Google Business Profile: the 10 changes that matter most for AI search

For local businesses, your Google Business Profile (GBP) is the closest thing to a master record. It drives your Maps listing and local search results, and Google’s AI features that answer local questions rely on the same business data. Other assistants cross-check it against their own sources. If it’s thin, wrong, or disconnected from your website, everything downstream suffers.

The ten that matter most

1. Verify the profile. Unverified profiles are barely visible.
2. Pick the most specific primary category. It is among the strongest signals for which searches you appear in.
3. Add every true secondary category. Each distinct service you actually offer.
4. Use your real name. Keyword-stuffed names risk suspension.
5. Match name, address and phone to your website exactly. Consistency is how systems decide two records are the same business.
6. List your services with a short description of each.
7. Write a clear description (up to 750 characters) saying what you do, for whom and where. No links or promotions.
8. Add real photos of your work, team and premises, and refresh them monthly.
9. Collect reviews steadily and reply to all of them. Volume, recency and content all count. Never buy or gate reviews.
10. Link profile and website both ways, and put your profile URL in your schema’s sameAs.

Don’t stop at Google

Claim Bing Places (it feeds Microsoft Copilot and other products built on Bing) and Apple Business Connect (Apple Maps and Siri). Both take around twenty minutes and close real gaps.

Work through it

Our Google Business Profile checklist turns this into 27 steps with the why and how for each, and saves your progress.