The five Google Business Profile fields most local businesses leave empty

For a plumber, a dentist or a bakery, the Google Business Profile does more work than the website. It is the thing that appears in the map pack, the thing that gets called from a phone at eleven at night, and the thing Google leans on hardest when deciding whether you are a credible local option. It is also free, and it takes about forty minutes to finish properly.

We audit a lot of these. The same five fields are empty almost every time.

1. Services, itemised

Not the category, the services. A profile categorised as Plumber with nothing underneath it is competing on category alone. A profile that lists twenty-two named services, each with a short description, matches far more of what people actually type. Add every job you will take money for, including the small ones. The description field under each service is indexed, and almost nobody uses it.

2. Opening hours, including the special ones

Wrong hours are worse than no hours, because a customer who drives to a closed shop leaves a one-star review about it. Set your regular hours, then set holiday hours a month ahead. If you take emergency calls outside your listed hours, use the more hours feature rather than lying about your standard hours, which suppresses the profile when Google notices the mismatch.

3. The business description

You get seven hundred and fifty characters. Use them to say what you do, where you do it, and who for, in plain sentences. Skip the adjectives. A description that reads family-run heating and plumbing business serving Boise, Meridian and Eagle since 2011, specialising in boiler replacement and emergency callouts tells both a human and a crawler exactly what they need. One that reads your trusted partner for quality solutions tells neither.

4. Products, even if you are a service business

The products module is not only for retailers. A clinic can list treatments with prices. A garage can list an MOT, a service and a diagnostic. Products get their own card in the profile, they appear in search, and they give a customer a price expectation before they call, which filters out the enquiries you did not want anyway.

5. Questions and answers

Anyone can answer a question on your profile, including a competitor. You are allowed to ask and answer your own, and you should: post the ten questions you get on the phone every week, answer them properly, and you will have pre-empted the enquiry and filled a section of the profile that is otherwise a liability.

What to do this week

• Open your profile and fill the services list until you run out of things you sell.
• Rewrite the description in two plain sentences.
• Add your next three holiday closures.
• Post five questions and answer them.

None of this requires a marketer, a budget or a login you do not already have. It is the cheapest hour of local search work available, and it is the one most businesses never get to.