If your business depends on nearby customers, there's a good chance more people have seen your Google Business Profile (previously called Google My Business) this month than have seen your actual website.
The map pack sits above the organic results, showing your rating and reviews, your opening hours, your photos and your phone number without anyone needing to click through at all. A lot of the businesses I speak to have spent real money on a website redesign and nothing at all on the thing most potential customers encounter first.
Google Business Profile optimisation has a reputation for being a long list of fiddly admin jobs, but a handful of things carry almost all the weight, and most of the rest is busywork.
What people decide before they reach your site
When someone searches for a service near them, they're usually comparing a handful of results side by side in the map pack. In those few seconds, they're checking:
- Whether you're open right now, or when you next will be
- How far away you are, and whether that's convenient
- What your rating looks like, and roughly how many reviews it's based on
- Whether the photos look like a real, currently operating business
None of that requires visiting your website. If your profile answers those questions badly, or doesn't answer them at all, you lose the enquiry before your homepage gets a chance.
The most common problem I find isn't a bad profile, it's a dormant one that was set up a few years ago and never updated since.
I audited a commercial design studio in 2026 that was losing local searches to competitors doing objectively less impressive work. The client's profile had eleven five-star reviews, which is a genuinely strong signal in this niche, but not one of them had been replied to. There hadn't been a Google Post since 2023, the "areas served" field was empty, and the Q&A section was untouched. Google reads all of that as a business that might not be trading any more.
What affects your Google Business Profile rankings
Plenty of Google Business Profile update tasks feel productive without actually impacting anything. Whitespark published a 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors report, where 47 local SEO specialists score 187 possible factors on how much they influence local rankings. The findings are arguably the most useful public reference we have on what actually moves local rankings, and some of them are genuinely counterintuitive.
Your GBP primary category is the most important ranking factor
This is the number one ranking factor in the map pack, and it's the one businesses most often get wrong. "Restaurant" and "Italian restaurant" surface for different searches, so pick the narrowest category that accurately describes what you do. People often say going more niche is a better way to gain more engaged visibility online, and this is one of those times.
After you add a primary category for your business, add your secondary categories to your GBP because those rank eighth on the same list. Most profiles I look at have one category filled in and the rest left empty, so make sure you're making use of all the space they're giving you to contextualise yourself for people using Google and AI Search.
Your opening hours, including the exceptions
Whether your business is open at the moment somebody searches sits at number five. Not whether your hours are listed, but whether you're open right now.
When you're closed, businesses that are open displace you. Nothing you do to your profile can outrun that, so the hours you publish need to be accurate, including bank holidays, Christmas and the half day you often close on a Wednesday. Setting your hours correctly is a separate factor and it climbed 64 places in this year's survey, which tells you how much attention Google is paying to it.
It's important that you don't list hours you don't actually keep to get extra ranking time, though, as it goes directly against Google's guidelines and produces exactly the sort of public customer review you don't want.
Your services, particularly Google's suggested ones
When you edit your services, Google offers a list of predefined options for your category. Ticking those has a real ranking effect, sitting at number 22 on the list. Custom service titles matter too, though slightly less. This takes ten minutes and almost nobody does it.
Resist the urge to list everything you could conceivably do because a services list that says you do all of it reads as a business that specialises in none of it. Google is trying to work out which problem you're the answer to, and a page of thirty loosely related services makes that harder. I audited a studio whose Google Business Profile services list was so broad it was competing for enquiries it had no interest in winning, which was exactly the problem the owner had come to me about (low-fit leads).
Reviews in both recency and volume
Three separate review factors sit in the top fifteen: how many reviews with text you have, how recent they are, and whether they arrive steadily rather than in bursts. So, forty reviews collected in one push three years ago is worse than a handful arriving every month. My advice for small businesses that want to improve their local SEO rankings is to start politely asking customers for a Google Review at the end of a job.
Photo quality beats quantity on a Google Business Profile
Photo and video quality, specifically not using stock images, ranks considerably higher than how many photos you've uploaded. Relevance to your category matters more than volume too, so Google is actively trying to match what is in your pictures against what you say you do.
