Your Google Business Profile, done properly
A 13 page checklist with Google's real limits written next to each step: the verification methods you do not get to choose, the 750 character description, the photo sizes, and the name rule that gets profiles suspended.
- Pages
- 13
- Format
- Print ready A4 PDF
- Sources
- Google's own help pages
- Cost
- Free
What is inside
Written to be worked through, not skimmed. Print it and tick as you go.
- Before you startThe eight answers to have ready, and the ownership question that saves the most pain later.
- Claim it and verify itEvery route in, and what Google actually requires for each verification method, including the 30 second unedited video.
- Name, category, descriptionThe name rules Google puts in the same sentence as suspension, with its own examples. One primary category plus nine. 750 characters.
- Hours, contact and chatSpecial hours, the six day threshold, and what replaced the messaging feature Google switched off in 2024.
- Photos that workThe exact file sizes, resolutions and video limits, plus how many of each type Google recommends.
- Services, attributes, questionsThe sections that turn a listing into an answer, and the content rules attached to each.
- Posts and reviewsThe three post types, how long a post really lasts, and how to ask for reviews without breaking policy.
- What moves your rankingGoogle's own words on relevance, distance and prominence, quoted rather than paraphrased.
- What gets a profile suspendedAddresses, signage, duplicates, ineligible business types, and the 60 minute window in the appeals process.
- The ten minute monthly checkThe short routine that keeps the profile worth having, plus a page of sources.
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Who this is for
Any business a customer can walk into, or that drives to the customer. If you have a listing that shows up when someone searches your name and your town, this checklist is for you, whether you set it up last week or inherited it from someone who left.
Why we made it
We build websites for local businesses, and almost every one of them already had a Google profile that was half filled in: no description, three photos from years ago, a category that did not quite fit. Fixing that costs an hour and nothing else, and it is usually worth more than anything we could sell them that month. So we wrote the hour down.
What is not in it
Guesses. Google does not publish a character limit for posts, so we do not print one, even though half the internet does. Google does not publish how far ahead special hours can be set, so we say that instead of inventing a number. Every figure in the checklist traces back to a Google help page, and the last page lists all of them.
And if the website at the end of it needs work, that is what we do
We build local businesses a proper website for $129 a year, or 110 euro a year in Europe, and that is the whole bill: the build, the design, your domain, hosting, the security certificate, and the changes when you ask for them. We build it first and show it to you live.
Build mine for free →