How to keep your Google Business Profile up to date
For a lot of small businesses in Buda, Kyle, Austin, and San Antonio, the first impression is not the website. It is the Google Business Profile that appears when someone searches the business name, a service, or a map of the area. If the hours are wrong, the phone number is old, or the photos look like a different chapter of the business, people notice. They may also drive to the wrong location or call a number no one answers.
Keeping the profile up to date is not complicated, but it does have to be done on purpose. This article walks through what to check, how often to look, and how the profile should match your website. We do not manage Google Business Profiles as part of our website care plans, so this is practical advice you can use yourself, or with whoever helps you with the account.
Start with the facts people use to reach you
Sign in to the profile and read it as if you were a new customer. Check the business name, address, service area, phone number, website link, and hours, including any special hours for holidays. If you close early, open late, or take a break between the holidays, those dates belong on the profile before the day arrives, and they should come down when you are back to your regular schedule.
Make sure the category still fits. A primary category that no longer matches what you do can confuse people, and extra categories should only describe services you actually offer. The same goes for the description: it should sound like your business, not like a leftover from an earlier version of the company.
If you have more than one location, each location should have its own accurate profile. If you serve customers at their homes or businesses instead of a public storefront, follow Google’s current guidelines for service-area businesses rather than listing an address you do not want people to visit.
Keep photos and posts from going stale
Photos do a lot of work on a profile. A current storefront, a clear picture of the work, and a few images of the space or the team (if you are comfortable sharing those) help people know what to expect. Old photos are not a crisis, but they should not be the only thing someone sees if the business has changed.
Google also lets you share short posts. These are useful for holiday hours, a new service, or a simple announcement. A post is not a substitute for fixing the official hours field, and it will not stay at the top of the profile forever, so treat it as a notice, not as the permanent record.
Reviews, questions, and messages
When people leave a review, a reply from the business helps, whether the review is warm or critical. Keep the tone even. Thank people for specifics you can stand behind, and if something went wrong, say how they can reach you. Do not offer rewards for reviews, and do not ask family or staff to post reviews that pretend to be from regular customers. That kind of shortcut can cause more trouble than it is worth, and it is not a practice we use or recommend.
If your profile has a Q&A section, look at it once in a while. Wrong answers have a way of sitting there until someone corrects them. If you have messaging turned on, decide who will reply and how quickly you can reasonably get back to people. An unanswered message can be worse than not offering messaging at all.
Make the profile and the website agree
The name, address, phone number, hours, and website on your Google Business Profile should match what appears on your site, and on any other listings you actively maintain. When they disagree, people are not sure which one to trust. If you change your hours on the website, change them on the profile the same day. If you get a new phone number, update both places before you print anything else.
It also helps to click the website link on the profile yourself from a phone. If the link goes to an old page, a broken page, or a form that no longer arrives in your inbox, fix that. A current profile that sends people to a neglected website still leaves a poor impression.
A simple routine
You do not need a complicated system. A short checklist, reviewed on a regular basis, is enough for most local businesses:
- Hours, including upcoming holiday hours
- Phone number, address or service area, and website link
- Categories and business description
- A few current photos
- Reviews and questions that need a reply
- Any leftover posts or attributes that are no longer true
A monthly look is a good habit. A quick check before a holiday, a move, a phone change, or a new service is also worth doing, even if you just reviewed it. If more than one person can edit the profile, agree on who is responsible so two people are not overwriting each other, and so the work is not left to “someone.”
If you ever lose access to the profile, start the recovery process with Google rather than creating a second listing. Duplicate profiles are a common source of confusion, and they take time to clean up.
Where we fit in
Our monthly website care plans cover the website itself: updates, backups, monitoring, and the day-to-day edits on the site you already have. They do not include managing your Google Business Profile, ad campaigns, or social media. If a change on the website should also be reflected on your profile—new hours, a new phone number, a new service page—we can remind you, and we can keep the site accurate so the two do not drift apart.
If you want a second set of eyes on the website that sits behind that profile, we are glad to take a free look and tell you honestly what we see.