Google Business Profile in 60 seconds
- How Google ranks you: relevance, distance and prominence, which Google now also calls popularity [1]. You can’t pay for a better map ranking.
- Most contractors are service-area businesses: hide your address if customers don’t visit it, and list up to 20 service areas [2].
- Your primary category matters most among the things you control, and experts rank it the top factor [3].
- Reviews are the lever you can pull every week. 68% of consumers only use businesses with 4 or more stars [4]. No incentives, no gating.
- 2026 changed the rules: Q&A became Ask Maps [5], posts can’t carry phone numbers or outside links [6], and suggested edits can go live after 4 days [7].
- Don’t stuff keywords in your name. It still works for some competitors, but it’s against the rules and a common reason for suspensions.
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What a Google Business Profile does for contractors
A Google Business Profile is your free listing on Google Search and Google Maps. It shows your name, category, service area, hours, phone number, photos and reviews, and it’s what Google uses to decide whether you appear in the map results for searches like “roofer near me.” Optimizing it means making it complete, accurate, and full of recent reviews and real photos.
For most roofers, HVAC companies and remodelers, the profile does three jobs. It gets you into the map results. It lets homeowners call you without visiting your website. And it’s where they read your reviews before they decide. Your Local Services Ads use it too: they pull your reviews, name, address and hours from your profile. Our Local Services Ads guide explains how.
Homeowners do read what’s there. In BrightLocal’s 2026 survey of U.S. consumers, almost everyone read reviews, and most wouldn’t consider a business below four stars:
How homeowners choose a local business in 2026
How Google ranks local results
Google publishes the short version. “Local results are mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity,” and “there’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google” [1]. Its definitions break that into three factors:
Relevance
“How well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for” [1].
- Primary and additional categories
- Services and description
- Complete, accurate details
Distance
“How far each business is from the customer who’s searching” [1].
- Your address or base location
- Where the searcher is
- You can’t change it much
Prominence
“How well-known a business is,” including links and reviews [1].
- Number of reviews and rating
- Links and mentions across the web
- Your website’s overall strength
Google also says that “more reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking” [1]. That’s the most direct statement it makes about what you can influence.
For more detail, the best public source is Whitespark’s yearly survey of local search experts. Its 2026 top 10 is useful, as long as you read it with a contractor’s eye:
| # | Ranking factor (expert survey) | What it means for a contractor |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Primary Business Profile category | Pick the one category that best describes your core business. |
| 2 | Distance from the searcher to the business address | Mostly out of your control. Don’t fake an address to get closer. |
| 3 | Keywords in the business name | Don’t. Adding keywords to your name breaks Google’s guidelines and risks a suspension. |
| 4 | Physical address in the city of the search | Favors storefronts. Service-area businesses can’t control it. |
| 5 | Business is open at the time of the search | List your real hours, and keep holiday hours up to date. |
| 6 | High Google star rating (4–5) | Earn reviews from every job, and fix what drives bad ones. |
| 7 | Address shown on the profile (not a service-area business) | Favors storefronts. Only show an address customers can visit. |
| 8 | Additional Business Profile categories | Add the few that describe what you are, not every service. |
| 9 | Number of Google reviews with text | A steady flow of written reviews beats a one-time push. |
| 10 | Correct map pin placement | Check your pin, especially after a move. |
Two things stand out. Several top factors, like distance and having a storefront address in the city, favor businesses you can’t become. And factor three, keywords in the business name, works for some competitors but breaks Google’s rules. Spend your time on the factors you can change honestly: category, hours, reviews and an accurate pin.
Service-area business setup
Most contractors work at the customer’s home, which makes them a service-area business in Google’s terms. Google’s rule is simple: “If you don’t serve customers at your business address, remove your address from your Business Profile” [2]. A business without permanent signage isn’t eligible as a storefront and “should be listed as a service-area business” [2].
