Find the right profile before you change anything
Search for your business name and city. Open the listing and save its public link. Check that it represents your business, rather than a similarly named company or an old location.
Then establish which situation you are in:
- You can manage the existing profile. Continue with the customer-facing checks below.
- The profile exists, but you cannot manage it. Resolve access first. Check the account your business used and who currently manages the listing. Do not create another profile to get around the problem.
- Verification is pending or requested again. Follow the options Google shows for that profile. You cannot assume a postcard, phone call or instant approval will be available.
- The profile is suspended or marked as a duplicate. Use the relevant help route before making unrelated changes.
- You cannot find a profile. Check the business name, location and existing accounts before adding one.
Google has different ownership instructions for storefront or hybrid businesses and service-area businesses without a customer-facing shop or office. Use the ownership guidance that matches your operation. For an unclaimed listing or unfinished verification, follow Google’s verification steps.
Keep the business in control of its profile. If an employee or agency helps manage it, use an appropriate owner or manager role through their own Google Account rather than sharing your password. Google explains the roles here.
Get your address and service area right
The important question is whether customers actually come to your business location.
You travel to customers and do not serve them at your address. Use the service-area setup and hide the address from the public profile. This often applies to a roofer working from a home base.
Customers visit your staffed location, and you also travel to jobs. A hybrid setup may fit. The location must meet Google’s requirements, including permanent signage and staff available to receive customers during its stated hours.
You have more than one operating location. Check each location’s eligibility. A genuinely separate location with its own staff and service area is different from another town you are willing to drive to.
A rented mailing address, borrowed address or extra pin in a town you want to reach is not a substitute for an eligible location. Use Google’s business-representation rules when the setup is unclear.
For service areas, choose the cities, postal codes or other supported areas you actually serve. Google allows up to 20, but you do not need to fill all the slots. It does not offer a radius setting; its general guidance is that the overall area should be within about two hours’ driving time of your base. Check the current service-area instructions for your situation.
Listing a town tells customers about your coverage. It does not guarantee that you will appear prominently for searches there.
Check the details that help the right customer call
Open the public profile alongside the business information your team has confirmed. Work through these checks:
- Name: Does it match the name customers know you by? Do not add towns or promotional phrases just to target searches.
- Category: Does the category available in Google’s selector describe your core business? “Roofing contractor” may fit a roofing company. Choose from the actual options rather than copying a category list from an old article.
- Services: Do you offer the work listed? Keep repairs, replacements, commercial work and roof rejuvenation accurate. A service description and a business category do different jobs.
- Hours: Do regular and special hours reflect the real operation? Do not advertise round-the-clock emergency service unless you actually provide it.
- Phone: Is this the correct number, under the business’s control, reaching the right team?
- Website: Does the link open a working page that represents this business or location and explains what the customer can do next?
Keep business claims factual and choose categories that describe the operation, not extra keywords. Google’s representation guidelines cover these fields.
Test the route, not just the button
Arrange a known internal test so your office knows what is happening. Call the number shown on the public profile. Confirm which phone or team receives it and what happens if nobody answers. Label the test so it does not become a customer lead in your reporting.
Open the website link on a phone too. Can you see the right business, relevant roofing services and a clear next step? If you test a contact form, agree the test with the receiving team and confirm where it arrives. Seeing a thank-you message does not prove the office received it.
If the page is the problem, use the roofing website checklist. If real leads arrive but nobody owns the response, the first-response guide covers that handoff. You can start manually.
Use real work and keep review requests honest
Choose photos that help the next customer understand the work you actually do. Check permission before using customer property or identifiable people, and keep private details out of the image and caption. A repair photo should not be described as a full replacement. Do not present stock or AI-generated images as your completed customer projects.
You do not need a photo quota. Start with relevant, approved examples and correct anything misleading or out of date.
For reviews, make the invitation neutral. Ask genuine customers using consistent rules, not an employee’s guess about who will leave five stars. Do not offer rewards, filter unhappy customers away from Google, pressure someone to review on the spot or request particular wording. Avoid review-count targets for staff. Google’s review policy sets these boundaries.
