Google Business Profile: the 20-minute setup that wins local work

Ask a plumber, sparky or vent contractor where their enquiries come from and you will usually hear "word of mouth, and Google". What they mean by Google is rarely the website. It is that box of three local businesses with a map above the normal results. That box is Google Business Profile, it is free, and most trade profiles are half finished.

This is the setup that matters, in the order that matters. It takes about twenty minutes if you have your details to hand, plus a wait for the verification postcard or video call. Everything after that is a five minute habit.

Why does the profile matter more than the website for local work?

Because of how the search actually happens. Somebody types "emergency plumber near me" or "ventilation contractor Ealing" on a phone. Before they reach any website, they see a map and three businesses with a star rating, a distance, opening hours and a call button. Plenty of people ring straight from that panel and never load a website at all.

So the profile is not a nice extra sitting alongside your site. For local jobs it is often the first impression, the phone number and the reviews, all in one. A tidy profile with a weak website still gets calls. A beautiful website with an empty profile quietly loses them to the firm two streets away who filled theirs in.

None of that means the website stops mattering. Google looks at your site to work out who you are and where you work, and once someone does click through, that page decides whether they trust you. The two feed each other, which is why we treat them as one job in local SEO rather than two.

What actually goes in the profile?

Work through these in order. The first four are the ones that decide whether you show up at all.

Business name, exactly as you trade. Your real name, not "Smith Plumbing Ealing Emergency 24/7". Stuffing keywords into the name breaks Google's rules and it is one of the easiest things for a competitor to report. Use the same spelling everywhere else online.

Primary category. This is the single biggest lever in the whole profile and people rush it. Pick the category that describes what you mainly do, not the broadest one you can find. "Ventilating equipment manufacturer" and "HVAC contractor" pull very different searches. Add secondary categories for genuine extra services, and stop there.

Service area, or address, or both. If customers come to a unit or shop, use the address. If you travel to them, set a service area by town or postcode and hide the address if it is your home. Be realistic about the radius. Covering half the country tells Google nothing about where you should rank, so it ranks you nowhere in particular.

Phone number and hours. Use a number that a human answers, and set the hours you genuinely pick up. If out of hours calls go unanswered, that is a separate problem worth fixing properly, and there is a calculator for what those missed calls are costing you on our AI answering page.

Website link. Point it at a page that matches the search intent, not always the homepage. A vent contractor is better sending "ventilation cleaning Ealing" traffic to the relevant service page than to a generic front door.

Services and description. List your actual services as separate items. Write the description in plain English about what you do and where, not marketing language about passion and excellence.

Photos. This is where trades have an unfair advantage and mostly waste it. You take site photos every week. Ten good ones beat a stock image every time: finished work, your van, the team, a clean site at the end of a job. Real photos also give a homeowner the thing they cannot get from words, which is proof you have done this before.

What keeps it working after setup day?

Three habits, none of them big.

Ask for reviews, consistently. Not a campaign. Just a message to a happy customer when the job is signed off, with the direct review link. Reviews mentioning the work and the area are worth more than "great service, 5 stars". Never buy them and never write them yourself. Fake reviews are illegal under UK consumer protection law and Google removes them anyway.

Reply to every review, including the bad one. Future customers read the reply more closely than the complaint. A calm, factual response to a one star review does more for you than ten unanswered five star ones.

Post occasionally and answer questions. A photo from a recent job, a note about seasonal availability, an answer to a question someone asked. It signals the business is alive. Once or twice a month is fine.

What about ChatGPT and AI search?

Increasingly people ask an assistant "who should I get to service an MVHR in west London" instead of typing it into Google. Those answers are built from consistent public information: your profile, your website, directory listings, all saying the same name, address and phone number. Inconsistency is what gets you left out. We wrote about that shift in getting found in Google and ChatGPT, and it is the same underlying work covered in answer engine optimisation.

Not sure what your profile looks like to a customer?

Search your own trade and town on a phone, logged out, and see who appears. If it is not you, something in the list above is missing or wrong.

If you would rather someone checked properly, our free website and setup audit looks at your profile, your site and what shows up when local customers search for you, and tells you plainly what is holding you back. When the fix is bigger than twenty minutes, local SEO for trades is where we pick it up.