Google Business Profile management service that follows Google's rules for your type of business

Which businesses need Google Business Profile management?

Any business that customers visit, or that travels to its customers, can have a Business Profile. Paying for help with it makes sense when the profile has drifted out of date, when nobody has time to answer reviews, or when there is more than one profile to keep in line. The job changes with the number of profiles:

• A single location or service area: one profile, for an established local business with a storefront or a service area. The job is making that listing complete and true, then keeping it that way as the business changes.
• Several locations or a region: a profile for each location, with names and categories kept consistent across them, as Google’s guidelines ask of chains. Our page on SEO for multiple locations covers how the profiles and the location pages fit together.
• A national brand: dozens or hundreds of profiles, held in business groups and edited by more than one team, where each change has to reach the right listing.

What is a Google Business Profile?

A Google Business Profile is the free listing Google shows for a business on Search and Maps: its name, category, address or service area, hours, phone number, website, photos and reviews. Google says creating a Business Profile and listing your business on Google is free, and that you can add or claim a business at no charge.

A profile is meant for a real business that meets its customers. Google allows one if you have a physical location customers can visit, or if you travel to customers where they are. P.O. boxes and mailboxes at remote locations aren’t acceptable, and a service-area business can’t list a virtual office unless it’s staffed during business hours. Departments that work as distinct entities, usually with their own customer entrance, can have profiles of their own, and so can practitioners who deal with the public, though Google says support staff shouldn’t create profiles.

What does a Google Business Profile management service do?

Google describes the market itself. The profile can be used at no charge, it says, and third parties often charge a fee to manage it. They might offer to keep the profile up to date, provide customer insights, answer your questions and respond to reviews. Services combine those tasks in different ways:

• Keeping the facts right: hours, special hours, phone, website, categories and services, changed whenever the business changes.
• Photos and posts: pictures of the work and the premises, and posts about what’s new.
• Reviews: asking customers for reviews and answering the ones that come in.
• Reporting: what people did on the profile each month, from calls to direction requests.

Google’s third-party policies set rules for anyone doing this for you. An agency must tell you about every change it makes to your profile, and changing or switching off profile features without the owner’s consent is prohibited. An agency that charges a management fee must also tell you that Business Profile itself costs nothing.

How do I set up a Google Business Profile?

If no profile exists for your business yet, Google’s steps are short:

1. Start the profile: go to business.google.com/add and select Add your business to Google.
2. Add the details: follow the on-screen instructions, and make sure the address is correct and meets Google’s guidelines.
3. Verify: select one of the verification options Google offers you and follow its steps.

Two choices at setup shape everything after. The first is the address. A business with a storefront shows it. A business that serves customers at their door sets a service area instead, and Google says such a business should have one profile, for its central office or location. The second is the name: Google wants the real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website and stationery, with nothing added to it.

How do I claim a Google Business Profile?

Often a profile for your business already exists, unverified. To claim it, open Google Maps on a computer, search for your business’s name and city, select Claim this business, then Manage now, and choose a verification option. The Google Maps app works the same way from the profile’s About tab.

If someone else has already verified the profile, Google lets you request ownership from the current owner, as long as you’re authorized to manage the business. Verification is what puts you in control: Google says that when you verify, you gain ownership of the profile and can make sure its information is accurate.

The methods Google may offer are a phone call or text, email, a live video call, a recorded video or a postcard. Which ones you see depends on things like your business type, region and hours, and Google recommends video where your business is eligible for it. While a postcard is on its way, don’t edit the business’s name, address or category, or the code won’t work.

How do I improve my Google Business Profile?

Google Business Profile optimization, as Google’s help describes it, comes down to a verified profile with complete and accurate information. Its help pages list what to work on:

• The basics: your full address if customers can visit, your hours including special hours, what kind of business you are, and details such as parking or Wi-Fi.
• Photos and videos: Google says they show customers what you offer and tell the story of your business.
• Replies to reviews: Google says replying shows you value feedback, and that positive reviews and helpful replies can help a business stand out.
• Verification: an unverified profile can’t be edited, and verifying makes it more likely to show up in search results.
• A clean name: Google’s guidelines don’t permit extra words in the business name, and say they could get the profile suspended.

Then keep it honest as the business changes. Google says inaccurate info can stop a profile from showing up for relevant searches in your area, so a new phone number, a move or new hours belong on the profile the day they happen.

How does Google Maps SEO work?

