Your Google Business Profile is now your AI business card
For local questions, Gemini leans heavily on Google Maps, and so on your Google Business Profile. ChatGPT also fetches ordinary web pages with OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User. Your profile and your website are both a source, and the profile is the only one where you set the details yourself, exactly. Whatever is not in your profile, they cannot mention. Now that Ask Maps is live, your profile is your most important business card for AI.
Your profile no longer works just for Google Maps
Picture this: a potential customer asks ChatGPT who a good painter in Tilburg is. Or someone types into Gemini: which gardener can landscape my garden in Oisterwijk? That AI then reads your Google Business Profile. Not your website. Not your Instagram. Your profile.
That is exactly where most local business owners go wrong
You once set up that profile, added a photo, filled in your phone number, and never looked at it again. You thought: that is for Google Maps, for when people look up my address. That was true too, until early 2026. Since March 2026, Ask Maps has been live. Users ask Google Maps direct questions, and Gemini, Google's AI, gives answers based on the information in your Business Profile. Not based on your website or your adverts. Based on your profile.
If that profile is half empty, you simply do not exist in those answers
This is no longer theory. This is how customers find you now. Or precisely how they do not.
The figures you cannot ignore
SOCi carried out extensive research in 2026 into how AI assistants recommend local businesses, across more than 350,000 locations of 2,751 multi-location brands. The results are sobering. Those brands were mentioned by ChatGPT in 1.2 per cent of cases when asked about a service in a particular region. Gemini does better at 11 per cent, and Perplexity sits at 7.4 per cent. By comparison: the same brands appear in 35.9 per cent of cases in the traditional Google Local Pack, the three map results you know. A figure like that is a chance of appearing, not a coverage rate across all local businesses, and the two are often mixed up. Source: SOCi Local Visibility Index 2026.
Here is where it gets interesting
In that same SOCi research, the profile information was 100 per cent accurate at Gemini, and 68 per cent for ChatGPT and Perplexity combined. SOCi offers no explanation for that gap; what the research does say is that Gemini is grounded directly in Google Maps and the other two are not. If your profile is filled in completely and correctly, that is exactly the source Gemini draws on.
What does this tell you
That your Google Business Profile is by far the most reliable channel for being found by AI. A field that is empty cannot be read aloud by an assistant. Fill in your services, hours and service area, and you give the model something to mention; skip it, and you let the competitor who did fill it in get mentioned instead. That is the difference between a phone that rings and silence.
The six layers Gemini reads from your profile
Most business owners do not know this: when Gemini looks at your profile to decide whether to recommend you, it does not just read your business name and address. It reads six layers of information, and every layer counts.
1. Basic profile information
Name, address, phone number, opening hours and website. Everything else rests on this. If there are mistakes here or things are missing, everything after it falls away too. Gemini trusts consistency: if your phone number on your website differs from your profile, that is a red flag.
2. Services and products
Google has a section where you state exactly what you offer. Most business owners skip this, but Gemini does read it. If someone asks who can install a fence in Goirle and fence installation is listed as a service on your profile, you get recommended. If that service is not filled in, you do not exist for that search.
3. Reviews and ratings
It is not just the star rating that counts, the content does too. Gemini genuinely reads your reviews. If customers write that you work tidily, arrive on time and communicate well, Gemini picks that up as a positive signal.
4. Photos
Yes, really. Businesses with more than a hundred images on their profile get 520 per cent more phone calls than the average business. That figure comes from BrightLocal, not from Google, and the comparison is with the average business, not with businesses that have no photos, and both of those points are often passed on incorrectly. Source: BrightLocal, Google My Business Insights Study. AI analyses photos and works out what kind of work you do. How to approach that is covered in our article on photos on your Google Business Profile.
5. Questions and answers
The section on your profile where anyone can ask a question. Many business owners ignore it completely, but Gemini reads these questions and answers to understand what your business does and how you treat customers.
6. Google Posts
Updates you place on your profile, similar to social media. Whoever posts at least once a week sends an active signal to Google and to AI. Businesses that never post are seen as possibly inactive. What happens after 30 days of silence on your profile is covered in our related article.
Go through all six layers today. Look up your own business on Google Maps and click through every tab. You will probably be shocked by how much is empty. That emptiness is exactly what AI cannot read.
Empty fields are invisible fields
Perhaps the most important point in this entire article comes now. An empty field in your Google Business Profile is not neutral. It is negative. AI can only work with information that exists. If a field is empty, that part of your business simply does not exist in the eyes of Gemini, ChatGPT or any other AI.
