Marketing · How-to

Google Business Profile for contractors: set it up right, then keep it alive in 10 minutes a week

Set your profile up as a service-area business: hide your home address, list the cities or ZIP codes you actually drive to, pick the one primary category that says what you are, and use your real business name with no keywords added. Then spend about ten minutes a week on it: answer reviews, add job photos, publish one post and check your hours. Most suspensions trace back to a handful of rule breaks covered below.

By Eric Smith, founder of Outfitter AI and a former general contractor · Prices checked October 4, 2026

Set it up as a service-area business

Most contractors work at the customer’s house, not their own. Google has a setup for exactly that, called a service-area business. If customers don’t come to your address, Google’s instruction is to remove the address from your profile [1]. Customers then see the areas you serve instead of a pin on your house.

1. Use the name on your truck and your paperwork. More on what Google allows in the next section.
2. Pick a primary category that names what your company is, like Plumber or Roofing contractor. You can add others later.
3. Take the address off if nobody visits you. A painter working out of a garage, a roofer with a yard full of shingles, a cleaning company run from a kitchen table: all of these hide the address. A kitchen and bath remodeler with a showroom people walk into keeps it, and adds service areas too.
4. Add your service areas. Google allows up to 20, entered as cities, ZIP codes or similar areas, not as a radius in miles [1]. The outer edge shouldn’t sit more than about two hours of driving from where you’re based [1]. List towns where you want work, not every town you’ve driven through.
5. Add a phone number you answer and your website, if you have one.
6. Set hours you actually keep (more below).
7. Verify. Nothing much shows until you do; see the verification section below.

Two setup rules trip people up. A P.O. box or a virtual office doesn’t count as an address, and Google wants a single profile per business [2]. If you find an old duplicate from a previous owner or a lead site, claim it and fix it rather than starting a second one.

Business name and phone number: the rules that get profiles suspended

The name field is for your business name, full stop. Google’s guidelines rule out taglines, phone numbers, web addresses, hours, service descriptions and location details in the name, and give examples like “Regal Pizzeria Open 24 hours” as what not to do [2]. Breaking the name rules can get the profile suspended [2].

These are made-up examples. If your legal or trade name truly includes a word like “Plumbing,” that’s fine; the problem is adding words that aren’t part of the name.

Keyword-stuffed names sometimes rank for a while, until a competitor reports you. A suspension in April costs more than the extra words earned in March.

Phone numbers. The number has to be under your business’s direct control, and it can’t send callers to some other business’s line or a landing page [2]. A call-tracking number you own that rings your shop is a different thing from a lead broker’s number. If you use tracking, put the tracking number in the primary slot and your main line as an additional number so your listings elsewhere still match. Our guide to call tracking for contractors covers how to set that up.

Categories and services

Your primary category does most of the work of deciding which searches you show up for. Google’s advice is to use as few categories as you can to describe your core business, and to pick categories for what the business is, not for things it has or does on the side [2]. Categories aren’t a place for keywords [2].

Category names come from Google’s own list and change; type the start of your trade and choose the closest match Google offers.

Services are where the detail goes. In the profile, choose Edit services, tick the ones Google suggests for your category, then add your own [3]. Each service can carry a description and a price, and you can group them [3]. Custom service names get rejected if they include prices or phone numbers [3], so write “Sump pump replacement,” not “Sump pump replacement $899 call now.” Put the effort into descriptions: what’s included, which towns, how fast you get there. An electrician who lists “panel upgrade,” “EV charger install” and “whole-home generator hookup” tells Google and the homeowner far more than one line that says “electrical services.”

Photos that make a homeowner call

Homeowners can’t visit your shop, so photos stand in for it. Use sharp, well-lit phone shots from real jobs: no stock images, heavy filters or AI touch-ups.

• Your logo and a cover photo that reads at thumbnail size.
• Your truck or van with the name visible. For a service-area business this is the closest thing to a storefront.
• The crew at work: a tech brazing a line set, a roofer on the ridge in a harness, a cleaner finishing a kitchen.
• Before and after pairs: a rotted subfloor and the new tile, an overgrown bed and the clean edge.
• Two or three new ones every week, taken on the phone at the job.

Leave out anything that identifies the customer: house numbers, license plates, family members, paperwork on the counter. Ask before you post inside someone’s home.

Hours, special hours and holidays

Wrong hours cost you calls both ways. List hours when nobody answers and callers hit voicemail; show closed when you’re open and they never call. Google asks for your regular customer-facing hours, lets you set special hours for holidays and events, and lets seasonal businesses mark themselves temporarily closed [2].

