Your Google listing is probably half empty.

01Why this is worth more than it sounds

When somebody searches for a local service on a phone, the first thing on the screen is usually not a website. It is a map with three businesses on it, and then a panel with opening hours, reviews, a phone number and a directions button.

Those businesses are not there because they have the best websites. They are there because Google has enough information about them to be confident they are the right answer, and because people have clicked them before and not come straight back.

The panel is your Google Business Profile. It is free, Google gives it to you, and it is the single most underused thing in local business marketing. I have seen listings with one category filled in, no services, no photographs and opening hours from before a refurbishment.

02Categories, which do most of the work

Your primary category is the biggest single lever on the whole listing. It is how Google decides which searches you are even eligible for. Get it wrong and nothing else you do will rescue it.

Be specific. "Contractor" is much weaker than "Bathroom remodeler" if bathrooms are what you do. Then add every secondary category that genuinely applies, because each one opens up another set of searches.

The mistake to avoid is adding categories for work you do not really want. If you add "Emergency plumber" you will get calls at eleven at night, and if you then do not answer them, Google notices.

03Services, which almost nobody fills in

There is a services section, and you can add as many as you like, each with a description of up to three hundred characters.

This is free text on a Google owned page about your business, and it is one of the things the AI assistants read when deciding who to name. Leaving it empty is leaving the easiest thing on the list undone.

Write them the way a customer would say them, not the way the trade does. Somebody searches for "leaking shower", not "wet room remedial works".

04Photographs, and why stock images hurt you

Listings with real photographs get more clicks, and it is not close. A stock photograph of a smiling person in a hard hat reads as generic, and people are better at spotting it than you think.

Take photographs of your actual work, your actual van, your actual shop front. A shop front photograph is more useful than it sounds, because somebody who has to find you will use it.

Add new ones occasionally. A listing that has not changed in two years looks like a business that might not be there any more, and that impression costs you calls you never hear about.

05The fields people forget

A few small ones that are worth ten minutes each.

• Bank holiday hours. Google prompts you and most people ignore it, then somebody drives over on Easter Monday and finds you shut.
• Service area, if you go to customers rather than the other way round. Set the towns you actually cover, not a fifty mile circle you would resent driving.
• Attributes, such as wheelchair access, parking, or whether you are a woman owned business. Some of these appear as filters in search.
• The website link, pointed at the most relevant page rather than always the homepage.
• Products, if you sell things. It is a separate section from services and it is usually empty.

06Reviews, without doing anything you should not

Reviews matter, and the honest way to get them is to ask every customer, every time, with a direct link that takes one tap.

What you must not do is offer anything in exchange, filter who you ask based on how happy they seem, or write them yourself. All three are against Google’s rules, and businesses do get caught. The penalty is losing the reviews you already have, which is a bad trade for a handful of new ones.

Reply to all of them, including the difficult ones. A calm reply to an unfair review persuades the next reader more effectively than the review damaged you.