Guide · Google Business Profile
Setting the listing
up properly.
For most local businesses the Google listing gets more visits than the website. It is also the part most often left half-finished: 11,503 of the 49,994 GTA listings we surveyed do not publish opening hours at all.
Published 2026-09-08 · Formory Group
Categories decide what you are shown for.
The primary category is the heaviest single lever on the listing. Pick the most specific one that is true — "emergency plumber" rather than "plumber" only if that is genuinely the business. Add secondary categories only for services you actually offer; irrelevant ones dilute the signal rather than widening it.
Most owners choose a category once at setup and never revisit it. It is worth revisiting yearly, because Google adds and retires categories constantly.
Service-area businesses: hide the address.
If you travel to customers rather than receiving them, set the business as a service-area business, hide the street address and define the area you cover. This is the correct configuration for trades, consultants and most agencies — including ours — and it does not disadvantage you. Publishing a home address you do not receive customers at is the mistake, not hiding it.
Hours, services and attributes.
Publish hours even if they are irregular, and set special hours for holidays. List each service with a short description — this is a free, direct statement to Google about what you do. Fill in the attributes that are true and leave the rest.
Photographs.
At least ten, of your own work, taken on a phone in daylight rather than bought. Listings with real photographs get more interaction, and the difference between a stock office picture and a photograph of a finished job is the difference between a listing that could be anyone and one that is obviously you.
What gets a listing suspended.
Keyword-stuffing the business name. A virtual office or mailbox address. A category chosen to catch searches you do not serve. Fake reviews. Suspension is quick, reinstatement is slow, and competitors do report these.
Questions
What people ask us.
Can I have more than one listing?
One per location where you receive customers, or one service-area listing. Multiple listings for the same business at the same address is a suspension risk.
Should I post updates?
They help a little and cost little, but they are far below categories, hours, services and reviews in importance. Do those first.
Someone else claimed my listing. What now?
Request ownership through the profile and, if that fails, use the reinstatement process with proof — utility bills, registration documents. It is slow but it works.
Before you decide anything
Find out whether
you have a problem.
Most people asking about a rebuild do not need one. The free check opens your site, looks at how it behaves on a phone, whether it is secure and how old the page is, and tells you which of those apply to you.
Worth a
conversation?
No pitch deck and no discovery call. Tell us the trade and the city, and we will say what we would do and what it costs.