The Google Business Profile Checklist Most UK Trade Businesses Get Wrong

If you run a trade business in the UK, your Google Business Profile is probably doing more for your enquiries than your website. It's free, it sits above the organic results on mobile, and most owners still treat it like a business card they filled in once and forgot about.

Here's what actually changes how often you show up in the map pack — and what's a waste of your Tuesday evening.

Your primary category matters more than almost anything else

Google ranks the map pack on three things: relevance, distance, and prominence. Relevance starts with your primary category, and most trade businesses pick the lazy option. If you're a plumber who also fits bathrooms, "Plumber" as your primary category with "Bathroom Remodeler" as a secondary beats "Home Improvement" every time — Google needs a specific label to match you against a specific search.

Look at who's sitting in the top three map results for your trade and town right now. Check their category (you can see it on their profile). If a competitor with fewer reviews than you is outranking you, category mismatch is the first thing to check.

Photos aren't decoration — they're a ranking signal

This one surprises people: Google has published that profiles with 100+ photos receive significantly more calls and direction requests than profiles with under 10. It's not just about looking professional to a human browsing your listing — an active, well-photographed profile signals to Google that the business is real, current, and worth surfacing.

Practical target: get to 30 photos in your first month, then add 2-3 a week — van on site, finished jobs, before/afters, your team. Stop once a job finishes and take five photos before you leave. That's it.

Reviews: volume and recency both count

A profile with 100 reviews at 4.8 stars will consistently beat a "perfect" profile with 15 reviews at 5.0. Google weighs both how many you have and how recently you got them — a business with zero new reviews in eight months looks stagnant even with a great historic rating.

The single highest-converting habit here: send the review link by text the same day the job finishes, while the customer is still happy and it's still front of mind. Waiting a week drops response rates hard.

One thing never to do: review-gating (asking happy customers for reviews and steering unhappy ones elsewhere). It's against Google's guidelines and it's the fastest way to get a profile suspended.

Posts are the free advertising nobody uses

The "Updates" feature — short posts with a photo and a short paragraph — resets every seven days and most trade businesses have never touched it once. Posting a completed job, a seasonal offer, or a genuine tip once a week costs five minutes and keeps your profile looking active, which is itself a minor ranking signal.

Services section: don't leave it blank

List every service you offer with a plain-English description. This isn't just for humans browsing — it's additional text Google matches against searches. A plumber who only lists "Plumbing" in the services section is invisible to someone searching "burst pipe repair" even though it's exactly what they do.

What to skip

You don't need every field filled with keyword-stuffed text. Google's systems detect it, and a business description crammed with "best plumber Ipswich emergency plumber near me" reads as spam to both the algorithm and the customer. Write the description like you're describing your business to a person — name your town, your main services, and what makes you different, and stop.

The 30-minute weekly routine that actually works

• Add 2-3 new photos
• Reply to any new reviews within 48 hours (yes, even the negative ones — professionally)
• Post one update
• Check the Q&A section for new questions (anyone can post one, and anyone can answer wrong if you don't)

That's the whole system. No tools, no subscriptions — just consistency, which is precisely why most competitors never bother and precisely why it works.