How to Get on Google Maps: Step-by-Step Google Business Profile Guide

When someone needs a plumber, a dentist or a café nearby, they usually open the map on their phone and choose from the first three to five listings they see. If your business isn’t there, it simply doesn’t exist for that customer. This guide explains how to get on Google Maps step by step: creating and verifying your profile, filling in every field, handling reviews, connecting the profile to your website and measuring whether it brings in customers. It works for any city and any country.

A quick note on names. Your business listing on Google Maps and Google Search is called a Google Business Profile (it used to be Google My Business). It’s free: you add your address, hours, services and photos yourself, and you reply to reviews. Everything you do to become more visible on the map is called local SEO — search engine optimisation for “near me” and “in my city” searches.

Why your Maps listing matters

People choose local businesses based on reviews and on what they see in the listing. According to the BrightLocal Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (1,002 US consumers), 97% of people read reviews for local businesses, and 71% use Google to do it. 68% will only use a business with four stars or more, 47% won’t use one with fewer than 20 reviews, and 74% only consider reviews from the last three months.

One more number from the same survey: 54% of people visit a business’s website after reading positive reviews. In other words, the profile and the website work as a pair — the profile gets attention, and the website helps people decide.

How Google ranks local results

Google explains this on its Business Profile Help page. Local results are mainly based on three factors:

• Relevance — how well your profile matches what the person is searching for. The more complete and accurate your profile, the easier it is for Google to see you fit the search.
• Distance — how far your business is from the searcher (or from the location mentioned in the search).
• Prominence — how well known your business is. Google says this includes how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have, and that more reviews and positive ratings help.

The same page states plainly that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. You can’t change distance, so your effort goes into relevance (a complete, honest profile and a good website) and prominence (reviews, mentions and links).

How to get on Google Maps, step by step

Step 1. Create your profile

The process is described in Google’s official sign-up guide:

1. Sign in to a Google Account — ideally one created with your business email, not a staff member’s personal address.
2. Go to business.google.com/create and enter your business name. If Google says someone has already verified it, request ownership instead of creating a duplicate.
3. Choose your primary category.
4. Say whether customers can visit you. If yes, enter the address or drop a pin on the map.
5. Add your service area, phone number and website, then complete verification.

Google is clear that customers can only find your profile after verification. “One business, one profile” is also an official rule: duplicates confuse the system and can cause problems.

Step 2. Address or service area

This is where mobile businesses often go wrong — gardeners, cleaners, repair technicians, consultants who visit clients. Under Google’s guidelines, if customers don’t come to your address, you must hide it and set a service area instead. P.O. boxes and virtual offices aren’t eligible.

According to the service area help page, you can add up to 20 service areas — cities, postcodes or districts — and they shouldn’t extend beyond about two hours’ driving time from your base. If you have a location customers visit and you also travel or deliver (say, a shop with delivery), you’re a “hybrid” business: show the address and add a service area.

Step 3. Verification

Google chooses which verification methods to offer, depending on your business type and country. A video recording is a common one. Per Google’s requirements, the video must be recorded on a phone in one continuous, unedited take of at least 30 seconds. It needs to show:

• where you are: the street, building number or familiar landmarks;
• that the business exists: permanent signage with the same name as your profile, or, for service-area businesses, your tools, equipment or branded clothing;
• that you manage it: staff-only areas, the till, you doing the work, or a document in the business name.

The review can take up to five business days. Keep bank details, ID numbers and other people’s faces out of the frame.

Step 4. Categories

Your primary category is one of the strongest relevance signals. Google advises using as few categories as possible, but the most specific ones — “Landscape designer” beats a vague “Services”. Only add secondary categories if they describe your core business, not a one-off service.

Step 5. Fill in every field

Google says directly that businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to appear in local results. Go through each section:

• Name — exactly as on your sign and documents. Adding keywords, a city or a slogan breaks the rules and is one of the most common reasons for suspension.
• Hours, including holidays and special hours.
• Phone and website — a number that reaches this specific location, and a link to the right page of your site, not a third-party page or a redirect.
• Description — in plain words: what you do, who for, and where. No links, no sales slogans.
• Attributes — parking, Wi-Fi, accessibility, payment methods.
• Services and products — list each service separately with a short description and, if you like, a “from” price. This helps the profile match specific searches.

Photos and posts

Google recommends adding photos and videos to show what you offer. Real photos work best: the outside and entrance (so people recognise the place), the interior, your team, before-and-after shots of your work, your products. Stock images don’t build trust.

Posts are short updates shown right in your profile. There are three types: Update, Offer (a promotion with dates) and Event. Posts older than six months are archived, so a sensible rhythm is one or two posts a month: a new service, a seasonal offer, a recent project.

Reviews: how to ask, how to reply and what not to do

Reviews affect both your position on the map and the customer’s decision. You can and should ask for them. Google’s review tips suggest sending customers a link or showing a QR code. The best moment is right after a job well done, while the experience is fresh. In BrightLocal’s survey, 78% of people had been asked for a review in the past year, and 28% say they “always” leave one when asked.

