The listing you may never have asked for
Search for your own trade and town the way a customer would, and look at what comes back. Before any website appears there is usually a map with three business names under it, each showing opening hours, a star rating, photos and a phone number. Search for a business by name and the same details fill a panel down the side of the page. That map entry and that panel are one thing, a Google Business Profile, and yours exists whether or not you have ever touched it. Google builds stub listings from directories and map data, which means a good number of firms around here are being described to their customers by a listing nobody in the business has ever seen.
It is free, and not free in the sense that the useful parts cost money later. There is no paid tier behind it, and claiming it takes an evening. I struggle to think of a better hour's work for a local business, which is what makes it so odd how often it is left to rot.
Why the map beats page one for local work
Somebody hunting for an electrician in Boston, or a cafe near where they are standing, gets those map results above the ordinary ones, and most of the choosing happens right there. The same logic runs one size smaller, and local SEO for village and market-town businesses covers it: what the map means when the nearest competitor is a drive away rather than across the street. At that point the customer is not comparing websites, they are comparing panels: who is open now, who has photos of real work, who has reviews from people nearby. A business with a filled-in profile can win that comparison against a competitor with a far better website, because the better website never gets its turn.
Google publishes figures to encourage businesses to fill the profile in, and they are worth knowing even allowing for who is doing the telling. Customers are 70% more likely to visit a business with a complete profile, it says, 50% more likely to consider buying from it, and 2.7 times more likely to think it reputable. Treat those as marketing rather than research if you like. The direction of them still holds, because a half-empty panel reads like a business that might have stopped trading, and people do not ring a business they are not sure still exists.
Claim it, then fill in every box
Claiming starts at google.com/business, or from the "Own this business?" link on the listing itself. Google then has to satisfy itself that you are who you say you are, usually by video these days, sometimes by phone or by post to the premises. If a marketing firm you parted with years ago claimed the listing, or a previous owner did, you can still get it back. Google has a request-access process that gives whoever holds it a deadline to reply. It is a tedious few weeks and it is worth doing, because whoever controls that profile controls the phone number and the opening hours your customers see.
Then fill in every box. Take your time over the primary category, which is the most important field on the whole profile: it decides which searches you can appear in at all, so pick the closest truthful match for what you are, rather than for something you do occasionally. Set a service area if you travel to customers, which has the useful side effect of keeping a home address off the internet. Put the opening hours in and remember the bank holidays. Write the services list in the words a customer would use, and write the description in your own voice instead of stuffing it with search terms.
Photos count for more than most owners expect, and only real ones are worth putting up: your work, your van, your premises, your food, you. Stock photography on a local listing gets spotted straight away, and it does quiet damage, because the photos are how somebody works out what they will get. A dozen honest pictures taken on a phone are worth more than anything staged. Every section you leave blank is one the business above you has filled in.
Reviews decide who gets the call
Star ratings are the part of the panel customers weigh most heavily, and the bar keeps going up. BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey found that 31% of consumers will now only use a business rated four and a half stars or better, up from 17% the year before, and that around two thirds want at least four stars before they will consider a business at all. Three reviews from 2022 does not clear that bar, however good the work behind them was.
Asking is most of it, and it has to be done straight. Ask when the job is finished and the customer is pleased, and make it one tap by sending your review link rather than telling them to go and look you up. Reply to all of them, the bad one included, because every future customer reads that reply as a sample of what you are like to deal with. What you must not do is buy, swap or write reviews. Google takes them down, and since April 2025 they have been illegal here: the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act banned fake reviews outright and lets the CMA fine businesses directly. If asking feels awkward, it can be done honestly and automatically, with a review request sent for you by text or email after each job, within Google's rules.
Fifteen minutes a week keeps it alive
Treat the profile as a noticeboard rather than a plaque on the wall. Google notices whether anything ever happens on it, and so do customers. A short post most weeks is enough: a job finished, a seasonal reminder, a service people do not realise you offer. Add a photo or two each month. Answer the questions in the Q&A section yourself, before a stranger answers them for you, because anyone is allowed to. If you switch messaging on, reply quickly or switch it back off. Fifteen minutes a week covers the lot.
For a customer weighing up three names on a map, all of that adds up to a business that is plainly still there: recent photos, a review answered last week, hours that look maintained. A listing that has not moved in two years says the opposite just as clearly, and says it to everyone who looks.
Where the website fits
None of this replaces a website, and the two are not competing for the same job. The profile is what gets you noticed on the map. The website is where that customer goes next, to check you are a real business worth ringing, and Google reads it too when it works out how much to trust the listing. What a website actually does for a small business goes through that in more detail, and if your customers are local, the web design in Lincolnshire page shows how I build the two to work together.
If you would rather have the profile done than do it, Google Business Profile optimisation is a £199 one-off including VAT, covering categories, services, photos, posts and help getting verified, and it comes with the £79 a month plan alongside the SEO campaign. Otherwise claim it yourself this week for nothing and fill in every box, and get in touch if you get stuck on the verification step. Either way, stop letting Google describe your business without you.