. What AEO means covers how to write answers a machine will quote.

Posts are optional

Google Business posts are short updates on your profile: an offer, a finished job, a seasonal note. Google’s help page on local ranking doesn’t list them as a factor, so treat them as a customer-facing extra. If you only have time for one habit each week, ask for reviews instead.

The monthly pass

The profile is a small, ongoing habit, not a page you set once. Once a month:

• Add a few new photos of real work.
• Check hours, holiday hours and services against what you actually do.
• Reply to any review you haven’t answered.
• Search your business name and your main service from a phone, and read the profile the way a customer would.
• Check that your name, address and phone still match your website and the big directories.

That rhythm is what separates the businesses in the map pack from the ones stuck below it. The local SEO pillar shows how the profile, reviews, citations and website fit together, and the order to build them in if you are starting from zero.