Local visibility: your Google Business Profile

For a business that serves customers from the area — a trade, a restaurant, a practice, a law firm, a workshop, a shop — there is one channel that often brings more than your own website: your Business Profile on Google.

It is the box that appears on the right when someone searches for “window fitter Hamburg”, or that shows up in the map view. With opening hours, phone number, reviews, photos and directions.

And for many searches it is the only contact with your business. The customer calls without ever having been on your website.

Why this is a job of its own

Because it works by different rules from classic findability.

For a local search, Google decides by three things: proximity, relevance and prominence. You cannot influence proximity. The other two you can.

And the difference from the website is: the profile takes effect faster. A website needs months to build up positions. A fully maintained profile with good reviews works within weeks.

For a small business with a limited budget, this is often the right first step — before any search engine optimisation on the website.

The first step: claiming the profile

Your business is probably listed already, even if you never did anything. Google creates entries automatically from various sources.

That means: there may already be a profile with wrong opening hours, an old address or an outdated phone number — and customers go by it.

The process:

1. Search for your business and check whether there is an entry.
2. Claim ownership.
3. Go through verification — depending on the case by phone, email or a postcard to the business address.

After verification you can maintain all the details yourself.

A special case worth knowing: if someone else has claimed the profile — a former service provider, an ex-employee — there is a procedure to transfer it back. It takes time, but it is possible.

What belongs in the profile

The name — exactly as the business is called. Including the legal form. No abbreviations that are not official.

And explicitly no search terms in the name. “Musterbetrieb GmbH — your window fitter in Hamburg” is not the company name. Such entries get corrected or suspended, and the damage is greater than the short-term benefit.

The category. The single most important value in the profile. One primary category that describes exactly what the business does, plus fitting secondary categories.

This is where many profiles give things away: the primary category is chosen too broadly. “Construction company” instead of “window fitter”. Google then assigns the specific search to someone else.

Address, phone number, opening hours — complete and current. Including special opening hours on public holidays. A business whose profile shows “open” on Good Friday annoys customers standing at a locked door — and that ends up in a review.

Services and products. They can be entered one by one and show up in the profile.

Photos. The most underestimated part. Inside, outside, team, finished work. Real photos, not stock images — you can see the difference, and the difference is trust.

And the website link — to the fitting page, not always to the home page.

(Udemy, Google My Business, sections 1 and 2)

NAP: the three details that have to be the same everywhere

Name, address, phone number. In the jargon NAP, and the rule for it is simple:

These three details have to be identical everywhere. On the website, in the Business Profile, in every business directory, on every platform.

Identical means: down to the spelling. Not “Straße” once and “Str.” the next time. Not once with and once without the dialling code in international notation.

Why it matters: Google compares these details across different sources to confirm that the business exists and that the data is right. Contradictory details weaken that signal.

And the most common case in practice: a business has moved or changed its number. The website is updated. The fourteen directory entries from the past ten years are not.

What to do: gather all the places where the data appears once, and keep a list. At the next change, that list is what you work from.

Directory entries — citations, in the jargon — are a lever of their own. A few good, relevant directories are better than many random ones. And duplicate entries should be merged or deleted.

Reviews

The second big lever, and the one that occupies businesses most.

Reviews work twice: as a signal for placement in the local result, and as a trust signal for the person choosing between three businesses.

Getting reviews

The only reliable way is to ask. Most satisfied customers do not leave a review because they do not think of it. The dissatisfied ones think of it on their own.

When to ask: shortly after the job is finished, while the impression is fresh.

How to ask: in person or by email, with a direct link to the review page. A link you have to copy costs half the answers.

And the trick that makes the biggest difference: give pointers about what one could write. Many people want to leave a review and do not know what to write.

Questions that have proven themselves for this:

• What was the starting point, what were you looking for a solution to?
• Which service did you use, and what did you like best?
• How was working together?
• In your view, what sets us apart from others?
• What would you tell an acquaintance about us?
• Is there anything we could do better?

The last question matters: it shows that feedback is genuinely wanted, and it often produces the most useful answers — even if they do not become public.

What is not on: buying reviews, asking for them in return for something, or writing only to satisfied customers on purpose. Apart from the legal side, it shows: twenty five-star reviews without text within one week — everyone can see that.

Answering reviews

All of them. The good ones too.

An answer to a good review takes twenty seconds and shows every later reader that someone here is listening.

