What is Google My Business? Now Google Business Profile
Updated October 2026.
Calls about Google My Business tend to arrive in a panic. “Our listing has disappeared from Maps.” “Google suspended us and we don’t know why.” Or our least favourite: “Someone rang from Google and said our listing gets deleted unless we pay today.” That last one is a scam, by the way, and we’ll show you Google’s own words on it further down.
What strikes us on those calls is how few owners know what their profile actually is or how it works. Most set it up years ago, possibly when it was still called Google My Business, and haven’t touched it since. Then it breaks, or it quietly stops showing up, and it turns out to be the thing that was bringing in half their phone calls.
So this is the explanation we give owners, written down. What Google My Business is now, how Google decides who shows up, how to set it up without tripping a suspension, and the problems we’re asked to fix most often.
What is Google My Business?
Google My Business, now called Google Business Profile, is Google’s free tool for managing how your business appears on Google Search and Google Maps, including your address, hours, phone number, photos, reviews and posts.
Google renamed Google My Business in November 2021 and later retired the separate app. You now edit your profile straight from Google Search or the Maps app, by searching your business name while you’re signed in. If an older guide, or an older version of this article, sends you looking for a Google My Business app or dashboard, that’s why you can’t find it.
Dropping the Google My Business name caused a lot of confusion, so let’s be clear. When someone tells you to “update your GMB”, they mean your Google Business Profile. Same listing, same reviews, new name.
Why does a Google Business Profile matter so much for a local business?
Because for a local search, it’s often the first and only thing a customer sees before deciding whether to call you.
Think about the last time you searched for a dentist nearby or a restaurant by name. You probably didn’t click through to their website. You looked at the map, the stars, the photos and the hours, and you either called or moved on. That panel is the profile.
It does three jobs a website struggles with. It appears in map results for “near me” searches. It puts your reviews right next to your name. And it gives people one-tap actions: call, directions, website.
We’ll be blunt about how we prioritise this. If you’re a local business and you can only do one piece of online marketing in the next three months, we’d rather you did your Google Business Profile properly than started a new Instagram account. It sits closer to the moment someone decides to buy. And as more answers appear directly on Google, fewer people click through to websites at all, which we explain in our piece on zero-click SEO. Your profile is one of the places that still gets seen.
How does Google decide which businesses show up on the map?
Google ranks local results on three factors, relevance, distance and prominence, and it states plainly that you can’t pay for a better local ranking.
That’s straight from Google’s own help centre. Here’s what each factor means and, more usefully, what you can and can’t do about it.
Relevance is where most of your control sits. Google describes it as how well a profile matches what someone searched for, and your primary category does most of the work. In Whitespark’s 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey of local SEO specialists, primary category came out as the top factor on the profile itself. Google allows one primary category and up to nine more, plus a description of up to 750 characters. Pick the most specific primary category that’s true. “Pediatric dentist” beats “Dentist” if children are who you serve. Getting this wrong is the single most common fix we make on profiles we inherit.
Distance you can’t change, and you shouldn’t try. Google measures how far you are from the person searching, or from the place they searched for. The temptation is to rent a virtual office in a better neighbourhood. Please don’t. Google’s guidelines don’t allow it, and it’s one of the fastest routes to a suspension.
Prominence is the slow one. Google defines it as how well known a business is, drawing on information from across the web, including links, articles and reviews. You build it with a steady flow of real reviews, replies to all of them, and a website that other local sites mention. It’s also where proper SEO services and your profile start to help each other, because the links and mentions that lift your website lift your profile too.
How do you set up a Google Business Profile without getting suspended?
Claim any existing listing instead of creating a new one, use your real-world name, choose correctly between a storefront and a service area, verify with the method Google offers, then complete every field.
The original version of this article had the right steps. What it didn’t have was the traps, and the traps are where we spend most of our time.
Check for an existing profile first. Search your business name on Google Maps. Google may have created a basic listing from public information, or a former employee may have claimed it years ago. Claim that one rather than creating a duplicate, because duplicates split your reviews and confuse Google.
Use the name on your signboard. Sign in with a Google account the business controls, not a personal one that walks out the door with an employee. Google’s guidelines say your name must match your real-world business name, and adding keywords, taglines or locations is a violation. “Sharma Dental Clinic” is fine. “Sharma Dental Clinic Best Dentist in Pune Root Canal Specialist” is asking for trouble, and we see versions of it every month.
