The Google Business Profile Checklist

Local SEO · Published September 17, 2026

For most local businesses the Google Business Profile moves more revenue than the website does, because the map pack sits above every organic result and is decided almost entirely by things that are not on your site. This is every field that affects whether you appear, in the order they actually matter, plus the ones that do nothing and are still sold as if they did.

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What the profile is actually competing on

Google states the three factors plainly: relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well your profile matches the search, and it is driven by your categories, services and description. Distance is how far you are from the searcher, or from the place they named. Prominence is how well known the business is, which is where reviews, citations, links and the website finally enter.

Two of those three live entirely on the profile. That is why a business with a mediocre website and an immaculate profile routinely outranks a business with the reverse, and why anyone quoting you for a rebuild before they have looked at your profile is selling the wrong thing first.

Distance is the one you cannot change, and it is worth understanding what it does. A searcher in Barrhaven sees Barrhaven businesses. You will not rank in the map pack across the whole city from one location, and any agency promising that is promising something Google does not offer.

The fields that decide whether you appear at all

Work these first, in this order. Everything below them is refinement.

Primary category. The highest-leverage field on the profile. "Website designer" and "Marketing agency" surface for different searches, and picking the second when you want the first quietly removes you from the searches you care about. Pick the one that names what you do most specifically.
Secondary categories. Add every one that genuinely applies, and none that do not. They widen the set of searches you are eligible for without diluting the primary.
Business name, exactly as it appears in the real world. Adding keywords to it is against Google's guidelines, it is the most commonly reported violation there is, and a competitor can and will report it.
Address or service area. If customers come to you, use the address. If you go to them, set a service area and hide the address, which is a supported configuration. What suppresses a listing is having neither.
Hours, including holiday hours. Wrong hours are the most common cause of a bad first review, and seasonal businesses get caught by this every changeover.
Phone number, matching the one on your website exactly, in the same format. This is the core of the citation matching that feeds prominence.
Website link, pointing at the most relevant page rather than always at the homepage. A single-service profile should point at that service's page.

The fields most businesses leave empty

These are the ones that separate a complete profile from a claimed one. Each is a direct relevance signal, and each is free.

Services, each with its own description. This is a structured list, not the business description, and it is one of the clearest statements of relevance available to you. Most profiles have none.
Products, which apply to far more businesses than sell physical goods. A packaged offering with a price and a photograph is a product as far as the profile is concerned.
The business description, 750 characters, written for a person rather than stuffed with search terms. Lead with what you do and where.
Attributes: languages spoken, accessibility, payment methods, appointment requirements. Several of these are filter criteria in Maps, which means an empty attribute removes you from a filtered search entirely.
Opening date, which feeds the prominence calculation and is trivially easy to supply.
Photos, added on a regular cadence rather than twenty on the day you set it up. Real photographs of real work outperform stock decisively.
Questions and answers. You may seed these yourself with genuine questions customers actually ask, and answer them. Left empty, the section gets filled by strangers guessing.

The ongoing work, which is where it is won

A profile is not a form you fill in once. The activity signals are continuous, and the businesses that hold the pack are the ones still working it in month nine.

Reviews, arriving steadily. Velocity beats total: thirty reviews spread across a year reads as a live business, while eighty that stopped in 2024 reads as one that might have closed.
Review responses, on every review, within a day or two. It is a visible signal to customers and a demonstrable activity signal to Google, and it costs minutes.
Posts, weekly or close to it. Offers, updates, new work, seasonal notes. They expire, which is the point: the section being current is the signal.
New photos monthly, geotagged where your workflow supports it, showing actual jobs.
Keeping hours, services and attributes accurate as the business changes.

What does not work, and is still sold

Some of this is folklore and some of it is actively dangerous to your listing.

Keyword-stuffing the business name. Against guidelines, easily reported, and a fast route to a suspension that takes weeks to reverse.
Creating additional listings for the same business at virtual offices or a relative's address. This is the single most common cause of a permanent suspension.
Buying reviews, or posting them yourself. Detectable, against Google's policies, and in Canada a deceptive marketing practice under the Competition Act with real financial consequences.
Review gating, meaning asking how the experience was and only routing the happy ones to Google. Explicitly prohibited by Google, and prohibited by the Competition Act's rules on reviews.
Geotagging photos as a ranking tactic. Google strips EXIF data on upload. It does no harm and it does nothing.
Paying for citation blasts across hundreds of low-quality directories. A handful of consistent, real citations is worth more than four hundred inconsistent ones, and the inconsistency actively hurts.

How to tell whether it is working

Profile insights give you calls, direction requests and website clicks, which are the numbers that matter and the ones most owners never open. Track them monthly rather than weekly, because local search is noisy week to week.

For ranking, a single check from your own phone is misleading, because your own location and history colour the result. What you want is a grid: the same search run from points across the area you serve, showing where you appear and where you vanish. That is what tells you whether you own a suburb or just your own street.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take for a Google Business Profile to rank?

A newly verified profile in a low-competition category can appear within weeks. A competitive category in a dense area takes months, and the variable that moves it most over that period is review velocity rather than anything on the profile itself. The setup work is a day. The ranking is the six months after it.

Can I rank in the map pack across all of Ottawa?

Not from one location, no. Distance from the searcher is one of the three ranking factors and it is not something you can optimise away. A single Ottawa location will rank strongly near itself and fade with distance. Genuine multi-area coverage requires genuine multiple locations, and fabricating them is the fastest way to lose the listing you have.

Do I need a physical address?

You need either an address customers can visit or a declared service area with the address hidden, which is a supported and entirely legitimate configuration for a business that travels to its customers. What you cannot do is use an address you do not operate from, including a virtual office or a mailbox.

Does posting on Google Business Profile actually help?

Posts are a modest signal on their own and a meaningful one in aggregate, because they demonstrate the business is active and they occupy space on your own listing that would otherwise be empty. Treat them as the cheapest weekly marketing you have rather than as a ranking lever.

What suspends a profile?

Most often: a keyword-stuffed business name, an address the business does not operate from, duplicate listings for the same business, or a category that does not match what the business does. Reinstatement is possible but slow, and the listing is invisible while you wait.