Google Business Profile: the complete 2026 guide for UK businesses

A Google Business Profile is the free listing that shows your business on Google Search and Google Maps, with your address, hours, photos and reviews. For most local businesses it brings in more calls and visits than the website itself, and Google’s own AI answers draw on it too. Getting it right is the best free marketing you can do.

Here’s a quick test. Search for your main service and your town on your phone. The map with three businesses under it is called the local pack. If you’re not in it, the good news is that most of what decides it is in your hands, and this guide walks through all of it.

What is a Google Business Profile?

It’s the panel that appears on the right of Google Search (or at the top on a phone) when someone searches for your business, and the listing that appears on Google Maps. It shows your name, category, address or service area, opening hours, phone number, website, photos, products, services and reviews. It used to be called Google My Business, and it’s free.

Any business that meets customers in person can have one: shops and offices that customers visit, and service-area businesses like plumbers and cleaners that go to their customers. Online-only businesses aren’t eligible.

How Google decides who appears in the map results

Google is unusually open about this. Its help page says local results are based mainly on three things:

• Relevance: how well your profile matches what someone searched for.
• Distance: how far you are from the person searching, or from the place they named.
• Prominence: how well known you are, which Google says includes reviews and how many websites link to you.

It also says, plainly, that there’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.

Whitespark’s 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey, which asks local SEO specialists what moves results, puts these at the top for the map pack:

1. Your primary business category.
2. How close you are to the person searching.
3. Keywords in your business name.
4. Having a physical address in the town being searched.
5. Being open when someone searches.

A word of warning on number three: don’t add keywords to your business name that aren’t really part of it. It breaks Google’s rules, competitors can report it, and your profile can be suspended.

Setting up your profile properly

1. Claim and verify it

Search for your business on Google Maps. If it’s already there, claim it; if not, add it. Google will ask you to verify that you’re the owner, often by recording a short video showing your premises, signage or tools. Verification matters: Google says verified businesses are more likely to show up for relevant searches.

2. Choose your primary category carefully

Pick the category that describes your main service as precisely as possible: “Electrician” rather than “Contractor”, or “Wedding photographer” rather than “Photographer” if that’s what you mostly do. Then add a few secondary categories for other genuine services. Have a look at what the top three businesses in your area use.

3. Fill in every section

• Services: list each one, with a short description and a price or price range if you can.
• Products: worth adding even for service businesses, as a way to show packages.
• Description: up to 750 characters about what you do, who for and where. Write it for customers, not for search engines.
• Hours: including special hours for bank holidays and Christmas. Being shown as open when someone searches really does matter.
• Attributes: wheelchair access, parking, payment options, free Wi-Fi and so on. They help you match more specific searches.
• Service area: if you visit customers, list the towns you really cover rather than drawing a huge circle.

4. Add real photos, and keep adding them

Your logo, a cover photo, the outside of your premises, the inside, your team and plenty of recent work. Phone photos are fine. Stock photos aren’t: they don’t build trust and they don’t show Google anything new. Aim to add a few new ones every month.

Reviews: the part that never stops

Reviews feed prominence, which Google says affects ranking, and they’re what people read before they call. BrightLocal’s 2026 survey of US consumers found:

• 97% read reviews for local businesses, and 41% always do (up from 29%).
• 74% only care about reviews from the last three months.
• 47% won’t use a business with fewer than 20 reviews.
• 89% expect the owner to reply, but 50% are put off by templated, generic replies.

So the plan is simple:

• Ask every happy customer, the same day. Copy your review link from your profile and send it in a short, personal message.
• Reply to every review in your own words. Thank people by name and mention the job. For a bad review, stay calm, apologise for the experience, and offer to sort it out offline.
• Never offer anything in return. Google doesn’t allow incentivised reviews, and since April 2025 UK consumer law has banned fake reviews and incentivised reviews that aren’t clearly disclosed.
• Don’t panic about the odd poor review. A perfect five stars can look suspicious. A 4.7 with thoughtful replies looks real.

What’s changed in 2026: Q&A is out, AI answers are in

For years, Google Maps had a questions and answers section on every profile. In late 2025 Google began replacing it with an AI-powered “Ask” feature: customers type a question and get an instant answer built from your profile information and your reviews. Business owners can still answer questions in their profile, and Google uses those answers when similar questions come up.

What this means for you:

• Fill in everything. If your services, prices, hours and attributes aren’t on your profile, the AI can’t use them.
• Reviews now do double duty. When a customer writes “they fitted our boiler the next day”, that sentence can end up in an answer to “who can fit a boiler quickly?”.
• Check what it says about you. Ask questions about your own business in Google Maps and correct anything that’s wrong at the source.

It goes further than Maps. In BrightLocal’s 2026 survey, 45% of consumers had used ChatGPT or another AI tool for local recommendations, up from 6% the year before. Those tools look for the same things Google does: consistent details, plenty of recent reviews and clear information. Our GEO guide explains how to help them.

Keep it active: a monthly checklist

Every month	Every three months	Every year
Add 4 to 10 new photos	Check categories against your top competitors	Review your description and services
Reply to every new review	Update holiday and special hours ahead of time	Re-check your service areas
Post an update or offer	Ask Maps and AI assistants about your business	Audit your details on other directories
Check your calls, clicks and direction requests in Performance	Add any new services or products

Common mistakes to avoid

• Keyword stuffing your business name. “Smith & Co Plumber Brighton Emergency 24/7” risks a suspension.
• Using a virtual office or PO box as your address. Google doesn’t allow it. Service-area businesses should hide their address and list service areas instead.
• Letting someone else own your profile. Make sure the owner is your own Google account, not a past agency or employee.
• Different details on different sites. An old phone number on a directory confuses customers and machines.
• Ignoring the “Suggest an edit” notices. Anyone can suggest changes to your profile, and Google sometimes accepts them. Log in regularly and check.

Your questions, answered

Ready for some help?

Want us to look over your profile and tell you the three changes that would make the biggest difference? Book a free chat. Or grab some quick wins for your industry from our free marketing ideas tool.