Google Business Profile for contractors: the 20 minutes a week that move you up the map

Google ranks local businesses on three things it names itself: relevance (does the profile match the search), distance (from the searcher, which you cannot change), and prominence (reviews, mentions, and how well-known the business is online).¹

For a contractor that comes down to: the right primary category, a service area and services list that match the site word for word, a steady flow of reviews with replies, real photos of real jobs, and nothing on the profile that contradicts the website. Twenty minutes a week keeps all of that current. The rest, posts, Q&A, products, helps at the margin.

Set once, check quarterly

• Primary category. "Roofing contractor", "HVAC contractor", "Plumber", "Electrician". Not "Contractor" and not "General contractor" unless that is the business. The primary category is the strongest relevance signal on the profile; a wrong one keeps you out of searches you do every day.
• Secondary categories. Only the ones you really do: "Gutter service" if you install gutters, "Furnace repair service" if that is a line of work. Each one is a search you can appear for; each wrong one dilutes the profile.
• Service area. The towns you actually drive to, not the state. A service-area business hides its address and lists areas; a shop with a front counter shows the address. Pick the one that is true; Google suspends profiles that are not.
• Services. Add each service with a short description and, where you publish them, the price. These match searches like "water heater replacement near me" and they are read by AI assistants; the AI answers guide explains why consistency with the site matters there.
• Name, phone, hours, website. Identical to the site's footer and structured data. The name is the legal or DBA name, without "Best Roofing in Albany" stuffed into it, which is against the rules and gets reported by competitors.
• Owner access. You are the primary owner; anyone who helps, including us, is a manager. The ownership answer covers the other accounts.

The weekly 20 minutes

1. Ask for two reviews (5 minutes). Same day as the job, by text, with the direct review link. "Thanks for having us out today. If you have a minute, a review here helps a small company more than you'd think: [link]." The crew lead sends it from the driveway; the office follows up once. Steady beats bursts; Google notices twenty reviews in a weekend. The reviews answer covers how many and what matters more than the count.
2. Reply to every review (5 minutes). Two sentences, by name, mentioning the job and the town ("Glad the new furnace is keeping the house in Niskayuna warm, Dana"). Replies are read by the next homeowner and are a place the town name legitimately appears. A bad review gets a calm, factual reply within a day, never an argument.
3. Add three photos of real work (5 minutes). From the week's jobs: the truck in the driveway, the finished roof, the new panel. Phone photos are fine; stock photos are not. Profiles with recent photos look alive to Google and to the homeowner comparing three of them.
4. One post (5 minutes). What is coming: "Furnace tune-ups before the first freeze, $129 through October." Posts expire; one a week is enough. Skip it before you skip the reviews or photos.

Reviews and photos every week; everything else quarterly.

The site pages the profile points to

The profile's website link and each service's link should land on a page that says the same thing the profile says: the trade, the town, the service, the price. A profile that says "Furnace repair, Schenectady" linking to a homepage that says "Quality You Can Trust" breaks the relevance chain. This is the real reason service pages and town pages exist; the town pages answer explains what makes one count and what makes one junk. The weekly work in the Growth engine writes those pages and keeps the profile's links pointed at them.

The Q&A section and messaging

Two parts of the profile most contractors never open. The Questions & answers section lets anyone ask a question on your profile, and anyone answer it, including a competitor or a stranger guessing. Seed it yourself with the five questions you get on every call ("Do you give free estimates?", "Do you work with insurance claims?", "What areas do you serve?") and answer them in two plain sentences; those pairs are read by homeowners and by AI assistants alike. Check it monthly for questions you did not write.

Messaging (chat from the profile) brings a few leads a month in some trades and a stream of spam in others. Turn it on only if someone answers within the hour during the day; Google shows the response time, and a slow one reads worse than none. The call button on the profile is the one that matters; make sure the number rings somewhere that picks up.

Leave alone

• Keyword-stuffed names. Against the guidelines, reported by competitors, and a suspension costs you every review while it is sorted out.
• Bought or traded reviews. Google removes them in batches, sometimes with the real ones, and the FTC fines for it are real.²
• Daily posts. They do not move the ranking; they consume the twenty minutes.
• Fifteen secondary categories. See above.
• Duplicate profiles for each town. One business, one profile per real location. Town coverage comes from the service area and the site, not from fake offices.

How to tell it is working

The profile's own Performance tab shows calls, direction requests and website taps by month, and which searches showed you. Watch calls and the number of searches you appeared in, quarter over quarter. For the map position itself, search your main service plus your town from a phone, logged out, in two or three spots around your area, once a month, and write the position down. Clients on the Growth and Dominance engines get that in the monthly note, measured the same way each time.

Questions contractors ask about the profile