Storefront or service area. If customers come to you, list your address. If you go to them, as a plumber, cleaner or home tutor does, set a service area and hide your address. Running a service business from home and showing the home address is one of the most common reasons we see profiles flagged.
Verify. Google decides which verification methods you’re offered, and you can’t swap them. Options include phone or text, email, a video recording or live video call, and postcard. Google says most postcard codes arrive within 14 days and reviews can take up to five business days.
Complete everything. Hours including holidays, categories, services, products, photos of the real premises and team, and a description written for customers rather than for keywords. A half-finished profile loses to a complete one.
If you’d like us to look over your profile before you change anything, we offer a free SEO growth call that covers your Google Business Profile as part of it.
What keeps a Google Business Profile working after setup?
A weekly habit of asking for and replying to reviews, a few posts a month, accurate hours, fresh photos every quarter, and a monthly look at the performance numbers. Most profiles decay quietly without these.
Reviews come first. Ask every customer, the same way, through a link or QR code, and reply to every review, good and bad. In BrightLocal’s 2026 survey of US consumers, 74% said they look for reviews written in the last three months, so a burst of reviews from two years ago doesn’t help much now. India-specific data on this is thinner, but in our experience customers here read reviews just as closely.
Posts keep the profile alive. Updates, offers and events show on your listing, and Google archives posts older than six months unless they carry a date range. Our 25 social media content ideas translate well, and our holiday marketing ideas work as seasonal offers.
Hours matter more than people think. Wrong hours are the fastest way to earn a one-star review from someone who drove to a closed shop. Refresh photos every quarter with real, recent pictures. And check performance monthly. Your profile shows searches, calls, direction requests and website clicks, and it’s the trend that matters, not any single month.
A note on features you may remember from the Google My Business days. Google shut down the free websites built with Business Profiles in 2024, and chat was removed on 31 July 2024. If your profile still points to an old Google-built site, replace it with your real website or a WhatsApp link. Our Facebook marketing guide explains how we use WhatsApp for enquiries.
The Google Business Profile problems we’re asked to fix most
Why is my Google Business Profile not showing up in search?
Usually because it isn’t verified yet, it’s been suspended or limited, or it isn’t relevant or close enough to the person searching, and new or incomplete profiles also take time to appear for anything beyond their exact name.
The question behind this is “is it broken, or am I just not ranking?” Those have very different fixes, so test it properly. Search your exact business name on Google Maps. If you don’t appear at all, it’s a status problem, so check your dashboard for “not verified”, “suspended” or “pending review”. If you appear for your name but not for a search like “plumber near me”, it’s a ranking problem.
For ranking problems, start with relevance, the factor you control most. Is your primary category the most specific one that fits? Are your services listed? Then look at prominence. How many recent reviews do you have compared with the three businesses that do appear?
The failure mode we see most is searching from your own shop. Distance makes your profile look great where you’re standing and invisible two kilometres away, so owners get a false picture in both directions.
The tradeoff is that relevance fixes are quick, while prominence takes months of steady reviews.
Our rule: if you can’t find yourself by name, fix the status first. If you can find yourself by name but not by service, fix your category, then build reviews.
Why was my Google Business Profile suspended?
Almost always because something on the profile breaks Google’s guidelines for representing your business, most often a keyword-stuffed name, an ineligible address such as a virtual office, or a home address shown on a service-area business.
People ask this in a panic, often right after making what looked like a harmless edit. That’s frequently the trigger, because changing your name, address or category can prompt a fresh review against the guidelines. The common causes, from Google’s own guidelines, are a name that adds keywords, taglines or locations, an address you don’t staff during business hours, including virtual offices and PO boxes, a service-area business showing a residential address, and categories used as keywords rather than descriptions.
To appeal, use Google’s appeals process and provide evidence such as a business registration, licence, tax certificate or utility bill in the business’s name, as Google’s appeals guidance explains. Fix the violation before you appeal.
The failure mode that makes things worse is creating a new profile while the old one is under appeal. Google tells you not to, and duplicates can sink both.
The cost is time. Appeals are decided by email, with no promised timeline.
Our rule: fix the violation, gather documents that match the profile exactly, appeal once with strong evidence, and change nothing else until you hear back.
Can I have a Google Business Profile without a shop address?
Yes, if you serve customers at their location, by setting it up as a service-area business, listing the areas you cover and hiding your address.
