Google Business Profile: a step by step guide for Chiswick businesses
For most small businesses in W4, the Google Maps pin does more work than the website. It is where people find you, judge you and decide whether to call, usually in about fifteen seconds. This guide covers setting one up, getting verified, filling it in properly, and turning the people who find you into customers.
What this covers
- Why the Maps pin matters more than the website
- What a Business Profile is, and what happened to Google My Business
- Setting it up, step by step
- Getting verified
- Filling it in so it actually ranks
- How Google decides who shows up
- Reviews, and how to ask without cringing
- Turning views into customers
- The ten minute monthly routine
- Mistakes that quietly cost you
- Questions people actually ask
Why the Maps pin matters more than your website
Think about how you look for a plumber, a physio or somewhere to eat. You do not go to a company's website first. You search, you glance at the map results, you look at the star rating, you check whether it is open, and you tap the one that looks the most convincing. The website comes later, if at all.
That whole decision happens inside your Google Business Profile. Your opening hours, your photos, your reviews, your phone number, all of it sits in a panel you control and most businesses barely touch. A profile that is complete and looked after will beat a better business with a neglected one, over and over.
It is also free, which makes it the single highest-return hour of marketing work available to a small business in Chiswick.
What a Business Profile is, and what happened to Google My Business
A Google Business Profile is the listing that appears on the right of Google Search and as the pin on Google Maps. It is not a website and it is not an advert. It is a record about your business that Google holds, and that you can claim and control.
Two things have changed that catch people out:
- The name. It used to be Google My Business. It is now Google Business Profile. Older guides and half the internet still use the old name.
- Where you manage it. The standalone app has gone. You now edit your profile straight from Google Search or Google Maps while signed in to the Google account that owns it, or at business.google.com.
Google announced it was switching off the simple websites it used to generate from Business Profiles. If that page was doing the job of your website, you need a real one. A free listing in a local directory like this one is a reasonable stopgap while you sort it out.
Setting it up, step by step
Allow twenty minutes. Do it on a laptop rather than a phone, and use a Google account you will still have access to in five years. Not a personal Gmail belonging to a member of staff who might leave.
Check whether a profile already exists
Search your business name and Chiswick. Google creates unclaimed profiles from other sources all the time, and if one exists you want to claim it rather than create a duplicate. Duplicates are a genuine headache to unpick later.
If you find one, look for Claim this business or Own this business? on the listing.
Create the profile
Go to business.google.com/create and work through it:
- Sign in to the Google account you want to own the profile
- Enter your business name, exactly as it appears on your signage and invoices
- Choose your business category, which matters more than anything else on this screen
- Say whether you have a premises customers can visit
- If you travel to customers, set your service area. You can list up to twenty areas
- Add your phone number and website
- Pick a verification method
Decide how your address is shown
If you work from home, you do not have to publish your address. Set yourself up as a service area business instead and list the areas you cover: Chiswick, Brentford, Acton, Hammersmith, wherever you actually go. Your pin still appears in local results, without a stranger knowing your front door.
If you have a shop, studio or salon, publish the address. People need to find it, and a physical address is a genuine ranking advantage for searches near you.
Getting verified
Nothing you type goes fully live until Google is satisfied you are real. There are four methods, and which ones you are offered depends on your business type and category. You do not always get a choice.
| Method | How it works | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Phone or text | A code arrives by call or SMS | The fastest when offered |
| Instructions sent to your email | Usually only for certain categories | |
| Live video call | You show a Google representative your premises or equipment | Increasingly common. Prepare before you start |
| A postcard with a code goes to your address | Around fourteen days, so leave time |
Google reviews what you submit afterwards, and says that review can take up to five working days. With the postcard route, add that to the fortnight the post takes.
Have three things ready before you press start: signage or branded material with your business name on it, proof you are where you say you are, such as the street outside or a delivery label, and something that shows the work happening, like tools, stock or your workspace. Walk slowly and narrate what you are showing. It is quicker than it sounds and it is not an interrogation.