Show the exterior so people recognise the business from the street and the inside so they know what they're walking into. Show pictures of the actual work you do as well. Wherever possible, avoid using high-res stock images over real, but lower-quality, images you've taken yourself as this is important when it comes to trusting the profile is real.
Consistency between your profile and your site
Your name, address and phone number matching between the two sits at number fifteen. This is one of the higher-impact things on the whole list and it's entirely within your control.
Lower priority issues to tackle with local SEO optimisation
Replying to reviews ranks 122nd out of 187 for map pack impact. It's not going to move you up the results but I say do it anyway because a prospective customer reading your reviews absolutely notices whether the owner engages. Frankly, it's a conversion decision rather than a ranking one, but my advice is to meaningfully engage with your profile as often as you can.
Google Posts rank 148th for frequency and 168th for quantity. They're near the bottom so post if it gives someone a reason to choose you, not because you think it'll lift your position. The Q&A section ranks 142nd so it's the same principle. It's useful because people read GBP questions and answers, and because it's the sort of explicit content AI tools can quote, not because Google rewards it directly.
Setting service areas ranks 152nd, so it's worth filling in for clarity but it's not the lever people treat it as. Setting service areas covering more than about two hours' drive is also flagged as a profile suspension risk, so don't get too broad with it.
None of these are wasted effort, they're just conversion work instead of organic ranking work, and it helps to know which is which so you can spend your limited time accordingly.
If your work is visual, you're leaving a whole channel unused
This applies to anyone whose customers choose partly on how something looks. Interior designers, architects, hairdressers, photographers, gyms, restaurants, builders doing extensions and conversions. For these businesses, images aren't decoration on the profile, they're a product demonstration.
Google compares your photo count and freshness against your competitors, so a Google Business Profile that hasn't had a new image since 2023 looks worse than one that gets three a month, regardless of which business does better work.
What to upload, in rough order of usefulness:
- Before and afters, which are the most persuasive thing most trades and design businesses own and almost nobody posts
- Work in progress, on-site or mid-job
- Finished results, properly lit
- Short walkthrough video, which is still rare enough to stand out
Take them on a phone as photo and video quality in the ranking data means "not stock", not "shot professionally".
Google Image Search is a reputable organic traffic channel for some businesses
Google Images is its own discovery route, and for visual industries it's often where the research starts. Someone planning a kitchen extension or a gym fit-out browses images long before they search for a supplier. Ranking there depends on things that barely register for the map pack: descriptive filenames, real alt text, and relevant copy surrounding the image on the page.
I audited a design studio whose flagship project image was published as something akin to 'DSC05491v2.webp' with no alt text. A competitor was ranking image results for high-value project searches using filenames that spelled out the client, the location, the firm and what was in the shot. Same industry and same quality of work, but completely different visibility. The competitor was doing nothing clever, they were just taking a couple of extra minutes during uploads to describe their own photos.
While image filenames and alt text sit near the bottom of the local pack ranking factors, these small jobs are worth doing if map pack position isn't all you care about. Image search is a separate entry point with its own audience, and for a visual business it can be a bigger source of first contact than the map pack is.
What Google can and can't tell from a photograph
Google's image recognition is good, and it can tell a kitchen from a gym from a hotel lobby without any help from you. But it simply cannot work out the specifics from pixels alone.
Looking at a photograph of a finished bathroom, Google can identify that it's a bathroom. However, it can't tell you whose bathroom, which town it's in, who built it, what the brief was, what the tiles cost or whether the business that did the work is the one publishing the photo. Those are facts about the picture, not things visible in it.
That's the gap filenames, alt text and surrounding copy fill. You're not describing the image to something blind, you're supplying the context that isn't in the frame, so Google can connect a recognisable bathroom to a specific business, a specific place and a specific kind of job.
Which is why DSC05491v2.webp is such a waste. Google knows what's in that photo but it has no idea that it should show it to someone searching for a designer in your county.
The practical version
Rename your project images before you upload them. Not IMG_4471, something a person could read and understand, like oak-kitchen-extension-stamford-finished.jpg. Write alt text describing what's actually in the picture and put a paragraph of real copy near it explaining the project.
It's dull, repetitive work but it's also the single most neglected thing I find on design-led websites.
