The Google Business Profile guide for London businesses

A Google Business Profile (the product Google used to call Google My Business) is the listing that appears in the map pack, on Google Maps and in the panel on the right of a desktop search for your business name. For a London shop, restaurant, clinic, practice or trade it is the single most important page you do not host, and it decides more calls and visits than most websites do.

This guide is the informational companion to our Google Business Profile service. It is written so that you can do all of it yourself. Each section quotes Google’s own help pages, linked at the point of use, because the rules change and the official page is the one that counts. The London notes explain what to do differently in a city where the nearest competitor is often on the same street.

1. Claim, verify and check for duplicates

Search Google Maps for your business name and address before you create anything. Many London businesses already have a profile that Google or a previous owner created. Claim that one rather than making a second, because duplicates split your reviews and confuse the map. Google’s verification help describes the methods (video, phone, email, postcard and others, depending on the business) and notes that businesses with many locations can use bulk verification.

Verification by video is now common. Google will ask you to show the exterior with signage, the interior, and evidence that you run the business (opening the till, unlocking the door). For a London office in a shared building, make sure your company name appears on the building’s directory board or the office door before you start the recording.

While you wait, read the guidelines for representing your business on Google once, start to finish. Almost every suspension we see traces back to one line in that document.

2. Name and categories: the two fields that carry the most weight

Name. The guidelines require the name to reflect your real-world name as used consistently on your storefront, website and stationery, and state that including unnecessary information in the name is not permitted and could result in suspension. "Smith Dental" is the name. "Smith Dental | Best Dentist in Islington N1" is not, even if it works for a while. Report competitors who do it through the profile’s suggest-an-edit function; do not match them.

Primary category. Google’s category help says to select the primary category that best describes your business, then add additional categories for other services and departments. Its own example: a pizza restaurant may appear when someone searches for restaurants, Italian restaurants or pizza, and a grocery store with a bakery and deli should set "Grocery store" as primary and add "Bakery" and "Deli".

The primary category is the strongest relevance signal on the profile. Choose it for the search you most want to win, not for the broadest description of what you do. The table gives London examples.

Add only categories you genuinely offer. A category you cannot deliver on brings the wrong searches and the wrong reviews.

3. Address, service areas, hours and the London specifics

Address. Shops, restaurants, clinics and offices that customers visit show an address. It must be a place where you have signage and staff during stated hours. A virtual office, a mail-forwarding address or a shared workspace where you do not meet customers does not qualify under the guidelines. Our own London office at Tower 42 is a by-appointment office with a named presence in the building, and our website says so rather than implying a shopfront.

Service areas. A business that travels to customers hides its address and sets service areas instead. Google’s service-area help allows up to 20 areas based on cities, postcodes or other areas, and says the overall boundary should not be more than about two hours’ driving time from where the business is based. A hybrid business (a showroom that also fits at home) can show an address and set areas. For London, choose the boroughs or postcode districts you cover in a normal week. Listing all 33 to look bigger dilutes the signal and invites jobs you will decline.

Hours. Keep them exact, including special hours for bank holidays and Christmas, because a closed-when-open mark is the fastest way to lose a review. For businesses near City and Canary Wharf offices, consider whether early or lunchtime opening is where the demand is. If you run on appointments only, Google lets you say so.

Phone and website. Use the 020 number customers will recognise and the same number on your website. Link the profile to the page that matches the profile (the home page for most businesses, the location page for a branch), and add a tracking parameter so GA4 can separate profile visitors from everyone else.

Get your free SEO auditPart two of every review is a Business Profile check: categories, services, photos, posts, reviews and what your two nearest competitors do better.

4. Services, products, attributes and the description

Services. Google’s services help lets you add services under each category, with a description and optional price for each. List every service you want to be found for as its own item, in the words customers use ("boiler repair", not "heating solutions"), and add a price or price range where you can. Services feed relevance directly and show in the profile on mobile.

Products. Retailers, salons and clinics can add products with photographs and prices. For a restaurant a menu link and dishes do the same job. Products appear as a carousel on the profile and are one of the few places you can show prices in the search results without an advert.