With negative reviews the answer matters more than the review itself. Because it is not read by the annoyed customer, but by the next prospect — and they judge how you deal with criticism.

What works:

• Stay factual. Always.
• Do not justify, understand. “I am sorry, that is not how it should go.”
• Move to a personal channel. “Call me, I will sort it out.”
• Short. A long justification reads like an excuse, even when it is justified.
• And do not spread details of the job in public. For doctors and advisers this is also a question of confidentiality.

An honest assessment: a profile with exclusively five-star reviews looks less credible than one with an average of 4.6 and two critical voices that were answered sensibly. Perfection is suspicious.

(Udemy, Google My Business, section 4)

Posts in the profile

Short posts can be published in the profile — offers, events, news. They appear in the profile and expire after a while.

The realistic benefit: they show that the business is active. They are not a big lever, but they cost little.

What is worth it: seasonal notices, company holidays, a new offer, a finished project with a photo.

What is not worth it: publishing something every week just to publish something.

What the website has to contribute

The profile does not stand alone. Four things on the website pay into it:

Local terms in titles, descriptions and content. Not tacked on — but where they naturally belong. Someone who works in Hamburg-Altona may write that.

Structured data for business and contact details. Address, phone number, opening hours marked up machine-readably. It is the same data set as in the profile, only on your own website.

Mobile usability and short loading time. Local searches mostly happen on the phone, often on the move. A page that takes six seconds to load loses the call.

Local content. A post about a project in a particular district, a page on a catchment area, a note on a local event you took part in.

And links from the area: from the chamber, from the guild association, from the local club you sponsor, from the newspaper that reported on you. Such links are worth more for local visibility than random links from elsewhere.

(Udemy, Google My Business, section 5; Atlas, seo/practice-2026.md)

What you can measure

The profile delivers its own analysis, and it answers questions no website analysis answers:

How did people search? Directly for the company name, generally for the service, or via a brand. The share of general searches shows whether you are visible to people who do not know you yet.

How often was the profile viewed?

What did people do? Called, visited the website, asked for directions. That is the most interesting part, because these are actual actions.

The call counter is especially revealing for businesses that believe their website brings nothing. Often it really does bring little — but the profile next to it brings a great deal, and nobody ever looked.

What to do

1. Check whether there is a profile and whether the details are right. That is the step that most often brings surprises.

2. Claim it and have it verified.

3. Fill it in completely. Completeness is the lever — category, services, opening hours including public holidays, photos.

4. Choose the primary category as precisely as possible.

5. Bring NAP to the same state everywhere and keep the list of places.

6. Start asking for reviews systematically. With a link and with pointers.

7. Answer all reviews.

8. Look at the analysis once a quarter.

What I tell clients about this: if your business lives on people from the area, the profile is the channel with the best ratio of effort to effect — well ahead of anything that can be done on the website. It takes an afternoon to set up and ten minutes a month after that.

Sources

• Udemy, Google My Business — mehr Besucher, mehr Kunden, mehr Umsatz — checking for an existing entry and claiming ownership through verification by phone, email or postcard; maintaining the details yourself after verification; the requirement to use the official company name including legal form and without unofficial abbreviations; clearly structuring primary and secondary categories; working local terms into titles, descriptions and content; consistent name, address and phone number across profile, website and directories; using local web and business directories, giving priority to high-quality and relevant ones and avoiding duplicate entries; building local links; mobile optimisation and short loading time as a precondition; structured data for business and contact details; local content on regional topics and events; reviews as a signal for placement and trust, with the note on their effect on the click rate; handling negative reviews professionally as an opportunity to improve; wording review requests by email with topic suggestions and a link to the review page, including the six guiding questions; creating posts for events, offers and products; and analysing the profile statistics by search queries (direct, indirect, brand), profile views and user actions (calls, website visits, direction requests) over selectable periods.
• Atlas, seo/practice-2026.md — the consistency of name, address and phone number as a check of its own.
• Own audit practice — the classification of proximity, relevance and prominence as factors of local visibility, the observation that a profile takes effect faster than work on the website, the warning against search terms in the company name, the too broadly chosen primary category as the most common mistake, special opening hours on public holidays, real photos rather than stock material, linking to the fitting page rather than the home page, spelling accuracy for NAP and the typical case of outdated directory entries after a move, the recommendation to answer all reviews and to keep it short and factual, the classification of a flawless review profile as less credible, the realistic benefit of profile posts, and the note on the call counter for businesses that consider their website ineffective.