Google Business Profile checklist for Glasgow businesses

When someone nearby searches for what you do, Google often shows a map with a handful of local businesses before the ordinary results. Your Google Business Profile is what gets you into that map. This checklist covers what to set up, what to keep doing each month, and what to avoid.

How Google decides who appears in the map

Google says local results are based mainly on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well your profile matches the search. Distance is how far you are from the person searching. Prominence is how well known your business is, which Google judges from things like reviews, links and your wider presence online.

You cannot change distance. Almost everything else on this list improves relevance or prominence.

Set-up checklist

• Claim and verify your profile. An unverified profile is easy for others to edit and less likely to rank.
• Use your real business name. Google’s guidelines say the name should match the one on your signage, website and stationery. Adding keywords or taglines breaks the rules and can get a profile suspended.
• Choose the most specific primary category. Google advises using as few categories as possible to describe your core business. Pick the category your business is, not everything it has.
• Set your address or service area correctly. If customers visit you, show your address. If you travel to customers, Google asks service-area businesses to hide the address and list the areas they cover instead.
• Add accurate opening hours, including special hours for bank holidays and Christmas.
• Link to the most relevant page. For a single-location business that is usually your homepage. For several locations, link each profile to its own location page.
• List your services and products with short, plain descriptions of what each one includes.
• Write a useful description. You have 750 characters. Explain what you offer and what makes you different. Google’s rules say not to include URLs or focus on promotions and prices.
• Add real photos: your premises, your team and your work. Stock images add little.
• Fill in attributes that apply, such as accessibility, parking or online appointments.

Keep your profile active

A profile that is set up once and never touched again tends to drift. A few minutes a month keeps it accurate and gives customers a reason to choose you:

• Add new photos of recent work.
• Publish an update when you have news, an offer or an event.
• Update hours before holidays.
• Check that nobody has suggested an edit to your details that you did not make.
• Reply to every review, good and bad.

Reviews: what to do and what to avoid

Reviews help your prominence and they help customers decide. The simplest way to get more is to ask every happy customer, and to make it easy with a short link or QR code on invoices, emails and receipts.

Be careful about how you ask. Since 6 April 2025, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act has banned fake reviews and reviews that hide an incentive, and the Competition and Markets Authority can fine businesses up to 10% of their worldwide turnover. Google also removes fake reviews and can restrict profiles that break its rules. So:

• Never buy reviews or write them yourself.
• Do not offer discounts or prizes in exchange for reviews.
• Do not only ask customers you expect to be positive while steering unhappy ones away.
• Reply calmly and helpfully to negative reviews. Other customers read the reply as much as the review.

Features that have changed

Google changes Business Profile features regularly, and older guides may be out of date. Business Profile chat and call history were switched off on 31 July 2024. Google also discontinued the Q&A API in November 2025 while it reworks questions and answers. Rather than relying on profile Q&A, answer common questions in a clear FAQ on your website.

Make your website back up your profile

Your profile and your website work together. The strongest local results usually come from businesses whose website confirms what the profile says:

• The same business name, address and phone number on your website, your profile and the main directories.
• A page for each service, and for each location or main service area, with genuinely useful content.
• LocalBusiness schema markup so search engines can read your details reliably.
• Links from genuine local sources, such as suppliers, trade bodies and community organisations.

Measure what matters

Your profile’s performance report shows calls, direction requests and website clicks. Add tracking parameters to your website link so those visits show up separately in Google Analytics. Rankings in the map vary from street to street, so check them from several points across your area rather than from your own office.

Want a second pair of eyes?

Our SEO services cover everything on this list, from profile set-up to citations, reviews and location pages. If you would like to know where your profile stands, ask for a free local SEO audit and we will send you a plain-English summary of the biggest opportunities.