Primary and secondary categories
Your category is the single biggest lever on your profile. Google’s own guidance is blunt: choose categories that answer “this business is a ___,” not “this business has a ___.” A roofer should be a roofing contractor, not “construction company” with roofing buried in the description. Use as few categories as possible and pick the most specific one available — the system folds in related broader categories automatically, so stacking overlapping ones doesn’t help (Google Business Profile Help). For a trade with more than one specialty, a specific secondary category (Roofing Contractor) beats a vague one (Home Improvement).
Service-area settings, if you don’t have a storefront
Most contractors don’t want a home address on Google Maps. Under Business Profile → Edit profile → Location, turn off “Show business address to customers” so only your service area displays — the standard setup for a service-area business (Manage your business address). Then set the actual area by city, postal code, or named area — not a radius; Google removed that option. You can list up to 20 service areas, kept within roughly a two-hour drive of your business, not padded with every county in the state (Manage your service areas).
The services list, photos, and hours
GBP has a services section — Edit services → Add more services — where you pick from Google’s suggested list or add a custom service; you can attach a second category with its own service list if you genuinely offer more than one trade (Manage your services). An empty services list wastes a place Google lets you spell out exactly what you do.
Photos need to be JPG or PNG, 10 KB–5 MB, recommended 720×720 px (minimum 250×250 px), and — Google’s own wording — “in focus and well lit, with no significant alterations or excessive use of filters.” Set a real cover photo and keep adding job photos over time (Photos & videos).
Regular hours live under Edit profile → Hours. For a holiday, storm prep, or a one-off change, “special hours” override the default for specific dates, and you can mark the business closed up to six days running before it has to revert (special hours; edit hours). “More hours” is a separate setting for something like a distinct estimate schedule versus on-call hours (more hours).
Q&A and posts
The Q&A section lets anyone — not just you — ask or answer a question, so a stranger can answer incorrectly if you never do. Answering from your own dashboard attaches an “Owner” label, and nothing stops you from posting and answering your own common questions. (No single dedicated Google help article on owner-side Q&A management was found — flagged in REVIEW_NOTES_P2.md.)
Posts come in three types — Updates, Offers, Events — each with a photo/video, description, and action button; Offers can carry a coupon code. Posts must clear Google’s content review, and ones older than six months archive unless you set a date range (Create & manage posts). No posts in a year reads, to a searcher, like a business that might not be operating.
Reviews, responses, and messaging
Once verified, you can reply to any review and the reviewer is notified; you can edit or delete your reply later (Read & reply to reviews). Google’s own tips for getting more reviews boil down to making it easy to ask, at the right moment, not anything clever (tips).
Google retired GBP’s old chat and call-history feature on July 31, 2024. Eligible businesses can now let customers reach them by text or WhatsApp from the profile (Chat with customers) — if a customer says they can’t message you, that’s likely why.
Google’s policy on incentivized reviews
Worth quoting directly — a real rule, not industry gossip. Google’s content policy prohibits businesses that “offer incentives — such as payment, discounts, free goods and/or services — in exchange for posting any review or revision or removal of a negative review,” and bans review gating: “discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers.” Asking for reviews of a genuine experience, with no incentive, is fine (Prohibited & restricted content). A gift card for a five-star review, or “text us a screenshot for ten dollars off,” both break this rule.
What changes once Local Services Ads enters the picture
LSA is a separate paid product, but linked to GBP: it requires an affiliated Business Profile, and once you sign up, GBP edits to name/address/location type sync into LSA automatically (Manage business details between GBP and LSA). Qualifying also involves a background check, license verification, and proof of insurance by category, beyond what a plain listing requires (qualify; overview). Clean up the profile before applying — a messy GBP complicates approval. More: our Local Services Ads explainer.
Common mistakes we see in Central Florida listings (our view)
Not a formal audit — a pattern in listings we’ve looked at across Orlando, Winter Park, and the surrounding counties:
- A generic category (“General Contractor”) when a specific one (“Roofing Contractor”) would match more searches.
- Service areas padded with every city in three counties instead of where the business actually works.
- Photos three-plus years old, or none beyond a stock logo.
- Reviews with zero owner replies — a real signal to a prospective customer that no one’s paying attention.
None of these are hard to fix. They’re just easy to neglect once the initial setup is done.
Next step
If you want a second set of eyes on your profile before you touch anything, reach out through Board Room and we’ll tell you plainly what we see — no obligation, no pitch deck.