The Google Business Profile Checklist for Home Services

For most home-service businesses, the Google Business Profile is doing more work than the website. It's what appears in the map pack, it's what shows on Maps, it's where the reviews live, and for a large share of customers it's the only thing they look at before calling.

It's also mostly a form. Which means most of the value here is available to anyone willing to go through it carefully once, and then keep it current.

The fields that decide whether you appear

• Primary category.The most consequential field on the profile. Pick the most specific one that describes your main work — “Roofing contractor”, not “Contractor”. Everything else is secondary to getting this right.
• Secondary categories.Add the other services you genuinely provide. Don't pad this with work you don't do; irrelevant categories dilute rather than broaden.
• Hours — and holiday hours.Customers filter by “open now”. Stale hours quietly remove you from searches at exactly the moments urgency is highest. Set special hours before holidays, not after.
• Service area.Set it to where you actually work. An unrealistic radius doesn't extend your reach — it makes you look less specifically local everywhere in it.
• Address or service-area configuration.If you don't serve customers at your premises, configure as a service-area business and hide the address. Getting this wrong is a common cause of suspension.

The fields that decide whether you get chosen

• Services list. Enter them individually with descriptions. Named services can match searches your business description never will, and they show customers you do the specific thing they need.
• Business description. Written for a person deciding between three options, not stuffed with keywords. What you do, where, what makes you a safe choice.
• Photos. Real work, real crew, real vehicles — added regularly. An exterior shot helps customers find you; completed-work photos help them choose you. Stock photography reads as exactly what it is.
• Attributes. Licensed, insured, emergency service, years in business, language options. Small signals that answer the question a hesitant customer is actually asking.
• Q&A.Anyone can answer questions on your profile, including people who don't work for you. Seed the real questions you get asked and answer them yourself, or someone else will.
• Booking and messaging links. If customers can act from the profile without a phone call, some of them will — particularly outside business hours.

Reviews — the part that never finishes

Reviews feed prominence, and prominence is the factor that compounds. The businesses above you in the map pack usually aren't there because of one good quarter; they have a habit.

• Ask every customer, every completed job. Not a campaign — a step in the job. The moment right after completion is when people are most willing.
• Make it one tap. A direct link to your review form. Any friction between intent and action loses most of the intent.
• Reply to everything. Positive reviews get a short thank-you; negative ones get a calm, specific, non-defensive response. The next customer is reading the reply more carefully than the complaint.
• Don't screen by sentiment.Asking “how did we do?” and only routing the happy answers to Google is review gating. It violates Google's review policies, it can get your reviews removed, and it produces a rating that doesn't survive scrutiny. Ask everyone; offer a private channel alongside, not instead.

The maintenance nobody does

A profile set up well in January and untouched since is a profile losing ground. The recurring work is small but real: holiday hours before each holiday, photos every month, new services as you add them, replies as reviews land, and a periodic check that nobody has “suggested an edit” that changed your hours or address without telling you — which happens more than owners expect.

If you'd rather see where yours stands before working through all of this, the Local Trust Audit checks these fields against the competitors you rank beside and tells you which gaps are actually costing you jobs.

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