Reply to every review, good and bad. 89% of BrightLocal respondents expect businesses to respond, and 50% are put off by templated replies. Google advises keeping replies polite and short, never sharing the customer’s personal details, not arguing and not using replies to advertise. For negative reviews, a simple approach works: thank them, acknowledge the problem, offer a fix and move the conversation to a private channel.

There’s a legal side too. In 2024 the US Federal Trade Commission announced a rule banning fake reviews (including AI-generated ones), buying reviews with a required sentiment and undisclosed reviews from insiders such as employees. Other countries have consumer protection laws as well, so faking reviews is a bad idea everywhere.

NAP consistency

NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone. These should be written exactly the same way in your Google profile, on your website, on social media, in directories and on other map services. If one place has an old phone number and another spells your street differently, Google has a harder time confirming it’s the same business — and a customer might not reach you at all. Every six months or so, check everywhere your business is listed and make the details match.

Connecting the profile and your website

A profile without a website works less well. Google counts links to your business, and the website is where people check prices and past work and decide whether to contact you. What matters:

• Local landing pages. If you serve several towns or districts, create a genuinely useful page for each: services, real projects and reviews from customers there. Copying the same text and swapping the town name doesn’t help.
• The profile link should go to the page for that location or service, not just your homepage.
• Structured data (often called schema). This is a bit of code on your site that tells search engines where your business details are. According to Google Search Central, LocalBusiness markup lets you tell Google about your hours, departments and other details. Name and address are required; phone with country code, coordinates, opening hours and the location’s URL are recommended. Don’t mark up your own reviews with star ratings — that’s only allowed for sites that collect reviews about other businesses.

If you don’t have a website or it’s outdated, start there: a business website with us starts at €1,000 and takes 1–3 weeks, and a simple landing page starts at €300.

Common mistakes and suspensions

Mistake	What can happen
Keywords or a city in the business name	Guideline violation, possible suspension
A virtual office or P.O. box as the address	Verification fails or the profile is suspended
Several profiles for one business	Confusing results, duplicates removed
Bought reviews or reviews from staff	Reviews removed, restrictions on the profile
A link to a third-party page or a redirect instead of your site	Guideline violation, less trust

Google reserves the right to suspend profiles that break the rules. If it happens, don’t create a new profile: fix the problem and appeal through the profile itself, with supporting documents and photos.

Measuring results

In your profile’s Performance section, Google shows:

• how many unique people viewed your profile on Search and Maps;
• which searches people used to find you (updated at the start of each month);
• how many tapped Call, Directions or Website, started a message conversation or made a booking.

Look at month-on-month trends, not individual days. A good sign is growth in directions and website clicks from searches for your service, not just your business name. To see how many of these became enquiries, add analytics to your site and record the source of each lead — for example, in our Telegram CRM LeadBot.

Example: Maxiprof

Maxiprof is a garden and villa care company working in the Marbella area since 2010. Before us it had a Tilda site that brought no clients, then a poor WordPress site from a freelancer with mixed languages on the pages. After an audit we rebuilt everything from scratch: market and keyword research, an SEO-optimised website, a cleaned-up brand with a brand book, and a properly set-up Google Business Profile with the right categories, service area, services and photos. The site launched at the end of September 2026, followed by monthly SEO work. It’s too early to talk about results, but the foundation — profile, website and consistent details everywhere — is now working together.

When it makes sense to hire help

You can set up a simple profile yourself in an evening. Help makes sense if:

• your profile is suspended or won’t verify;
• you have several locations or serve several cities;
• competitors consistently rank above you even though you’ve been around longer and do better work;
• you don’t have time to reply to reviews, post updates and keep details accurate.

We offer local SEO and Google Maps optimisation from €350 per month; first changes usually show within 4–8 weeks. If you’re not sure where to start, you can order an SEO audit.

Want customers in your city to find you on the map? Message us on Telegram or WhatsApp, or send a request through the contact form — we’ll look at your profile and tell you what to fix first.

Sources

1. Google Business Profile Help — Tips to improve your local ranking on Google (2026)
2. Google Business Profile Help — Guidelines for representing your business on Google (2026)
3. Google Business Profile Help — Sign up for Business Profile (2026)
4. Google Business Profile Help — Manage your service areas for service-area & hybrid businesses (2026)
5. Google Business Profile Help — Verify your business with a video recording (2026)
6. Google Business Profile Help — Create & manage posts on your Business Profile (2026)
7. Google Business Profile Help — Tips to get more reviews (2026)
8. Google Maps User Contributed Content Policy — Prohibited & restricted content (2026)
9. Google Business Profile Help — Understand your Business Profile performance & insights (2026)
10. Google Search Central — Local business (LocalBusiness) structured data (2026)
11. BrightLocal — Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (2026)
12. Google, The Keyword — New ways we’re protecting businesses on Maps (2026)
13. U.S. Federal Trade Commission — Final rule banning fake reviews and testimonials (2024)