How to create a Google Business Profile, step by step

Before you start: are you eligible?

Google's guidelines are built around businesses that meet customers in person. In practice that means one of two things:

• Customers visit you: a shop, clinic, office, restaurant, salon or coaching centre with a real address and signage.
• You visit customers: a plumber, electrician, home tutor, pest control or cleaning service that travels to customers. These are service-area businesses.

A business that only sells online, with no place customers visit and no visits to customers, fits neither. Google's guidelines also say a virtual office (an address you rent but don't operate from) isn't eligible, and P.O. boxes can't be used as an address. There should be only one profile per business; a business with several real branches, each with its own staff, can have one per branch.

If that's you, you're ready. It helps to read local SEO for small business first so you know why each choice matters.

What you need

• A Google account the business controls (for example, the business Gmail). Avoid a staff member's personal account.
• Your exact business name, as on your signboard, GST registration or letterhead.
• Your address, with a pin code, if customers visit you. Or the areas you serve, if you visit them.
• Your main phone number and website address (if you have a site).
• Your opening hours.

Step by step

1. Go to Google Business Profile

Open Google Business Profile on a computer and choose to manage or add your business. You can also start from Google Maps by choosing to add your business. Sign in with the business's Google account.

2. Enter your business name

Type your real business name. If Google suggests an existing listing with that name, check it: it may already exist (created by Google or a customer). If it's yours, claim it rather than making a new one.

Google's guidelines say your name should reflect your real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website and stationery, and that including unnecessary information in the name isn't permitted. "Sharma Dental Clinic" is right; "Sharma Dental Clinic Best Root Canal Dentist Pune" is not.

3. Choose your business category

Start typing and pick the most specific category that describes your core business: "Pediatric dentist" rather than "Dentist" if that's what you do; "Chartered accountant" rather than "Consultant". You can add more categories later, but Google's guidelines say to use as few as possible to describe your overall core business, and not to use categories as keywords.

4. Add a location, or not

Google asks whether you want to add a location customers can visit.

• Yes if customers come to you. Enter your full address, and drop the map pin exactly on your door if Google asks.
• No if you only visit customers. You'll then add the areas you serve (cities, localities or pin codes), and your address stays hidden.

If you do both (a salon that also offers home visits), add the address and also add service areas.

5. Add contact details

Add the phone number customers should call (a local or mobile number answered during your hours) and your website, if you have one. If you don't have a website yet, you can skip it, but a site strengthens your profile over time.

6. Verify

Google then asks you to verify that you run the business. The methods offered (video recording, phone or text, email, live video call, postcard, or instant verification) are chosen by Google and can't be changed. Our guide to Google Business Profile verification explains each method and what to do if it stalls.

7. Finish the profile

Once verified, fill in everything that applies: hours, special hours for Diwali and other holidays, a description, services with short descriptions, products, attributes, and real photos of the outside, inside, team and work. Then read Google Business Profile optimisation for the detail.

Mistakes that cause trouble

• Keywords in the name. It's against Google's guidelines and a common reason profiles get suspended.
• A home address shown for a service-area business. If customers don't come to you, hide it.
• A virtual office you don't operate from. Google's guidelines say it isn't eligible.
• Duplicate profiles. One per business (or per real branch). If you find an old duplicate, ask Google to mark it as a duplicate rather than leaving two live.
• Editing the name, address or category while verification is pending. Google advises against it; it can hold up verification.
• Creating it under an agency's account. You can lose access when they leave.

Add your team safely

In the profile's settings, under people and access, add staff or your agency as managers. Keep at least one owner from the business itself, and remove access when someone leaves.

A worked example

A physiotherapy clinic in Coimbatore (a made-up example) searches Google Maps and finds a listing for itself already exists, created by a patient, with an old phone number. Instead of creating a new profile, the owner claims the existing one, corrects the phone number, sets the primary category to "Physiotherapist", and adds the exact address and pin code. Google offers video verification; the owner records the signboard, the street, and the treatment room with the reception computer. After verification, they add hours, services and photos, and send the review link to recent patients. See our page for dental and medical clinics.

After you're live

A profile is never finished. Keep hours current, add photos now and then, reply to every review, and check its performance section monthly to see how many people called or asked for directions. The Google Business Profile glossary entry explains how it connects to the rest of local search.