Most profiles are half finished. That half is where the phone calls were.
TL;DR Four fields do most of the work: primary category, service area, service menu, and messaging. Set them properly once and the profile runs for years on twenty minutes a month.
Step 1: Category selection
Your primary category decides which searches you are even eligible for. Everything else is secondary.
- Pick the most specific category that describes your money service. “Bathroom Remodeler” not “Contractor.”
- Check what the top three ranked competitors use. Match it. They are ranking for a reason.
- Add every secondary category you genuinely deliver. Each one opens a new set of queries.
- Do not stuff. Categories you do not service produce bad-fit leads and hurt conversion.
One primary. Up to nine secondary. Choose deliberately.
Step 2: Service area, and the polygon question
If you travel to customers, you set a service area instead of showing an address.
| Method | How it works | When to use |
|---|---|---|
| By city or ZIP | You list named areas | Almost always. Clean and unambiguous |
| By radius | Circle around a point | Rarely. Includes water, farmland, other states |
| Hiding your address | Required for service-area businesses | If customers do not come to you, yes |
Google caps service areas at 20 entries and roughly a two-hour drive. List the towns you actually serve, in the words locals use. Adding thirty towns you would technically drive to does not extend your reach. It dilutes relevance.
Step 3: The service menu is doing more work than you think
Most owners never fill this in. It is one of the few places you get to describe your services in your own words, and AI tools read it.
- List every service individually. Not “plumbing services.” Water heater replacement, drain cleaning, repiping, each as its own entry.
- Write a real description for each. Two or three sentences. Plain language, the way a customer would say it.
- Include price or a range where you can. Even “from $X” reduces bad-fit calls.
- Use the customer’s words, not the trade’s. People search “hot water not working,” not “thermostatic mixing valve fault.”
Step 4: Turn messaging on, or turn it off properly
Messaging lets people text you from search results. It converts well and it punishes slow replies.
Turn it on if you can answer within a couple of hours during business hours. Google shows a response-time indicator, and a bad one is worse than no messaging.
Leave it off if nobody is watching it. An unanswered message thread is a customer who chose someone else.
The completion checklist
| Field | Done | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Primary category | ☐ | Decides query eligibility |
| Secondary categories | ☐ | Expands coverage |
| Service area or address | ☐ | Distance signal |
| Hours, including holidays | ☐ | Wrong hours produce angry reviews |
| Phone, matching your site | ☐ | Entity consistency |
| Website link | ☐ | Passes traffic |
| Business description | ☐ | Read by humans and AI |
| Services, individually listed | ☐ | Query matching |
| Products, if applicable | ☐ | Extra surface area |
| 20+ real photos | ☐ | Trust and activity |
| Attributes | ☐ | Filters you into results |
| Q&A seeded | ☐ | Answers objections pre-call |
| Messaging configured | ☐ | Conversion path |
Seed the Q&A yourself. You are allowed to post a question and answer it. Use the five questions you get on every single call.
Ongoing, and it is small
Twenty minutes a month: respond to reviews, add a few photos, update holiday hours before the holiday, post one update.
That is the entire maintenance load. The setup is the work.
Open your profile right now and count how many of the thirteen rows above are actually complete. Most businesses are at seven, and the missing six are free.
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