Google Business Profile

Treat the profile as a product page you rent from Google: primary category chosen precisely, every service listed with descriptions, real photos added on a schedule, hours accurate to the minute, and posts used for what changes. Most profiles are set once and abandoned, which is why maintained ones stand out so cheaply.

Primary category is the highest-leverage single field on the profile and the one most often set carelessly. It does more to determine which searches you appear for than anything on your website. A business categorised as "Contractor" competes in a different and vaguer pool than one categorised as "Roofing contractor." Secondary categories broaden reach but never override the primary, so the primary should name the service you most want to be called about, not the widest umbrella you could defend.

Service-area businesses have their own rules and their own common failure. If you travel to customers rather than serving them at an address, the address should be hidden and service areas defined honestly. Listing twenty cities you would technically drive to does not create visibility in them — it dilutes relevance and, in the worst case, triggers a suspension. Proximity to the searcher still dominates, and no configuration overrides geography.

Suspension is the risk worth respecting because recovery is slow and the loss is total. The usual triggers are mundane: a keyword-stuffed business name, an address that is a virtual office or a residence presented as a storefront, or category changes made repeatedly in a short window. A profile that disappears takes the local pack, the reviews, and much of the AI evidence layer with it overnight.

Its gravity extends beyond Google: assistants asked "who should I call" routinely cite profile facts and review language. A stale profile misinforms every machine downstream of it. The profile optimization guide is the full checklist, suspended-profile recovery covers the failure case, and the free profile audit scores an existing listing.