The review-request guide covers the correct link, eligibility, wording and follow-through. There is no need to rebuild that process here. When replying publicly, address the feedback without revealing private customer or job information.
If you publish profile updates, make them useful: an accurate change in availability or an approved example of work, for instance. Do not turn weekly posting into another job solely because somebody promised it would improve rankings.
Keep profile activity separate from real leads
Google’s Performance report can help you see how people interact with the profile. Read the metric names carefully:
- Calls counts clicks on the profile’s call button. It does not confirm an answered call.
- Website clicks counts clicks on the website link. It does not confirm a new lead.
- Available metrics vary, and the report can include activity from both organic results and Google Ads.
Those definitions come from Google’s performance guidance.
Keep actual new leads in your existing lead log, along with the work requested, service area, known source and next step. Someone may call twice about one job. An existing customer may call about an appointment. Neither should automatically become another new opportunity.
Fictional example: A profile shows 18 call-button clicks during a month. The office records 11 new potential jobs, along with repeat calls and existing-customer contacts. You cannot subtract 11 from 18 and conclude that seven leads were lost. The two records count different events and may not identify the same people.
If the records do not explain what happened, improve the recording and phone handoff first. Leave unknown sources marked unknown rather than assigning every caller to Google Maps.
Likewise, finding your business once from the office does not establish where every customer sees it. Google’s local results depend mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. There is no way to request or pay Google for a better local position. Google explains those factors here.
Leave the next fix with a person, not a checklist
Use this card for the first issue worth addressing. Access problems and broken contact routes deserve attention before adding more photos or posts.
Your profile check and handoff card
1. Profile and checks
Business and location: ______
Public profile link: ______
Checked by / date: ______
Profile state: manageable / access unresolved / verification pending / restricted or duplicate / not found / unsure.
What we checked: name; address visibility; service areas; category and services; hours; phone; website; photos; review process.
For each item, note checked, issue found, not checked or not applicable. Unknown is a useful answer. It tells the next person what still needs checking.
2. Issue and next action
First issue: ______
What we observed, where and when: ______
Why it matters to a customer: ______
What is still unknown: ______
Next action: ______
Responsible person: ______
Approval or information needed first: ______
When we will check progress: ______
3. Public confirmation
Status: not started / waiting / submitted or pending / rejected or blocked / publicly confirmed / no change needed.
What would confirm it is fixed: ______
Who checked the public result, when and what they found: ______
If you made a test call or form submission, record the outcome and keep it separate from customer leads. Keep passwords, verification codes and supporting documents out of this card.
Worked example: the hours are wrong
This example is fictional. It is not a Goliath client or a reported result.
- Example Roofing has one home-based operating base and no customer visits. The owner can manage its verified profile. The public hours show Saturday opening, but the owner confirms that the business no longer operates on Saturdays. Its website already shows Monday–Friday.
- The office manager records the mismatch and asks the owner to confirm the correct customer-facing hours. Once approved, the manager submits the hours correction without changing unrelated fields.
- The issue stays pending until someone checks that the approved hours appear publicly and agree with the phone-handling arrangement. Pressing Save is not the final check. If the edit has not appeared, the manager records the status and follows the appropriate next step rather than repeatedly submitting it.
Photos and the review process have not been checked yet. They stay marked “not checked.” Correcting the hours does not establish any change in rankings, leads or sales.
Know when to stop editing
Some problems need a specific support route rather than more profile changes:
- Lost access: Follow the ownership process for your business type.
- Possible duplicate: Identify the listings before removing or merging anything. Removing the wrong profile can affect its content and access. Use Google’s duplicate guidance.
- Suspension or restriction: Use the official appeal guidance. Do not create a replacement profile or submit repeated appeals while a decision is pending.
- Verification problem: Follow the options available for your profile. Keep any requested evidence in the official process, not a public checklist or post.
A specialist can help you understand the issue and prepare the next step. They cannot promise a particular Google decision or ranking.
For now, finish one useful check. Confirm the profile, test how a customer reaches you and give the first unresolved issue a person and a next step. If everything checked is accurate and working, record that too. You do not need to change something just to show activity.