The real question is usually “I work from home, will Google punish me?” It won’t, as long as you set it up the way Google intends. A service-area business such as an electrician, cleaning service, home tutor or mobile mechanic can list a service area instead of a storefront, and if you work from a residential address you must hide it. What you can’t do is invent a storefront. A virtual office or mailbox that isn’t staffed during business hours isn’t eligible. Purely online businesses with no face-to-face contact are a different case and generally aren’t eligible for a profile at all.
The failure mode is a home-based business showing its home address to look established, or renting a co-working address it never visits. Both are common reasons for suspension.
The tradeoff is real. With no visible address you lose the directions button, and some customers simply trust a storefront more. That’s the cost of not having premises, and faking premises costs far more.
Our rule: if customers don’t come to you, set a service area and hide the address. If they do, list the address and make sure it’s staffed during the hours you show.
Is Google Business Profile free, and who keeps calling me about it?
Yes, it’s completely free, and Google never asks for payment over the phone to create, verify, keep or rank your profile, so calls promising a better position for a fee are not from Google.
People usually ask this straight after one of those calls, and the caller almost always still says “Google My Business”. “Your listing will be removed unless you verify today.” “We can get you to the top of Maps.” It sounds official, and it targets exactly the owners least likely to know better. Google’s own help page on fraudulent calls says it will never ask for payment information over the phone or guarantee you a special spot in its products. Google does make some real automated calls, to confirm your opening hours for example, but it won’t ask you to sign up for anything or pay.
The failure mode is paying an anonymous caller for “verification” or “ranking”, or worse, giving them manager access. Some take control of the profile and then charge you to get it back.
What does cost money is optional. Google Ads, including Local Services Ads, and paying an agency like us to manage the profile for you. Either way, you should always know exactly what you’re buying.
Our rule: never pay or grant access to anyone who calls you. If in doubt, hang up and check your profile yourself by searching your business name while signed in.
How many Google reviews do I need?
Enough to look at least as credible as the businesses ranked around you, with a steady flow of recent ones, because there’s no magic number and recency matters more than a big old total.
The real question is “why are competitors with worse service outranking me?” Often it’s because they have more recent reviews, and reviews feed prominence. Here’s how we benchmark it. Search your main service on Maps from where your customers are, and note the review counts and ratings of the top three. That’s your target range. Then look at the dates. A competitor with eighty reviews, ten of them from last month, is in better shape than one with three hundred and nothing since last year.
The failure mode is the shortcut. Google’s review policy bans paying for reviews, offering discounts in exchange, and asking only your happy customers. Google blocked or removed more than 240 million policy-violating reviews in 2024. In India, the Bureau of Indian Standards has also set out a standard for fair online reviews, IS 19000:2022.
The tradeoff of asking everyone is that you’ll get some critical reviews. That’s fine. A reply that fixes the problem often persuades more than another five stars.
Our rule: ask every customer, the same way, every time, and reply to every review within a few days.
Why is my Google Business Profile not getting verified?
Usually because the details you entered don’t match what Google can confirm about the business, the verification step wasn’t completed properly, or the profile is still being reviewed, which Google says can take up to five business days.
The real problem is often the method. People wait for a postcard that’s stuck in the post, or fail a video verification because the recording didn’t show what Google needed. Google chooses which methods you’re offered, and you can’t pick another. For video, you generally need to show your location, signs of the business such as signage or equipment, and proof that you manage it, in one continuous recording. For postcards, Google says most codes arrive within 14 days.
The failure mode we see repeatedly is editing the name, address or category while verification is pending, which can restart the process or trigger a fresh review. The next most common is a name or address that doesn’t match the signage or registration documents.
The tradeoff is patience. There’s no way to buy faster verification, and repeated attempts can make it slower.
Our rule: make every detail match your real signage and documents, complete the method Google offers carefully, and change nothing until you get a decision. If it fails twice, contact Business Profile support through Google’s help centre rather than resubmitting the same thing.
What should you do before you touch your profile?
Search your own business name on Google Maps, signed out, from a phone, and look at it the way a customer would. Check the name, the category, the hours and the last three reviews before you change anything.
Google My Business is now Google Business Profile, but the job hasn’t changed. It’s the free listing that decides whether a local customer calls you or the business next door. Get the basics exactly right, then do the unglamorous part every week. Ask for reviews, reply to all of them, post now and then, and keep your hours accurate.
If your profile is suspended, stuck in verification or just not showing up, tell us what you’re seeing. We’ll tell you honestly what’s wrong and what it’ll take to fix it.