Attributes. Tick what is true: wheelchair-accessible entrance, toilets, Wi-Fi, outdoor seating, online appointments, identifies as women-owned, LGBTQ+ friendly and so on. Some attributes come from customers rather than from you. Attributes are filters in Google Maps, so a missing accessible-entrance tick can remove you from a search before ranking is even considered.

Description. Up to 750 characters of plain English: what you do, who for, where, and what is distinctive. No offers, no URLs, no keyword lists. Write it for the person reading, mention the neighbourhood and nearest station once, and stop.

5. Photographs and video

Photographs are chosen in seconds and decide whether the person taps "Call" or scrolls on. Google’s photo and video help gives the specifications: JPG or PNG, a recommended resolution of 720 by 720 pixels, and video of up to 30 seconds, up to 75 MB, at 720p or higher. It lists the types you can add, including logo, cover, exterior, interior, product and team photographs.

Customers add their own photographs and you cannot remove them unless they break policy. The way to keep the gallery representative is to keep adding good ones of your own.

6. Posts, and the Q&A section

Posts are short updates (offers, events, news) that appear on the profile. Google’s posts help notes that posts older than six months are archived unless a date range is set, which tells you the intended rhythm: posts are current information, not a blog. A monthly post is enough for most London businesses: a seasonal menu, a new service, an opening-hours change, a before-and-after from a recent job. Use a real photograph each time and a clear call to action (book, call, learn more).

Questions and answers is the section where anyone can ask a question about your business and anyone, including you, can answer. Most London profiles have it empty or, worse, filled by customers guessing. Seed it with the eight to ten questions you are asked on the phone every week (parking, nearest station, card payments, whether you take NHS patients, whether you do same-day appointments) and answer them as the business. Check it monthly, because customer answers can be wrong and sit there for years.

7. Reviews and replies: the rules first, then the habit

Reviews are the part of the profile that most affects both ranking and choice. Google’s local ranking page names review count as an input to prominence. Before you ask anyone for a review, know the rules.

• Google’s review tips say that offering incentives such as free or discounted goods or services in exchange for posting, changing or removing reviews is considered fake and misleading content and is strictly prohibited. The same page encourages you to verify your profile, remind customers to leave reviews and respond to them.
• The Maps content policy prohibits fake engagement, including content that is not based on a real experience, and reviews with a conflict of interest, such as reviews of your own business or a competitor’s.
• In UK law, Schedule 20 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 treats submitting or commissioning a fake consumer review, and publishing reviews without reasonable steps to prevent fake or undisclosed incentivised ones, as commercial practices that are always unfair.

The habit that works is unglamorous. Ask every customer at the natural end of the job, in person or by message, with a direct link to the review form (your profile gives you a short link). Do not filter who you ask. Reply to every review within a few days: thank the positive ones briefly and specifically, and answer the negative ones calmly, with what you have done about it and an invitation to continue offline. The reply is written for the next reader, not the reviewer.

A London example from our own work: Blac in Whetstone N20 holds 4.6 stars across 341 Google reviews and 7.9 out of 10 on TheFork (as at 7 July 2026). Our role was reels-first social and reputation; the review volume came from a consistent habit, not from a campaign. Our reviews guide covers requesting, replying and what to do about reviews that break policy.

8. Several locations: one profile per place, one system behind them

A London business with several branches needs a verified profile for each location, with its own address, hours, photographs and reviews. Google’s verification help points businesses with many locations to bulk verification. Within the Business Profile manager you can group locations, set shared attributes and give branch managers access to their own listing only.

The traps are the same ones we see on multi-location websites: the same photographs on every branch, a head-office phone number on every profile so calls cannot be attributed, and a single landing page for all branches. Each profile should link to its own location page on the website, carry its own local number or tracked number, and show photographs of that branch. Our guide to multi-location SEO in London covers the website side and how to report by branch.

9. The monthly checklist

A Business Profile decays when nobody owns it. Give it to one person and put thirty minutes in the diary each month.

If the numbers in the last row are flat after three months of the routine, the problem is usually relevance (categories and services) or the website behind the profile. That is where a wider local SEO programme starts; the local SEO guide explains the rest of the picture.