Google Business Profile Checklist for Contractors and Trades

For a roofer, electrician or plumber, the Google Business Profile is often the first thing a new customer sees: the map listing with your name, stars, phone number and photos. It’s free, and it’s also one of the easiest places to make a mistake that quietly costs you calls, or gets the profile suspended.

This checklist goes field by field, using Google’s own help pages rather than rumors. Where Google’s wording matters, it’s quoted or linked so you can check it yourself.

Why does the profile matter so much for a contractor?

Google’s page on how to improve your local ranking says local results are based mainly on three things:

• Relevance: how well your profile matches what someone searched for. Complete, detailed information helps here.
• Distance: how far your business is from the person searching.
• Prominence: how well known your business is. Google says this includes things like links to your business from other sites and your reviews, and that “more reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.”

The same page states plainly: “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.” So anyone selling a shortcut is selling something Google says doesn’t exist. What you control is accuracy, completeness and reviews, which is what the rest of this list covers.

Name, address and service area: what does Google allow?

These three fields cause most of the trouble for trades, because many contractors work from home or a yard that customers never visit. Google’s guidelines for representing your business set the rules:

• Use your real-world business name. The name should match your truck, invoices and signage. Google says not to add marketing taglines, service information or location information to the name, and warns that unnecessary information “could result in the suspension of your Business Profile.” “Smith Roofing” is fine; “Smith Roofing Best Roof Repair Carlsbad” is the kind of name that gets flagged.
• Hide your address if customers don’t come to you. Google says service-area businesses “should hide your business address from customers.” Its service-area help page puts it this way: if you don’t serve customers at your business address, remove the address and enter only your service area.
• Use a real location. P.O. boxes and remote mailboxes aren’t acceptable, and a virtual office isn’t eligible unless it is staffed during business hours.
• One profile per business, not per city. A business that travels to customers gets one service-area profile. Extra profiles are only for separate locations with their own staff.

For the service area itself, Google says you can set up to 20 service areas based on cities, postal codes or other areas, that the overall area shouldn’t extend more than about two hours’ driving time from where you’re based, and that you can’t set it as a radius around your business.

For example, a hypothetical roofer based in Vista might list Vista, Carlsbad, Oceanside, San Marcos, Escondido and Encinitas: the places the crew actually drives to every week. Listing every city in Southern California doesn’t help you rank in all of them, and it makes the profile less believable to the customers reading it.

Categories, hours, phone and website

These fields look simple, and Google still has specific rules for each one.

Field	What Google says	What it means for a contractor
Categories	Use “as few categories as possible” to describe your core business, as specific as possible. A category should complete the sentence “This business IS a,” not “HAS a.”	Pick the main trade first (for example, roofing contractor). Don’t add categories as keywords or for jobs you rarely do.
Hours	List your regular customer-facing hours. Businesses that operate only by appointment shouldn’t list hours.	If you answer the phone 7 to 5, say so. Don’t list 24 hours unless someone really picks up at 2 a.m.
Special hours	Use special hours for holidays and short closures of up to 6 days in a row; for 7 or more days, mark the business temporarily closed.	Set holiday hours ahead of Thanksgiving and the end of the year so customers don’t call a closed office.
Phone	Use a number that represents your location, a local number rather than a central call center whenever possible, and one under your direct control. No premium-rate numbers or numbers that redirect elsewhere.	Use the number your office answers, and keep it the same as on your website and invoices.
Website	The website should represent your individual business. No links that redirect somewhere else.	Link to your own site, ideally a page that matches your main service, not a directory listing or social page.

Google’s ranking page also warns that “if your business info isn’t accurate, your Business Profile might not show up for relevant searches in your area.” Wrong hours are an easy way to lose a job: a customer sees “Open,” calls, and nobody answers.

What photos should a contractor upload?

Google’s tips for business-specific photos list photo types with a suggested minimum for each. For a trade, the ones that matter most are:

• Photos at work: at least three showing the services you offer. Before-and-after shots of real jobs belong here.
• Team: at least three of management and employees. Google suggests a less formal look, so a crew photo next to the truck works.
• Exterior: at least three, if you have a shop or showroom customers visit.

The technical rules are short: JPG or PNG, between 10 KB and 5 MB, with 720 by 720 pixels recommended and 250 by 250 the minimum. Google also says photos should be in focus, well lit, and have “no significant alterations or excessive use of filters or AI.” They should look like what the customer will actually get. Photos only show once the business is verified.

A practical habit: have whoever finishes a job take two or three well-lit photos before packing up, and upload the best ones each month. Real photos of your work are hard for a competitor to copy.

Reviews: what are you allowed to do?

Reviews feed the “prominence” part of ranking, and they are what customers read before they call. Google’s ranking page encourages replying to them, saying “positive reviews and helpful replies can help your business stand out.” Google’s prohibited and restricted content policy also sets firm limits. It says businesses must not:

• Offer incentives such as payment, discounts, or free goods or services in exchange for a review, or for changing or removing a negative one.
• Discourage negative reviews or “selectively solicit positive reviews from customers.” In other words, you can’t ask only the happy customers.
• Require or pressure customers to leave a review on the spot, or ask staff to collect a set number of reviews.
• Post reviews with a conflict of interest, which the policy says can include current or former employment.

What’s left is simple and works: ask every customer, in person at the end of the job or in a follow-up email with a direct link to your profile, and reply to every review, good or bad, politely and without sharing private details about the job. Reviews and a clear website also shape how AI tools describe you, as we covered in how service businesses get recommended by ChatGPT and Google AI.

What if your profile gets suspended?

Google’s page on suspended or disabled profiles says it may suspend profiles that don’t follow its guidelines. If it happens:

1. Fix the cause first. Compare the profile with the guidelines above: name, address, service area, categories, phone.
2. Gather proof. Google lists documents such as an official business registration, a business license, tax certificates or utility bills, and says the business name and address on them should match the profile.
3. Appeal once, through Google’s appeals tool. Google says “appeals can only be submitted once,” and you can request an additional review only if the appeal is denied.
4. Don’t create a new profile. Google says directly: “Do not create a new Business Profile for the same business.”

The best protection is boring: a real name, a hidden home address, an honest service area and accurate hours. Check the profile every few months, and again whenever you change your number, hours or services.