Where AI search fits in
There's a lot of noise about AI killing local search, but the evidence doesn't really support it yet. Whitespark's own read is that local discovery still happens mostly through Google's local results because they're a better experience for "near me" intent than a chatbot answer.
What has changed is what earns you a mention when an AI tool does answer a local question. Three of the top five AI search visibility factors in the 2026 report are citation factors, meaning consistent listings and mentions of your business across other sites. Getting your details right on Bing Places, Apple Maps and the directories that matter in your industry is now doing double duty.
One warning from the same report: AI-generated text and AI-generated photos on your profile both score as suspension risks. Write your own description and use your own photographs.
How AI tools decide who to recommend
Google Business Profile vs website: what each one does
None of this makes your site irrelevant because a well-optimised Google Business Profile gets you seen and the website is where someone decides whether to trust you with their money. What it does mean is that the site and the profile need to agree with each other.
| Where the mismatch shows up | Why it costs you |
|---|---|
| Name, address or phone number differs | Directly weakens a top-fifteen ranking factor |
| Services listed on the profile aren't on the site | Visitors bounce looking for what they were promised |
| Opening hours differ between the two | Erodes trust immediately, and it's very visible |
| The page your profile links to is thin | That landing page's content and title tag are both significant local ranking factors |
That last row is worth expanding on. The page your profile points at, usually your homepage, carries real weight. Keywords in its title tag and headings both rank inside the top twenty. If your profile links to a page that doesn't clearly say what you do and where, you're wasting the connection. Getting all of this consistent can be tedious but it is genuinely worth doing to improve your local SEO efforts.
Common questions about Google Business Profile Optimisation
How do I optimise my Google Business Profile?
Start with your primary category, then your secondary categories, then your opening hours including bank holidays. Add Google's predefined services for your category. Those four jobs cover most of the ranking impact available to you. Everything else is refinement.
How do I get my Google Business Profile to rank higher?
Beyond category and hours, the biggest remaining levers are reviews arriving steadily rather than in bursts, real photographs rather than stock images, and your name, address and phone number matching exactly between your profile and your website. Proximity to the searcher also matters enormously and you can't change it, so don't lose sleep over rankings from three towns away.
How often should I post on my Google Business Profile?
Less often than you've been told. Posting frequency ranks near the bottom of the 187 factors in Whitespark's 2026 survey. Post when you have something a customer would actually want to know, such as a seasonal change or a new service, rather than to a schedule.
Why isn't my Google Business Profile showing up?
Usually one of four things: the profile isn't verified, there's a duplicate listing competing with it, the profile has been suspended, or you're checking from too far away for it to appear. Search for your business name directly to work out which.
Is a Google Business Profile free?
Yes. Creating, verifying and managing one costs nothing. Anyone charging you a monthly fee is charging for their time, not for the listing.
What's the difference between Google My Business and Google Business Profile?
Nothing. Google renamed the product and retired the standalone app. You now manage the profile directly from Google Search and Maps.
A reasonable starting point
If you do nothing else this week, search for your own business the way a customer would. On a phone, not logged into anything, ideally not sitting in your own premises. Look at what comes back.
Check your primary category and the hours. Look at the date on your most recent photo. Read the last review and see whether anyone replied. That five-minute exercise usually surfaces at least one thing worth fixing, and it costs nothing.
If you'd like someone to look at it properly, my free basic SEO audit covers your Google Business Profile alongside a technical health check of the site. You can also read more about how I approach local SEO, or get in touch and tell me what isn't working.
About the author
Georgia Petrie is a freelance SEO and content specialist based in Peterborough, working with businesses across the East Midlands and the rest of the UK. She spent nearly a decade in automotive journalism and in-house SEO, including a Newspress Rising Star Journalist award in 2018, before moving agency-side to manage organic search across a wide range of client accounts. She now works directly with specialist retailers, service businesses and design studios on technical SEO, local search and content that both people and AI tools can actually use.
She reviews Google Business Profiles as part of every SEO audit she runs. You can read more about her background or find her on LinkedIn.
Sources
Whitespark, Local Search Ranking Factors 2026, published November 2025. A survey of 47 local search specialists scoring 187 ranking factors.
Sterling Sky, research on predefined services in Google Business Profile, referenced in the same report.