● Customer reviews
Google Business Profile (Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business))
Google Business Profile is the listing that controls how a business appears on Google Search and Google Maps. It holds the address, hours, photos and customer reviews. It was previously called Google My Business. Owners claim, verify and update it themselves.
Full definition
What a Business Profile contains
A Business Profile holds the basic facts about your business: its name, address or service area, opening hours, phone number, website, categories, photos and a short description. It also shows the reviews customers leave and your replies to them.
Google displays this information in its own results, so customers can find it without visiting your website. You can also list your services or products and add photos of your premises. Fill in every field that applies to you. Google uses this information to match your listing to a search, so a complete and detailed profile gives it more to work with.
Who is eligible
Google allows a Business Profile for a business that has a physical location customers can visit, or that travels to customers. The details sit in Google's eligibility guidelines.
The address must be a real place where you operate. A virtual office or a rented mailing address does not qualify. A service-area business, such as a plumber or a mobile hairdresser, can have a profile too. It lists the area it serves and hides its home address. A purely online business, with no location to visit and no visits to customers, is not eligible.
Where it appears: Search, Maps and local results
A profile shows up in three places: Google Search, Google Maps and the local results that list businesses near the searcher.
When someone searches for your business name, Google can show a panel with your details, photos and rating. When someone searches for a type of business nearby, such as a hairdresser or a plumber, Google shows local results with a map. Each result displays a rating and the number of reviews. On Maps, the profile also gives directions and your contact details.
Customers often compare several listings in seconds. Photos, hours and ratings are what they see first, before they ever reach your website.
How reviews affect local ranking
According to Google's page on local ranking, local results rely mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well your profile matches the search. Distance is how far you are from the searcher. Prominence is how well known your business is, and it draws on things like links to your site and review counts.
On reviews, Google writes that more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking. It gives no minimum number of reviews and no target rating, so treat any threshold you read elsewhere as a guess.
You cannot change distance. You can complete your profile and earn reviews. Here is how to get more Google reviews without breaking the platform's rules.
Managing and replying to reviews
You can read and reply to every review from your profile. Google advises replies that are professional, polite and short, and says the same generic thank-you sent to everyone adds little.
For a negative review, address the reviewer by name, apologize when it fits, stay honest about what you can do and protect their privacy. Do not use a reply to offer a deal. Our guide shows how to respond to Google reviews with examples.
If a review breaks Google's content policies, you can flag it, and Google then decides whether to remove it. A review you simply disagree with is not a policy violation, so reply to it instead.
Concrete example
These three examples are illustrative.
Hairdresser. A salon on a high street fills in its hours, adds photos and lists its services. After each visit the owner asks clients for a review and replies to each one within the week. Someone searching for a hairdresser nearby sees photos, a rating and recent replies, and can get directions in one tap.
Dental practice. The practice keeps its opening hours current, including holiday closures. A patient searching late in the evening sees when it reopens and plans a call for the morning, instead of ringing a closed line.
Plumber with a service area. He works from a van and has no shop. He sets up a service-area profile with the towns he covers and hides his home address. Customers in those towns find him in local results, and reviews from past jobs show new customers what to expect.
In each case the work is the same: keep the facts current and keep reviews coming.
With Review Collect
Review Collect sends review requests after a purchase and directs each customer to one review platform that you choose, for example Google. It never sends the same customer to several platforms at once, and the customer always keeps the choice to publish.
Once a review is published on your profile, the AI replies to it in under 60 seconds, whether it is positive or negative. It covers all published reviews. To connect your profile, see the Google Business Profile integration.
