Optimising your Google Business Profile in 2026: how to reach the top of local search

Send a direct link to your review page after every job. Put that same link in your email signature, on your invoice or as a QR code at the counter. Satisfied customers are happy to help, as long as you make it easy.

Ignoring them is harmful, and so is reacting defensively. Respond calmly, professionally and with a solution in mind: thank the reviewer for the feedback, acknowledge a fair complaint and offer a solution. You are not writing that reply for that one customer, but for every future reader.

Respond to every review, full stop. For a positive review, a personal thank you is enough. And encourage customers to describe in their review exactly what you did, such as "great boiler installation, done properly". Those keywords strengthen your relevance.

That is where Gemini, Ask Maps and the regular search results draw their answer from, because Google never names posts or profile text as a separate relevance signal.

The temptation to add something is strong: Smith Plumbing 24/7 Emergency Call-Out. A name like that is no longer a name field but an advert, and it clashes with Google's own guidelines for business listings. A competitor can report it, and then a correction gets applied, in the worst case together with a suspension of your profile. Put in the name field exactly what is on your van and on your invoice. If your business is named after the town you are based in, that town name can obviously stay, because then it really is your name.

The description shows up when someone opens your profile in full. It is the place to say, in plain sentences, what you do, for whom, in what area and since when. Do not start with "We are a dynamic company that". Start with the work: "We replace and service boilers across the region, usually within a week."

Three practical rules. Write it separately, not cut and pasted from your homepage, because that text is for someone who has already found you. Name the places you actually cover, not the whole region. And do not put in prices or offers that will no longer be accurate in three months' time, because you rarely update this text, and an expired promise works against you.

What you do put in: what you specialise in, which brands or materials you use, whether your quotes are with or without VAT, and what a customer can expect when they call. Those are exactly the questions that would otherwise come in by phone.

Your profile lets you set special hours for particular days. Do that once a year for every public holiday at once, in January, instead of on the day itself each time. Half an hour's work, and you are done with it for the whole year.

Two weeks closed without your profile saying so means two weeks of people calling for nothing and then calling someone else instead. Also put in a post when you are back.

Those are two separate things. Drag the pin to the spot where someone actually rings the bell or parks, especially on a business park or a building with several entrances. Then check the route from the motorway yourself.

A service-area business should not show a home address. Instead, set the towns you cover, and keep that list honest: towns you would rather not drive to only bring you enquiries you turn down.

Name, address and phone number on your site, in your directory listings (such as Yell) and on your profile: exactly the same, right down to how the street is written. If your phone number changes, update it the same day in all three places.

The report shows which words brought people to your profile. It is not a tool's estimate, but exactly what was actually typed in. Two things usually stand out. First, your own business name, and those are people who already knew you; they do not count as new demand. Second, a handful of terms you would never have thought of yourself, and those belong straight in your services and your description.

This month against the same month last year, not against last month. Almost every trade has a season, and comparing August with June just measures the summer, not your work.

One line each time: the date, what you changed. Without that list, you will not know in three months' time where an increase came from, and you will draw the wrong conclusion.

The report does not tell you which position you were in, and that position also differs per searcher, because distance plays a part. Someone searching from five kilometres away sees a different order than someone standing on your street. Screenshots of "we are number 1" therefore say little without also saying where the phone was standing.

Few views means you are not being found, and then the work is about category, distance and prominence. Many views with few callers means you are being found but not convincing anyone, and then the work is about photos, reviews and the text described above. Confusing the two costs you half a year of working on the wrong thing.

Each location gets its own profile with its own address, its own phone number and its own photos. That last part often gets skipped, and then four profiles end up showing the same eight photos of the same building. Also link each profile to its own page on your site about that location, rather than all of them to the homepage.

You are only allowed one profile, even if you cover twenty towns. A second profile at a relative's address in another town is a suspension waiting to happen. What is allowed and does work: setting your service area, and creating a page on your own site for each place that is genuinely about that place.

A business that does both roofing and solar panels chooses one primary category and puts the rest in as a secondary category and as a service. The temptation to turn that into two profiles is strong, and the answer is no, unless they really are two businesses with their own staff and their own address.

Anything outside that, you solve with your service area, your categories and your own website, not with an extra profile.