• Regular hours: when a customer can actually reach you. Mark 24 hours only if someone, or something, picks up overnight. If nights go to an answering service, read our guide to after-hours calls first.
• Holiday hours: set them a month ahead, and confirm them even when they don’t change. Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and the Fourth of July are the days homeowners check.
• Temporarily closed: for a lawn or pool business that shuts down for the winter, rather than leaving summer hours up.

Posts, messaging and Q&A in 2026

Posts come in three types: updates, offers and events, and you can schedule them on a weekly or monthly repeat [4]. Posts older than 6 months get archived unless they carry a date range, and a post with a phone number in it can be rejected [4], so put the number in the button, not the text.

Ideas that fit a 2-minute post (examples):

• A gutter or roofing crew: one photo of last week’s tear-off, two sentences on what you found under the shingles.
• HVAC: a reminder in September to book furnace maintenance before the first cold night.
• Lawn care: spring signup dates for the routes in your listed towns.
• Pest control: what the ant calls in May usually turn out to be.

Messaging. Google ended chat and call history on Business Profiles on July 31, 2024 [5]. Its help page now says eligible accounts can let customers reach them by text message or WhatsApp from the profile [5]. Turn that on only for a number someone checks during business hours.

Questions & answers. The old public Q&A section is going away. Google shut off the Q&A API on November 3, 2025, and in December 2025 a Google product specialist announced that customers would instead ask questions in Google Maps and get an instant AI answer “based on your answers and relevant reviews” [6]. So the answers now come from what’s on your profile. Put the things people ask most (towns served, free estimates or not, emergency service, brands you install) into your description, services and posts, and keep earning detailed reviews.

Verification and suspensions

Verification. Google picks the method, and for many service-area contractors it’s a video recording. Google’s requirements: one continuous, unedited clip of at least 30 seconds, recorded and uploaded from a phone through the profile [7]. For a business without a storefront, it should show where you operate (street signs or landmarks), the tools and equipment of your trade, and proof you manage the business, such as doing the work or showing business documents [7]. Keep bank, tax and ID numbers out of the shot [7]. Reviews take up to 5 business days [7].

A shot list that works (example): start at the street sign on your corner, walk to the truck and show the name on the door, open the box truck or trailer to show tools and stock, unlock your shop or storage unit, then show a work order or invoice pad with the business name on it.

Suspensions. A suspended profile disappears for the public and locks out owners and managers [8]. The usual causes for contractors are the ones above: keywords in the name, a virtual office address, a phone number that forwards to someone else, or a second profile for the same business.

1. Fix the cause first, before you appeal.
2. Gather proof with the same name and address as the profile: business registration, license, tax certificate or a utility bill [8].
3. Appeal through Google’s appeals tool. Once you open the evidence form you have 60 minutes to submit it [8], so have the files ready first.
4. Don’t make a new profile while the appeal is open [8].

The 10-minute weekly routine

Put it on the calendar for the same slot every week, like Monday at 7:30 before the trucks roll. Here is the order we’d use:

1. Reply to new reviews (3 minutes). Short, specific, signed with your name. For the hard ones, see how to respond to negative reviews.
2. Send your review link to last week’s finished jobs (2 minutes). Templates are in how to get more Google reviews.
3. Upload two or three job photos (2 minutes) from the crew’s phones.
4. Publish or schedule one post (2 minutes).
5. Check for edits and holidays (1 minute). Look for suggested changes from Google or the public, and set special hours for any holiday in the next month.

Once a quarter, spend 20 minutes more: reread your services and description, prune service areas you no longer want, and search your trade and town on your phone to see what a homeowner sees. The profile is stage one of the full contractor marketing guide; once it’s solid, Local Services Ads build on the same reviews and photos.

Common questions

Sources and how we compared

Every rule and limit here comes from Google’s own Business Profile help pages, opened October 4, 2026, except the Q&A change, which comes from trade press quoting Google’s announcement; the name, category, post and shot-list examples are our own illustrations.

1. Google Business Profile Help: Manage your service areas
2. Google Business Profile Help: Guidelines for representing your business on Google
3. Google Business Profile Help: Manage your services on your Business Profile
4. Google Business Profile Help: Create a post for your Business Profile
5. Google Business Profile Help: Changes to chat and call history
6. PPC Land: Google replaces Business Profile Q&A with an AI Ask button — December 22, 2025; quotes Google’s December 3, 2025 forum announcement and the Q&A API shutdown
7. Google Business Profile Help: Verify your business with a video recording
8. Google Business Profile Help: Fix suspended or disabled profiles

Last updated October 4, 2026. Prices change; if something here is out of date, call or text (507) 628-0400 and we’ll fix it.

Related: Marketing: the full guide · How to get more Google reviews · Google Local Services Ads for contractors · Every marketing option compared