How to rank higher on Google Maps: a Google Business Profile guide

Google ranks businesses on the map by three things: relevance, meaning how closely the profile matches the search; distance from the person searching; and prominence, meaning how well known the business is. Its local ranking help page adds that a better position can't be requested or paid for, so the work goes into relevance and prominence.

Prominence rests partly on how many sites link to you and how many reviews you have, and Google adds that “more reviews and positive ratings can help”. Distance you can't touch. It is why a profile that comes first when the owner searches from the shop can sit fifth for a customer across town.

Google keeps the rest of its algorithm confidential, so practitioners' observations are the next best evidence. A long-running survey of local search specialists gathers them. Its 2026 edition came out on 6 November 2025, and the top five for the map are the primary category, distance from the searcher, keywords in the business name, a physical address in the city searched, and being open at the moment of the search.

Money buys an ad on the map, through a location asset linked to the profile, but not a higher unpaid position; how Google Ads is priced for a small business has its own guide.

Search for the business on Google Maps. If a profile exists and nobody has verified it, select Claim this business; if there is none, add one at business.google.com/add. Both routes end in verification: Google decides which methods you are offered, from a call or text to email, video or a postcard, and its review takes up to five business days.

Sign in with a Google Account that belongs to the business, not to whoever happens to be doing the job: verifying gives that account ownership of the profile. Anyone helping you afterwards goes in as a manager, a role that edits the profile but can't add or remove users, you included.

If another account already owns it

A verified profile set up by a former employee, an old agency or the business's previous owner can't be claimed directly. Select Request access at business.google.com/add: the current owner has three days to answer, and if nothing comes back, Google sometimes lets you claim it. Settle ownership first. A new owner waits seven days before removing anyone, and until the right account holds the profile, whoever does can undo your edits.

The verification video

Google recommends video whenever it is offered. The rules ask for one unedited take of at least 30 seconds, recorded live and uploaded from a phone. In it you show where you are (a street sign, the building number), that the business exists (a permanent sign with the profile's name) and that you run it, by opening the till or the storeroom, or by using the card terminal. A service-area business films its tools, its branded van as it unlocks it, or an invoice or utility bill in the profile's name. Walk the route once before pressing record. A rejected video comes back with a Review issues button, and the next take has to show everything again, not only what was missing.

Postcards

Most postcards arrive within 14 days, and the code expires after 30. Until it arrives, don't edit the name, address or category and don't request a second code: either one voids the card already in the post.

Pick the most specific category on Google's list that completes the sentence “this business is a…”. Google's own example is “Nail salon” rather than “Salon”, and Google states that the categories you choose affect local ranking. Up to nine more are allowed, and Google asks for the fewest that describe the core business.

The same help page draws the line with a grocery that has a bakery, which adds “Bakery”, and a health club with an independently run café, which doesn't, because the café needs a profile of its own. To see what you are up against, search your main service from where your customers are and read the categories the map shows. Then choose once. A new name or category can send the profile back through verification.

The business name is where the rules and the rankings pull apart. The 47 specialists rank keywords in the name third, and Google's guidelines forbid them: the name is the one on your sign, website and stationery, without taglines, towns or services, and extra words “could result in the suspension” of the profile. I would not add them. The gain lasts only as long as the profile does, and a profile Google removes stays invisible to the public until an appeal succeeds. If the service is part of the trading name, painted on the van and printed on the invoices, it belongs on the profile too.

Yes, and if customers never come to your address, Google's guidelines say you should. A plumber working from home removes the address and lists service areas: up to 20 towns, postcodes or districts, within about two hours' drive of the base. A business that also receives customers at signed premises shows both.

A virtual office or a PO box is not an eligible address at all, and a co-working desk qualifies only with your sign on it, your staff at it and customers coming in during opening hours.

The survey does not establish how hiding an address will affect an individual profile. Follow Google's eligibility rules for displaying an address and monitor the profile's performance after changes.

A complete profile has real opening hours, holiday hours, a logo and cover photo, photos of the place and the work, your services, a description and the website link. Google's ranking page says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up in local results.

Hours are the surprise. Being open at the time of search is fifth on the practitioners' list, and its commentary describes profiles slipping down the map in the hour before closing, then giving way to competitors that are still open. Set special hours for public holidays. Google's guidelines ask for your regular customer-facing hours, which rules out showing a longer day than you keep, and a business that works by appointment only should leave the hours empty.