Picture two plumbers in the same city
Plumber A has filled in his profile completely: every service is listed, there are 40 photos of work carried out, he has 85 reviews averaging 4.7 stars, and he posts a Google Post about a job every week. Plumber B has only filled in his name, address and phone number. No services, no photos, 3 reviews from two years ago, never posted.
If a potential customer asks Gemini who a good plumber nearby is, Gemini has a wealth of information for plumber A
It sees which services he offers, quotes the positive reviews and analyses the photos. For plumber B it has almost nothing. Even if B is actually better in reality, that does not matter. AI works with data. No data, no recommendation.
That is how it works in real life too, by the way
If you only say at a networking drinks event that you are a plumber, nobody remembers you. Talk about your speciality, your approach and your recent projects, and you make an impression. Your Google Business Profile is that digital networking conversation. And it runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Reviews are your new AI reputation
Reviews were always important. But what many business owners do not realise: reviews now have a direct influence on how AI talks about you. It is no longer just about the star rating, but about what people write.
Gemini reads the text of your reviews
If several customers write that you respond quickly, work tidily and offer good value for money, Gemini picks up on those patterns. If someone then asks which painter in Tilburg responds quickly, Gemini can recommend you based on what your customers say about you. That works powerfully in your favour. It also works the other way: complaints about poor communication or work that never got finished are taken into account by AI just as readily. Your reviews have literally become your AI reputation. And unlike an advertising campaign, you cannot pause them.
The action is simple
Actively ask satisfied customers for a review. Not once a year, but after every job. Send a WhatsApp message with a direct link to your Google review page. It costs you 30 seconds and it builds visibility that no advert can buy you. Also reply to all your reviews, including the negative ones. AI sees businesses that respond as engaged and professional. A short, friendly reply to every review is worth its weight in gold.
What you can already do this week
The good thing about optimising your Google Business Profile: you do not need a specialist for the basics. You can do this yourself this week, with no technical knowledge and no budget.
Fill in every empty field
Go to business.google.com or look yourself up on Google Maps and click Manage Business Profile. Be specific about your services: do not just write painting, but also interior painting, exterior painting, wood rot repair and wallpapering. The more specific, the more searches you match.Upload photos, lots of photos
Of your work, your van, your tools and your team. You do not need 100 straight away. Start with 10 to 20 good photos and add a few more every week.Post your first Google Post
Write about a recent job, share a tip or announce something. Three to four sentences with a photo is enough. Do it at least once a week.Answer the questions on your profile
If there are unanswered questions, answer them. If there are none, ask some yourself and answer them. Think of questions customers often ask: do you work weekends, do you offer a guarantee, how quickly can you start?Pay attention to consistency here, because it is everything. Your business name, address and phone number must be exactly the same on your profile, your website and everywhere else online. Small differences, such as street versus st., can confuse AI and damage your visibility.
Do all of this, and within a week you will have a profile that is ready to be recommended by AI
Your competitors are not doing this yet, and that is your edge. You will find more free articles and guides in our Knowledge base. Want to outsource the strategy behind it, from keywords to AI visibility? Take a look at our AI and automation service.
What you should specifically not put in your profile
Almost all the advice about your Business Profile is about adding things. The part that rarely gets written down is what you should leave out, and that part has become more important now that a language model reads your profile aloud instead of a human looking it over. A human who sees an odd business name thinks: they are overdoing it a bit. A system that checks against the rules thinks nothing, and suspends your profile.
Keywords in your business name
The temptation is strong to register your business as Jansen Painters Tilburg Interior and Exterior Painting. Google does not allow that: the name on the profile should be the name you present to the world in real life too, on your van, your invoice and your shopfront. Adding superfluous information to your business name is not permitted according to Google and can lead to your profile being suspended. Source: guidelines for representing your business on Google. Last checked on 25 August 2026.
The damage from this is not only the risk of suspension either. An AI that has to name your business in an answer names it exactly as it is written. A name with four keywords crammed in reads as spam, which is precisely the opposite of what you were trying to achieve.
An address where you are not based
If you work from home and serve customers on location, that belongs in your profile as a service area, not as a rented postal address in the town where you would like to be found. Google asks for proof when in doubt, and a profile that gets reset to not verified is, for an AI, the same as a profile that does not exist.
Promises you do not make anywhere else
Whatever you put in your description and your services will one day be summarised by an assistant and passed on to someone who does not know you yet. So do not put a guarantee period, a response time or a price agreement there that you cannot back up on your quote. A customer who calls saying I read that you come within 24 hours did not get that sentence from your website, but from an assistant reading out your own text. So everything in this field should carry the same status as a sentence in your quote.
The four questions an assistant asks, and where the answer comes from
Anyone who wants to fill in their profile for AI gets furthest by turning the question around. Not: which field is still empty. But: what question is someone asking who is about to call me, and can my profile answer that question. Almost all local questions fall into four types, and each type leans on a different part of your profile.