Google Maps SEO is local SEO as it plays out on the map. The same three factors Google names for local results decide which profiles the map shows: how relevant a profile is to the search, how far the business is from the person searching, and how well-known it is. Our page on local SEO services explains each one.

On the map, the profile does most of the talking. Its category and services tell Google what you do, and its address or service area sets where you can appear. Reviews and the websites linking to you count toward how well-known you are. Behind the profile sits your website: a searcher who taps through should land on a page that answers the search they made.

Google says a better local ranking can’t be requested or paid for, and that no third party can promise or directly influence your ranking on Search or Maps. Map results also move with the searcher, so a business can sit high on one street and lower a few miles away. That’s why our report puts leads first and treats map positions as a guide.

How should a business ask for and answer reviews?

Reviews come with rules from both Google and the FTC, so know them before you buy review management services:

• Ask everyone: send customers a Google link or QR code to the review form. Google’s content policy bars asking only the customers you expect to be happy, and the FTC says that practice could violate the FTC Act.
• Offer nothing in return: the FTC’s rule doesn’t ban an incentive as long as the review isn’t required to be positive or negative, but Google treats any incentive, such as a discount or a free service, as fake and misleading content.
• Don’t pressure: Google says a business shouldn’t require or pressure customers to review while they’re on the premises, or ask for specific content.
• No reviews from the inside: Google counts employment and a contractual relationship as conflicts of interest, so neither you, your staff nor an agency you hire should review your business.
• Answer the bad ones well: Google says negative reviews aren’t necessarily a sign of poor business practices, and that a constructive reply can show you care and may even lead the customer to update the review.

The FTC’s rule also bars a business from suppressing reviews through groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation or false accusations against the reviewer.

What is local citation building?

A citation is a mention of your business’s name, address and phone number on another site, such as a directory, a map app, an industry association or a local chamber. Citation building is the work of creating those listings where they’re missing and correcting them where they’re wrong.

It’s worth being clear about what citations do. Google’s help on local ranking names links from other websites and the number of reviews as part of how well-known a business is. It doesn’t mention directories. So the case for citations rests on two things: buyers who look you up on those sites, and the same details everywhere, so nobody finds an old phone number or a past address. WebFX includes citation management in its local SEO plans, and Dagmar Marketing’s guide for law firms lists it as a monthly cost.

Start with the sites your buyers use and the ones that appear when you search your business name, and fix the wrong details there first.

Who should own and manage the Business Profile?

Your business does, under Google’s rules. Google’s third-party policies say a business must keep ownership or co-ownership of its profile at all times, and that the business decides whether an agency gets co-owner access, manager access or none. Google’s help adds that each user needs their own Google Account, so the profile can be run without anyone sharing a password.

The two roles differ in one way that matters. Owners have full control: they can add or remove users, manage the profile’s information and even delete it, and a profile has one primary owner. Managers have mostly the same access, from editing the business’s details to replying to reviews, but they can’t add or remove users or remove the profile. Google adds that only owners control who has access, and can change permissions at any time.

That’s why we ask to be added as a manager. The profile stays on your business’s Google account, and since only owners control access, you can change or remove ours at any time.

What should you watch for when hiring help with a profile?

Google publishes advice for businesses that hire outside help, with warning signs to look for:

• Placement promises: Google says third parties can’t promise or directly influence where your business ranks on Search or Maps.
• Claims to be Google: ask the person for their name and an email from their @google.com address. If they can’t provide it, Google says they likely don’t work for Google.
• Threats: a third party can’t remove your business from Google or reach your profile without your permission, and Google’s policies ban holding a profile hostage for money.
• Hidden numbers: you have the right to know how your profile performs, from how many people view it to how many click.
• Shifting prices: before you agree, get an official copy of the agreement that spells out the services and what they cost.

Google also suggests working with one third party at a time, since your business can only appear once on Google. Its notice on working with a third party to manage your Business Profile is short, and worth reading before you sign with anyone, us included.

What does Business Profile management look like with us?

Midnite Systems is run by its co-founders, Nicolas Perez as CEO and Noah Alvarez as CCO, and was formed in 2023. We’re based at our office in Valencia, California, and our own team does the profile work for businesses across the US.

The profile is half the job; the other half is the website it links to, which our SEO work covers. That work runs on sites we build and host, so a site made elsewhere is rebuilt in our system first, with every old address pointed at its new page.

We don’t promise placement on the map or a count of links. If your profile isn’t bringing in the calls it should, book a 15-minute call, with the profile’s name to hand.