Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile is a business’s profile in Google’s local results on Search and Maps, showing its name, address or service area, opening hours, photos and customer reviews. Owners verify the profile so they can edit the information and reply to reviews.

What is Google Business Profile?

Many people still call it Google My Business. That was the name of the website and app used to update a Business Profile; a 2020 Google blog post still refers to both tools (Google Blog, Update your Business Profile on Google Maps and Search, August 2020). Google’s help center now uses the name Google Business Profile. In Vietnamese, the help center calls it “Trang doanh nghiệp trên Google.”

To qualify, a business must have a location customers can visit, or travel to customers to serve them. A virtual office, meaning a rented mailing address where the business does not operate, is not eligible. An office in a co-working space counts only if it has signage and receives customers during business hours (Google Business Profile Help, Guidelines for representing your business, accessed October 2026).

Google Business Profile verification

You need a Google Account to sign up. Google picks the verification method based on business type, public information, region and opening hours, and you cannot change it. Options can include a phone call or text, email, a video recording, a live video call or a postcard. Postcard codes usually arrive within 14 days and expire after 30 days. After you submit, Google’s review takes up to 5 business days (Google Business Profile Help, Verify your business on Google, accessed October 2026).

While you wait for a postcard, do not edit your business name, address or category, or the code already sent will stop working.

Rules for your business information

• The name must match the real-world name on your signage, website and stationery. Do not add taglines, phone numbers, opening hours or product keywords to it; doing so can get the profile suspended.
• One profile per business. Pick the fewest categories that describe your core business.
• The description cannot contain links and should not focus on promotions or prices.

Hypothetical example. Wrong: “Hoa Mai Spa Massage District 3 0909xxxxxx”. Right: “Hoa Mai Spa,” with the address and phone number in their own fields.

How Google ranks local results

Google says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Results are based mainly on three factors (Google Business Profile Help, Tips to improve your local ranking, accessed October 2026):

1. Relevance: how well a profile matches what someone is searching for. Complete information helps Google understand the business.
2. Distance: how far the business is from the person searching.
3. Prominence: how well known the business is, based partly on how many websites link to it (backlinks) and how many reviews it has.

Your website still needs its own SEO and monitoring in Google Search Console; the two jobs do not replace each other.

Review rules

Google bans offering incentives such as money, discounts, free goods or services in exchange for posting a review, or for changing or removing a negative one. Reviews paid for directly or in kind are removed (Maps User Generated Content Policy, Prohibited and restricted content, accessed October 2026).

A quick calculation (hypothetical, treating the rating as a simple average): a cafe has 50 reviews averaging 4.2 stars. To reach 4.5 it needs x five-star reviews: (50 x 4.2 + 5x) / (50 + x) = 4.5, so x = 30. That means 30 genuinely happy customers, not 30 discount vouchers traded for stars.

Frequently asked questions

Can you pay to rank higher on Google Maps?

Not in the organic results. Google states plainly that you cannot request or pay for a better local ranking.

Can an online-only shop create a profile?

Under Google’s guidelines, profiles are for businesses with a location that serves customers in person or that travel to customers.

If you want your profile reviewed alongside your website SEO, see Adtek’s SEO page.