Google Business Profile

What it means for a contractor

When someone searches "water heater repair near me" or "roof leak" and a map with a short list of businesses appears, those entries come from Google Business Profiles. For many home-service shops the profile is where a stranger first sees your name, your reviews and your photos, and it's often where they tap to call. It is separate from Google's paid ads; the paid version for home services is Local Services Ads.

Service-area businesses hide the address

Most contractors go to the customer, which Google calls a service-area business. Google says that if you don't serve customers at your business address, you should remove the address from your profile, and its example is a plumber who runs the business from home ¹. A shop with a showroom customers visit can keep the address and add a service area too.

You can list up to 20 service areas by city, postal code or other area, and Google says the overall area shouldn't extend more than about 2 hours of driving time from where you're based ¹. That's a ceiling, not a goal. Draw the area around places you can reach on the jobs you want most.

Example: A one-truck HVAC shop based in a small city can reach six nearby towns within 40 minutes, and a seventh in 90. Listing all seven brings calls from the far town that are hard to serve on a no-heat day. Listing the six close ones keeps the calls to places the shop can reach the same day.

Use the name on your truck

Google's guidelines say your business name should match the real-world name you use consistently on your signs, website and stationery, and that adding extra information such as services or locations to the name isn't permitted and can get the profile suspended ². "Smith Plumbing" is fine. "Smith Plumbing 24/7 Emergency Plumber Springfield" is a suspension risk, not a ranking trick.

Common mistakes

• Keeping a home address visible. Clear it if customers never come to you.
• Hours you won't answer. If the profile says open 24 hours, someone has to pick up at 2 a.m. List the hours your phone is really covered.
• Categories and services that don't match the work. Pick the primary category that fits your shop, then add the specific services you sell, in the words customers search.
• Stock photos. Real job photos, captioned with the town and the work (never a house number), show what you actually do.
• Ignoring reviews. Answer every one, including the unhappy ones. Never screen customers so only happy ones get asked; see review gating and how to get more reviews legally.

How it connects

Track the calls and messages your profile produces like any other lead source, so you can compare them with paid channels using customer acquisition cost and close rate. The customer guides for each trade, such as how to get more plumbing customers, show trade-specific setups.