Google Business Profile: Filling It In by the Rules

Google Business Profile is a free business profile shown on Maps and Search. It must be filled in by Google’s rules: for an inaccurate name, extraneous words in the address or violations in the description, the profile can be changed or suspended. Below: what exactly the guidelines for representing your business require for the name, categories, description, address, hours and photos, and which common tips (“750 characters with keywords”, “at least 10 photos”, “posts as a ranking signal”) are not found in those guidelines.

Name

The name should reflect the business’s real-world name as used on its storefront, website and stationery and as known to customers. Other details — address, hours, category — go into their own fields. The guidelines list directly what must not be in a name: marketing taglines, store codes, fully capitalized words, business hours, phone numbers or website URLs, extra special characters and legal terms, service or product information, location information, containment information, and repeated bilingual names. Extras in the name can lead to suspension. That answers “keywords in the name”: adding them is not permitted unless they are in the real name.

Categories

Categories help customers find accurate, specific results for the services they are interested in. The rule from the help page: use as few categories as possible to describe your core business, and choose categories as specific as possible but representative of your main business. Do not use categories solely as keywords or to describe attributes of your business. “A main category plus many additional ones” is not a recommendation of the help page; the better the match, the better the relevance (local SEO basics).

Description

The description field is for useful information about services and products offered, as well as the mission and history of the business — honest and to the point. It must not: display low-quality, irrelevant or distracting content (misspellings, gimmicky characters, gibberish); focus on special promotions, prices and sales (“Everything on sale, -50%”, “Best bagels in town for $5!”); display links: “no links of any type are allowed”. The tip “include keywords organically” is not found in the guidelines; the benchmark is usefulness to the customer, as in ordinary text (keywords on a page). The length limit mentioned in articles is not stated in these guidelines: check the limit in the field itself.

Address and service area

• The address must be precise and real; P.O. boxes and remote mailboxes are not accepted, and virtual offices are not eligible.
• Address lines must not contain anything not pertaining to the physical location, such as URLs or keywords.
• One profile per location; creating several profiles for one address is not allowed.
• A business that travels to customers gets one profile with a service area; if the address is a home, it should be hidden.
• A service area should generally not extend farther than about two hours of driving time from where the business is based.
• If an address is shown, permanent fixed signage with the business name should be at the location.

Hours, phone, website

Provide your regular customer-facing hours; special hours exist for holidays and events. Some types of business should not provide hours: hotels, schools, movie theaters, transportation, event venues. The phone number should belong to the business and, whenever possible, be local rather than a call-center line; the website should represent this specific location rather than redirect to third-party pages.

Photos and videos

Photos and videos show up on Google only after you verify the profile. Under the rules, photos must meet these requirements (photos and videos help page):

• JPG or PNG format, between 10 KB and 5 MB;
• recommended resolution 720 × 720 pixels, minimum 250 × 250;
• in focus, well lit, with no significant alterations or excessive filters: the image should represent reality;
• video up to 30 seconds and 75 MB, resolution 720p or higher.

An exterior photo helps customers recognize the place; the logo is highlighted on the profile, and a cover photo does not always become the first image. The “at least 10 photos” figure is not mentioned in the help page; honesty and freshness of images matter more.

What else

• Reviews: respond to them; replies show you value customers’ feedback (the lesson on reviews).
• Posts and “profile activity”: the local ranking help page has no such factor; assess whether posts are useful from your own data.
• Consistency of details on other sites is the topic of the lesson on citations and NAP.
• Violations: a trick like keywords in the name can lead to suspension (the general logic of policies is in the lesson on spam policies).

Order of work

The help page sets no fixed sequence, but the logic is plain: verify the business, because photos and videos show only after that, enter precise details (name, address or service area, hours, category), then add the description and photos and respond to reviews. Look at results in the profile itself: the help center has a section on performance indicators.

Checklist

1. The business is verified; there is one profile per location.
2. The name matches the real one and contains no extras.
3. As few categories as possible, and specific ones.
4. The description has no links, promotions or prices; the text is honest and useful.
5. The address is precise; a home address is hidden for a travelling business.
6. Hours are current; photos meet the requirements and show the real place.

Mistakes

• Adding keywords, slogans, hours or a phone number to the name.
• Choosing many categories “for reach”.
• Putting links and prices in the description.
• Creating several profiles for one place.
• Showing a home address for a travelling business.

What next

Next comes citations and NAP: how business details on other sites relate to the profile and what to check in them.