Google Business Profile: a step-by-step guide for your business

Creating or claiming the profile

Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is now managed from Google Search itself or the Maps app: signed in with the account that owns it, you search for your business name and the editing panel appears. This guide focuses on the profile; ranking higher in local searches is covered in the local SEO guide, and reviews have a guide of their own.

First, check whether your business is already on Google Maps. Many businesses appear without the owner doing anything, because a customer added them or Google built the listing from other sources. If it exists, don't create a new one: open it and choose the option to claim it or say you own it. If you create another, you'll have two listings for the same business, splitting your reviews, and Google may treat it as a duplicate.

If it doesn't exist, you create it from google.com/business with a Google account. That account should belong to the business or to you, never to whoever builds your website: if you change provider one day, the profile has to stay yours. If someone else needs to manage it, add them as a manager from the people and access section; that way you can remove their permission whenever you want without touching ownership.

If, when you try to claim it, someone else already controls it (a former partner, a previous agency), Google offers a process to request access from the current owner. If they don't respond within a few days, you can go through verification yourself.

Verification, without surprises

Google asks you to prove the business exists and is yours before publishing the profile or your edits. Google decides which methods you can use, based on the type of business, the area and the profile's history; you don't choose, and sometimes it asks for more than one. Until the profile is verified, your edits may not go live.

Once you have completed the steps, the review usually takes up to five business days, although it occasionally takes longer. If you're offered a postcard, the code usually arrives within about 14 days and expires after 30. While you wait, don't request another code or change the name, address or category: any of those edits invalidates the code on its way.

In the verification video, show the street or sign and the interior in one continuous take with no cuts. Rejected videos are almost always rejected because the interior can't be linked to the address.

Name, address and phone: the non-negotiable details

Name, address and phone are the details Google uses to identify your business and cross-check against your website and other directories. They must be true and written the same way everywhere: if the profile says “C/ Alcalá 120” and the website “Calle de Alcalá, 120, local 2”, nothing serious happens, but if the phone or name differ, the signal weakens and customers hesitate.

Categories, services and attributes

The primary category is one of the strongest factors in which searches you appear for. The guidelines ask you to choose as few as possible and as specific as possible: they describe what your business is, not what it has. A bakery with a coffee corner is a “Bakery”; if it really works as a café, “Cafe” can go in as a secondary one. What you can't do is use categories as keywords.

Changing the primary category, the name or the address can put the profile under review or trigger a new verification. Do it only when necessary and not all at once.

Regular hours, special hours and public holidays

Regular hours are your customer-facing hours. If your business has several sets (kitchen and bar, workshop and reception), Google asks you to enter the main one and, where the category allows, add the others as additional hours. Appointment-only businesses shouldn't list hours as if they were open to walk-ins.

Special hours are for specific days: holidays, stocktaking, an event. You set them from the hours section of the profile by picking the date and marking it closed or entering that day's hours. Google recommends also filling in holidays when you open with your normal hours, so customers can see they are confirmed. If you'll be closed for more than six days in a row, for holidays or building work, mark the business as temporarily closed; don't mark it as permanently closed, which is something else entirely.

Spain has three layers of public holidays: national ones, those of each autonomous community and the two local holidays of each municipality, which change every year and are published in different official gazettes. It's easy to miss one. To keep them at hand, the calendar at festivos.amgdesign.io (in Spanish) collects each region's holidays with the official gazette that sets them; spend ten minutes in December adding next year's to your profile.

Photos, logo and videos

Photos are what customers look at most after reviews. Google accepts JPG or PNG files between 10 KB and 5 MB, at least 250 × 250 pixels, and recommends 720 × 720 or more. They should be in focus, well lit and free of filters or edits that change what the place looks like. Those that break the content policy are marked “Not approved” and aren't published.

You don't need a photographer: a recent phone, daylight and a tidy space are enough. What you do need is variety, and the photos must be yours. Stock photos add nothing: people recognise them and they don't show your business.

• The front of the building from the pavement, in daylight, so people recognise it when they arrive.
• The entrance, if getting in is tricky (doorway, courtyard, first floor).
• The interior from several angles: main room, counter, waiting area.
• The team at work, with their permission.
• Your work or product: dishes, haircuts, a finished renovation, the shop window.
• A short video (around 30 seconds) of the premises or a service, if it suits your business.

Posts, messages and questions: what still exists in 2026

Posts let you put updates, offers or events on the profile. An update has text, a photo or video and an optional button (book, order, learn more). An offer requires a title and dates and includes a “View offer” button, with an optional coupon code. An event has a title and start and end dates. Posts older than six months are archived unless they have a date range.

Two details that cause rejections: don't put a phone number in the post text unless it is the profile's verified one, and don't link to dubious websites. For a small business, one post a month about something real is enough: the seasonal menu, the August closure, a new service.

Other features are gone. Profile chat stopped working on 31 July 2024; if customers were used to messaging you there, offer them WhatsApp or a form on your website. The public questions and answers section on Maps has been withdrawn since late 2025 and replaced with AI-generated answers based on your profile details and reviews. The practical consequence: the more complete your profile is (services, attributes, hours), the better those automatic answers about your business will be.

Performance: what to check each month

The profile's performance section shows how people find you on Search and Maps and what they do next. The data includes profile views, the searches that showed it and the actions taken: calls from the call button, website clicks, direction requests and, depending on the business, bookings or messages. You can view and download several months of history.

Once a month, note three numbers: calls, website clicks and direction requests. If they drop suddenly, check whether someone has changed your hours or category (users and Google itself can suggest and apply edits), whether the profile is under review or whether a duplicate has appeared. The list of searches tells you which words customers use to find you, which are often not the ones you use.

Why a profile gets suspended and how to get it back

Google suspends or disables profiles that don't follow its guidelines. The most common causes for small businesses are always the same, and nearly all are avoided by reading the rules once.

• Keywords, area names or taglines added to the name.
• The address of a virtual office, a PO box or a home where customers aren't served that hasn't been hidden.
• An inflated service area, or several profiles for the same business with made-up addresses.
• Duplicate profiles for the same premises.
• Fake or bought reviews, or a restricted Google account: if the account is restricted, every profile it manages is suspended.

Profile and website, each in its role

The profile brings the visit; the website turns it into a customer. The profile holds short facts; the website holds what doesn't fit: prices, services explained, photos of your work, how to book, frequently asked questions. Since March 2024 Google no longer offers the free websites that could be built from the profile, so if you had one of those, the link no longer works and you should replace it with a website of your own.

For the two to reinforce each other, the website should repeat exactly the name, address, phone and hours on the profile, ideally with an embedded map and local business structured data. If you ever need a website that matches your profile, AMG Design does exactly that for businesses in Madrid; but you can get the profile right yourself by following this guide.