Filling it in so it actually ranks
Google is explicit about this: "Businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results." Completeness is not a nice-to-have, it is the mechanism. Most local businesses stop at name, phone and address, which is why the ones who go further win.
Categories
Your primary category carries the most weight of any single field. Be specific. "Coffee shop" beats "Restaurant" if that is what you are. Add secondary categories for the other things you genuinely do, but do not stuff them with things you do not.
A quick way to sense-check: search the term you want to be found for, then look at which categories the businesses ranking above you have chosen.
Hours, including the awkward ones
Set your regular hours, then set special hours for bank holidays and the Christmas fortnight. Google surfaces "open now" constantly, and nothing loses a customer faster than turning up to a closed door your profile said was open. If you close for two weeks in August, say so.
Services and products
List what you actually sell, with prices where you can. This is one of the few places you get to use your own words at length, and it feeds what Google understands you to be. A physio listing "sports massage", "post-operative rehab" and "running gait analysis" is far more findable than one that just says "physiotherapy".
Description
You get 750 characters. Write it for a human who has never heard of you: what you do, who you do it for, where you do it, and what makes you the sensible choice. Mention Chiswick or W4 naturally if it is true, but do not write a paragraph of place names.
Photos
Google's own guidance is that photos and video "show customers what you offer and tell the story of your business". In practice photos are the difference between a listing that looks alive and one that looks abandoned.
- A logo and a cover image, both properly sized and not stretched
- The outside of the premises, from the angle someone walking up the street would see
- The inside, so people know what they are walking into
- The work itself, or the product
- The people, because local customers buy from people
Real photos taken on a decent phone beat stock every time. Add a few more every couple of months rather than dumping forty on day one.
Attributes
These are the small tick boxes: step-free access, outdoor seating, free parking, women-led, LGBTQ+ friendly, appointment required. People filter by them and they cost you nothing.
How Google decides who shows up
Google publishes this, which saves a lot of guessing. Local results are ranked on three things:
| Factor | What it means | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| Relevance | How well your profile matches what was searched for | Categories, services, description, complete fields |
| Distance | How far you are from the person searching | Little, beyond being honest about your address or service area |
| Prominence | How well known you are, drawn partly from links, reviews and ratings | Reviews, local press, being listed in places like this directory |
Two of the three are things you can move. Distance is not, which is why a business in Chiswick will struggle to rank for searches made in Richmond however good the profile is, and why chasing that is usually wasted effort.
Google states it plainly: "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google." If somebody cold-calls offering exactly that, they are either selling ads, which are a different thing entirely, or selling nothing.
Reviews, and how to ask without cringing
Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking, and that responding to reviews shows you value your customers. Both halves matter, and the second is the one people skip.
Asking
The best moment is immediately after something has gone well, while the person is still standing in front of you or has just replied to say thank you. Not a fortnight later in a newsletter.
Make it one tap. In your profile there is a short review link you can copy: turn it into a QR code for the counter, put it in your email signature, and paste it into the message you send when a job is finished. Ask plainly. "If you have two minutes, a review really helps people find us" works better than anything clever.
- Never offer a discount or anything else in exchange for a review. It breaches Google's policies and can get reviews removed or the profile suspended
- Never ask only the customers you know are happy in a way that filters out everyone else. Ask everyone
- Do not buy reviews. It is obvious, and it is the fastest way to lose the profile
Replying
Reply to all of them, ideally within a couple of days. Good ones get a short, specific, human thank you rather than the same sentence fifteen times. Bad ones get the harder version: acknowledge it, do not argue the detail in public, say what you are doing about it, and offer to take it offline.
Remember the audience is not the reviewer. It is the next person reading, deciding whether one bad review is a fluke or a pattern. A calm reply to a harsh review often does more good than the four star average above it.