Do you do this
Someone asks about wood rot repair, not about a painter. This answer comes from your services and products, not from your category. A category is a box; your services list is where the words customers actually use are found. This is where you gain the most, because this field is half empty on most profiles.Do you cover here
This comes from your address or your service area. Set your service area realistically: too wide brings enquiries you have to turn down, too tight leaves work on the table. Note that on Google's own page about local rankings it names only relevance, distance and prominence, and that you cannot request or buy a better position. Source: Google's page on local rankings. Last checked on 25 August 2026.Can I trust you
This comes from your reviews, your years active and your photos. It is the only one of the four you do not fill in yourself, and that is why it weighs more heavily with an assistant than the rest: it is the only layer where someone other than you has also said something.When can I reach you
This comes from your opening hours, including the special hours around public holidays. A profile that says it is open on Boxing Day while your phone is switched off delivers exactly the experience that ends up in the next review.Go through those four with a customer's eyes and within a quarter of an hour you will see where your gap is. In practice, for tradespeople it is almost always the first: the services are not filled in, or they are written in the tradesperson's language rather than the customer's.
How to measure whether it is working, without fooling yourself
This is the part where most business owners go by feel, and feel is a poor guide here. You do not notice when an assistant mentions you, because there is no notification and nothing in your statistics that says AI. What you can do is put three things side by side that together give a reasonable picture.
Your own profile statistics, with the right expectations
In your Business Profile you see views, searches, calls and directions requested. That is useful for seeing a direction, not for pinpointing a cause. So always compare with the same month last year, not with last month, because in most trades the season does more than any optimisation.
Asking the question yourself, with a fixed list
Write down five questions a customer would ask, exactly as a customer would type them, and ask them once a month in the assistants your customers use. Note down for each question only whether you get mentioned and which businesses do get mentioned. Always do it on the same day of the month and with the same wording, otherwise you are measuring your own word choice rather than your visibility. This is not an exact measurement, and it does not need to be: you are looking for a shift over months, not a single snapshot.
What your customers tell you
The most honest source costs you one sentence on the phone: how did you find us. Note the answer in the same list where you keep track of your jobs. After two months, you will know more about where you come from than any dashboard would tell you, and you will hear it in the customer's own words too. Whoever does this consistently sees the shift from via Google to something like via ChatGPT or it came up in the answer coming, before it becomes visible in any statistic.
What you should not do here is invent a figure to give a sense of direction. There is no reliable public measurement of how often a Dutch tradesperson ends up in an AI answer, and any estimate you come across comes from a party selling something. Better to measure small, and yourself.
Frequently asked questions about Google Business Profile and AI
Does it cost anything to optimise my Google Business Profile?
No. Your Google Business Profile is completely free. Creating it, filling it in, uploading photos, posting updates and collecting reviews cost you nothing but time. It is one of the few marketing channels where you get results without a budget.
How quickly do I notice a result after optimising?
Most business owners see more views and clicks in their profile statistics within two to four weeks. AI recommendations can move faster, because Gemini picks up the data almost immediately after an update. You notice the real difference after two to three months of consistent optimisation.
Do I no longer need to keep up my website then?
Yes, absolutely. Your website and your profile complement each other. But for AI visibility, your profile is currently the most important channel. AI assistants look first at structured data such as your profile, and only then at your website. Invest in both, but start with your profile.
Does this also work for businesses outside the Randstad?
Precisely for businesses outside the Randstad. In less competitive regions it is often easier to be the first to have a complete profile. The smaller your market area, the bigger the effect. In a town like Oisterwijk or Goirle, an optimised profile can put you straight at the top.
Can I do this myself or do I need an agency?
The basics you can absolutely do yourself: filling in your profile, uploading photos, posting updates and asking for reviews. An agency like ours adds value in the strategy behind it: which keywords you target, how your profile compares to competitors, and how you combine local SEO with your website and adverts.
Start with the field that is empty for you
If you take one thing from this whole page, let it be this: your profile is the only source about your business where you set the words exactly yourself. Your website gets summarised, your reviews are written by others, but your services, your opening hours and your description sit there literally as you type them. That makes an empty field more costly than it looks, and it makes filling it in the cheapest work there is.
Do not know which field would help you most, or want someone to place your profile next to your three closest competitors and tell you honestly where you are behind: put that question to us. Tell us your trade, your service area and the name under which you appear on Maps, and we will take a look and also tell you when you can simply do it yourself. That can be through the contact page, where you pick your own slot in the calendar or call. Want to hand off the profile work and tie it to your broader visibility? That route is covered under improving your SEO, and what it costs is on the pricing page NL.