Customers come to you
- You have a showroom or office with permanent signage
- Staff are there to meet customers during your hours
- Show your address on the profile
- You can add a service area too, if you also travel
You go to the customer
- Most roofers, HVAC companies and many remodelers
- Hide your address if customers don’t visit it
- Add up to 20 service areas, such as cities or zip codes
- Keep the whole area within about 2 hours’ drive of your base
The limits are specific. You can set “up to 20 service areas based on the cities, postal codes, or other areas you serve,” and the overall area “shouldn’t be more than about 2 hours of driving time from where your business is based,” though Google says larger areas may be appropriate for some businesses [2] [8]. Pick the towns and zip codes where you want jobs, not every place you’ve ever driven to.
Don’t use a virtual office or mailbox to get a pin in another city. Google says remote P.O. boxes and mailboxes “aren’t acceptable,” virtual offices are only allowed if they’re staffed during business hours [8], and a business that sets its address at a P.O. box “will have their profile suspended” [9].
One profile per business is the default. Google’s guidelines allow a service-area business one profile per office only when each office has its own staff and its own service area [8]. Separate profiles for each service line, like one for kitchens and one for baths, don’t qualify: Google only allows department profiles for public-facing departments that operate as distinct entities [8].
Your business name
Google’s guideline is short: “Your name should reflect your business’s real-world name,” and “including unnecessary information in your business name isn’t permitted” [8]. Google’s list of things you can’t add includes marketing taglines, service or product information, location information, phone numbers and business hours [8].
So “Smith Roofing” is fine. “Smith Roofing | Roof Repair & Replacement Springfield” isn’t, unless that’s honestly your registered, signed name. Changing your name can also trigger a new verification, and Google may reject significant changes to a business name or category [10] [9].
Categories
Your primary category is the first one you choose, and you can add up to 9 more [10]. Google says you “can’t create your own category” and that categories affect how you rank [11]. Its guidelines ask you to “use as few categories as possible to describe your overall core business” and not to use categories “solely as keywords or to describe attributes of your business” [8]. A useful test: choose categories your business is, not services it has.
| Your business | Primary category to consider | Additional categories to consider |
|---|---|---|
| Roofing company | Roofing contractor | Gutter, siding or skylight categories, only if you do that work |
| HVAC company | HVAC contractor | Air conditioning contractor, heating contractor, furnace or AC repair service |
| Kitchen and bath remodeler | Kitchen remodeler or bathroom remodeler, whichever is most of your work | The other one, plus remodeler or general contractor |
| Whole-home remodeler | Remodeler or general contractor | Kitchen remodeler, bathroom remodeler, basement or home addition categories you actually do |
Editing your categories can trigger a new verification [11], so settle on them once rather than testing different ones every month.
Services, description, hours and links
The rest of the profile is about being complete and accurate. Here’s what matters for contractors:
- Services. Add Google’s predefined services and your own custom ones [12]. Keep custom names plain: Google rejects names with prices, phone numbers or gibberish [12].
- Description. Up to 750 characters, no URLs or HTML, focused on your business rather than promotions or prices [10]. Say what you do, where, and what makes you different.
- Hours. List your regular customer-facing hours [8], and set special hours for holidays [10]. Being open at the time of a search is a top-five factor in the Whitespark survey [3].
- Phone numbers. Use a local number under your direct control [8]. You can add up to 2 more numbers [10].
- Links. Add your website and, if you book online, appointment links; Google allows up to 10 per category [13].
- Attributes. Add identity attributes that apply, such as veteran-owned or women-owned. The small business attribute is for businesses under $10 million a year, and franchises don’t qualify [14].
- Suggested edits. Anyone can suggest a change to your profile. Since September 2026 you have 4 days to accept or reject a suggestion, and Google “may apply suggested user edits to your business information without prior review” [7]. Check your dashboard weekly.
Messaging has changed too. Google removed chat and call history from Business Profiles on July 31, 2024; eligible businesses can now be contacted by text message or WhatsApp instead [15].