Add services from Google's suggestions, and custom ones for the rest. Google can highlight a matching service on the profile, and a customer reviewing a service business may be asked which one they bought. In-store product listings exist only for shops in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland.

Google can replace a cover photo it considers low quality with one a customer uploaded, so take a sharp, well-lit photo of the entrance first. The description takes 750 characters, which is room for what you do, for whom, where and since when, and Google wants no links in it and no prices or promotions, so this month's offer goes in a post instead. Posts are archived after six months unless you set dates, and Google's ranking page doesn't mention them. Use posts for relevant updates, offers and questions customers ask.

Ask every customer, soon after the job, with a direct link. The Business Profile gives you a review link and QR code under Read reviews, then Get more reviews, for receipts, thank-you emails or a card by the till; the QR code can only be made in a computer browser. Google allows asking. It forbids rewarding reviews in any form, discounts included.

A survey of 1,002 US adults on local reviews, published in February 2026, gives the reason to ask steadily: 47% won't use a business with fewer than 20 reviews, 74% only care about reviews from the last three months, and 31% will only use one rated 4.5 stars or more, up from 17% a year earlier. I would rather have two reviews a week for a year than a hundred in a fortnight. A steady flow rather than bursts is fourteenth in the specialists' ranking for the map, and a sudden hundred is the kind of unusual volume Google's policy lists under rating manipulation.

The best moment to ask is when the customer says thank you.

What gets reviews removed

Google's fake engagement rules catch a few familiar habits:

• offering payment, a discount or anything free for a review, or for changing or deleting a bad one
• asking only the customers you expect to be happy, including the review-tool set-up that surveys customers first and passes only the high scores on to Google
• pressure: a review demanded before the customer leaves, a staff quota, a request to mention someone by name
• reviews by employees, former employees, relatives, competitors or anyone else with a conflict of interest

Google deletes such reviews and can restrict the profile: no new reviews for a set period, existing ones hidden, a public warning. Under Google's undertakings to the UK Competition and Markets Authority of 24 January 2025, a UK business caught at it repeatedly loses all its reviews for six months or more.

How to reply to reviews

Reply to every review. In that February survey, 89% expect the owner to respond, 81% within a week and 32% by the next day, and templated replies put off half, so a reply written for the review in front of you beats any template. Google's advice matches: keep it short, use the reviewer's name, answer their point, sign with your name or initials, and make no offers.

I would keep a reply to a bad review to four sentences: a thank-you, what happened as far as you know, what has changed, and a direct number for the rest. The reviewer is notified and can still edit the review, and Google says a constructive reply sometimes prompts exactly that. Arguing the details in public looks bad whoever is right.

Use one version of the business name, address and phone number, everywhere it appears. Google builds each profile from your entries, your website, licensed third-party data and users' edits, and when those sources say your details are wrong or out of date, it can change the profile itself, marking its changes in blue in the editor.

On your site, put the details in plain text on the contact page and in the footer, exactly as on the profile; the practitioners' ranking puts that match fifteenth. LocalBusiness structured data repeats them for Google. Point the profile's website link at the page that best matches the primary category, and check that Google has indexed it. If the site doesn't appear in Google at all, read why a website isn't showing up in Google first.

Beyond Google, Apple folded Business Connect, where businesses managed their Apple Maps place cards, into Apple Business on 14 April 2026, free in more than 200 countries and regions. In the same US review survey, the share of respondents using Apple Maps as a source of reviews nearly doubled in a year, from 14% to 27%. Add Bing Places, then every directory the business is listed in. Checking these listings is part of local SEO: customers should find the same current contact details in each place.

The Performance report counts calls, direction requests, website clicks, bookings and messages, plus the searches that showed the profile. A call there is a tap on the call button, not an answered call, the figures include Google Ads, and the call history feature was switched off on 31 July 2024.

Tag the website link with UTM parameters, such as ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp, and Google Analytics reports those visits as their own campaign under Traffic acquisition. I would add the tag the day the profile goes live, because visits from before it can't be separated out later. For the phone, ask every new caller where they found you.

Google may suspend or disable profiles that break its guidelines. The five breaches I would check first are keywords in the name, an address customers can't visit, a visible address on a service-area business, two profiles for one location, and a phone number or link that forwards somewhere else. Fix the cause, then appeal.

The appeals tool shows the reason. Google's list of evidence runs from a business registration or licence to a tax certificate or utility bill, each with the profile's name and address, and once the evidence form is open you have 60 minutes to submit it. Gather the files first; a bill with last year's address argues against you. Don't create a new profile while the appeal is pending.