Turning views into customers
Ranking is only half of it. Plenty of businesses appear in the map pack and still lose the click. The gap is almost always one of these.
- The phone number is wrong or unanswered. Call it yourself once a month from a phone that is not yours
- The hours are stale. If you show as closed when you are open, you lose the customer entirely and never know
- There are no photos of the actual place. People will not walk into a room they cannot picture
- The website link goes to a slow or broken page. Or worse, to a homepage when the profile promised a specific service
- Nobody has replied to a review since 2023. It reads as a business that has stopped caring
Use Posts for the things that change
Posts appear on your profile and are the right home for an offer, an event, a seasonal change or an announcement. They are not a blog and nobody is subscribed to them. Post when there is genuinely something to say, roughly monthly, and always with a clear next step.
Answer your own questions
The questions and answers section is open to the public, which means anyone can answer for you, correctly or not. Get in first. Post the five questions you are asked every week, parking, appointments, whether you take card, and answer them yourself. It is entirely legitimate and it fills a space you do not want somebody else filling.
The ten minute monthly routine
Set a recurring reminder. Once a month, in this order:
- Reply to every review since last time
- Add two or three new photos
- Check the hours against the next month, including bank holidays
- Post once, if there is something real to post
- Check the questions section for anything unanswered
- Glance at the performance figures: calls, direction requests, website clicks, and which searches found you
- Ask the last three happy customers for a review
That is the whole job. Businesses that do this consistently pull away from the ones that do not, and the gap compounds.
Mistakes that quietly cost you
- Keyword stuffing the business name. "Smith Plumbing Chiswick Emergency Plumber 24hr" breaches Google's rules and gets edited or suspended. Use your real name
- Duplicate profiles. Usually from creating a new one instead of claiming the existing one. They split your reviews and confuse Google
- A different address, phone number or business name on your website, your directory listings and your profile. Consistency across the web is part of how Google decides you are real
- Letting a marketing agency own the profile. You should always be the primary owner. Add anyone else as a manager
- Ignoring the suggested edits. Members of the public can suggest changes to your hours and details, and they sometimes stick. Check your profile every so often to confirm it still says what you wrote
Questions people actually ask
Is a Google Business Profile free?
Yes. Creating, verifying and managing it costs nothing. Google Ads is a separate paid product and you do not need it to appear in the map results.
How long does verification take?
Google says the review of what you submit can take up to five working days. Phone, text and video are usually much faster than that. The postcard route adds around a fortnight for delivery before the review even starts.
Can I have a profile if I work from home?
Yes. Set yourself up as a service area business and list the areas you cover instead of publishing your home address. You can name up to twenty areas.
Someone left an unfair review. Can I get it removed?
Only if it breaches Google's policies, for example if it is spam, off-topic, or from a competitor rather than a customer. You can report it from the review itself. Reviews that are simply negative but genuine will not be removed, so the reply is your tool, not the report button.
Do I still need a website?
Yes. The profile is where people find you, the website is where they check you out properly and where you control the whole story. They do different jobs. Google also announced it was turning off the free websites it used to generate from Business Profiles, so anyone relying on one of those needs a real site.
How does being in a local directory help?
Prominence, one of Google's three local ranking factors, is drawn partly from links and mentions across the web. A consistent listing on a genuine local directory, with the same name, address and phone number as your profile, is one of the signals that feeds it. It is not a magic trick, it is one of the many small things that add up.
What if my business has moved or closed?
Update it rather than deleting it. A profile with a stale address sends customers to the wrong door and damages the consistency Google is checking for. If you have genuinely closed, mark it as permanently closed so the reviews and history stay attached to the record.
One more place people can find you
Once your Google Business Profile is sorted, the same details in a local directory give Google another consistent signal, and give people in W4 another route to you. A basic listing in the Chiswick Business Network directory is free and takes about five minutes.
Sources: Google Business Profile Help, covering creating a profile, verification methods and how Google ranks local results. Checked August 2026.