What a Google listing is
It is the box that shows your business on Google Search and Maps: your name, hours, phone number, photos and reviews. Google calls it a Business Profile. When someone nearby searches for what you do, it is often the first thing they see.
Google shows people the businesses closest to them first, and nobody can change that. What you can control is whether your listing is complete, accurate and trusted when you are in range.
What to have ready
A Google account. Your business name exactly as it appears on your signage and invoices. Your address, or the area you serve if you work from home or travel to customers.
A phone number you answer, a short description of what you do and some photos of your own.
Setting it up
Google changes its screens from time to time, so follow what you see. The order stays much the same. Sign in with your Google account, then search for your business on Google Maps. If a listing for you already exists, claim it instead of creating a second one.
Enter your business name exactly as it is in the real world. Do not add keywords or a town to it. Choose the most specific category for your main service. You can add others later.
Add your address if customers visit you. If you work from home or travel to customers, set the area you serve and hide your address. Google allows this. Then add your phone number, your website and your hours.
Verifying your business
Google asks you to prove that the business is real. Which options you see depends on the business and on Google. For many businesses it is a short video of the place you work from.
Our guide to verifying by video lists exactly what Google asks you to show.
Finishing the listing
Add photos of your own place, your work and your team. Aim for ten or more, and use real photos only. Write a short description of what you do and where. List your services and add your hours, including public holidays.
Reply to every review, kindly and briefly. To ask for reviews, send one neutral request for honest feedback to every customer. Do not offer anything in return, do not ask only the happy ones and do not set quotas for staff.
Mistakes to avoid
Do not put keywords in your business name. Do not create a second listing for the same place. Do not show a home address on a listing that serves customers elsewhere. Never buy reviews. Google can suspend a listing that breaks its rules, and getting it back takes time.
Or let us look after it
Our Setup is R1,500 once-off, paid in full upfront. We check your listing, claim or create it, verify it and set it up properly. Care is R450 a month from the month after Setup, and you can leave free at month three if your baseline numbers have not moved.
Start with your free score. It shows what your listing looks like today.