Google Business Profile: optimizing it so locals actually find you

For many Quebec SMBs, the first impression no longer happens on their website. It happens on their Google Business Profile. Search for a plumber, a restaurant, or an accountant in your neighbourhood: before the first classic result, Google shows a map and three business profiles. Hours, reviews, photos, directions: the customer often gets everything they need without ever visiting your site.

The tool itself keeps moving. Google My Business became Google Business Profile in November 2021, the mobile app was retired in 2022, and management now happens directly in Google Search and Maps. The built-in chat disappeared in 2024, and the Q&A section is being phased out in favour of AI-generated answers. What has not changed: most owners fill in their profile once and never touch it again.

This article sorts it out: the fields that actually influence your local ranking, the ones that are cosmetic, and the rules whose violation can get your profile suspended overnight.

The short answer, for the busy

To get found locally, start with what Google itself says matters: relevance, distance, and prominence. You cannot do anything about distance; everything else can be worked on. Pick the most specific primary category, fill in every field (hours, phone, service area), publish real and recent photos, then focus on reviews: Google states plainly that review count and ratings influence local ranking, and recommends responding to them. Your profile name must be your real-world name: slipping keywords or a city into it violates the rules and can get the profile suspended. Nobody can pay for a better local ranking. Since late 2025, Google has been replacing the Q&A section with AI-generated answers built from your profile, your reviews, and your website: a site that is current and consistent with your profile now feeds directly into what that AI tells your customers.

The homepage you only half control

A Business Profile looks like a homepage, with one major difference: you choose neither the layout nor what shows up first. Google assembles the page from three sources. What you declare (category, hours, photos, description). What customers publish (reviews, ratings, photos). And, increasingly, what its AI infers: Maps now shows automatically generated review summaries that condense what your customers keep saying about you, good and bad.

The scale of this has been documented for years. BrightLocal's study of 45,000 profiles (2017-2018 data, still the reference in its category) found that the average profile appears in about 1,000 searches per month and that only 5% of views lead to a website click, a call, or a direction request. Put differently, 95% of the people who see your business on Google stop at the profile. The numbers have aged; the mechanism has only intensified, because Google answers more and more questions without letting anyone leave its pages.

The practical conclusion: treat the profile as a channel in its own right, on par with your site. You do not control the layout, but you fully control the raw material Google uses to build it.

What Google itself says about local ranking

No need to speculate: Google publishes an official help page on how local results are ranked. Three factors. Relevance: does your profile match what the person is looking for. Distance: nothing you can do. Prominence: how well known you are, measured among other things by links to your site, review count, and average rating.

The same page states two things many local-marketing vendors prefer not to mention. First, "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google." Anyone guaranteeing you the top spot in the local pack is selling something they do not control. Second, Google says explicitly that more reviews and positive ratings can improve your local ranking, and recommends responding to them. The highest-return lever on your profile is therefore a process, not a field: ask for a review after every successful job, and answer all of them.

The profile is only one piece of local search, though: the consistency of your business details elsewhere on the web and the content of your own site matter too. We covered the whole picture in our local SEO guide for Quebec SMBs; here, let's stay on the profile itself.

The four fields that actually matter

The primary category. This is your main relevance signal: Google uses it to decide which searches your profile is even eligible for. Pick the most specific one ("Plumber" rather than "Contractor"), and add secondary categories for the rest of what you do.

Reviews and your responses. The only factor Google explicitly names as a ranking lever. Count matters, rating matters, recency matters: ten recent reviews weigh more in a customer's decision than fifty from four years ago. And the owner's response is read by every customer who comes after.

Completeness. Opening hours (including holidays), phone, website, service area, attributes. Google says it on its ranking page: a profile with complete, accurate information is easier to match with the right searches. A profile that shows "open" on a holiday when you are closed produces the opposite effect, and worse: a customer who drove over for nothing rarely leaves five stars.

Real photos. Your premises, your team at work, your finished jobs. No stock photography: a customer comparing three profiles spots the generic image in a second. And if you publish none, your profile will be illustrated exclusively by whatever photos your customers decide to upload.

Where does the wasted time go? Into the cosmetic fields. Google's official page on local ranking mentions neither the description nor posts. Those elements serve conversion (reassuring a customer who is comparing, announcing a promotion); nothing indicates they influence position. Useful, but after the rest, not instead of it.

The mistakes that get a profile suspended

The most dangerous field is the name. Google's rule is strict: the profile name must be your real-world name, the one on your storefront and your invoices. No keywords, no city, no tagline, no phone number. Google's own examples of violations include adding a service ("4G LTE"), a status ("Open 24 hours"), or a location hint. Adding "plumber Montreal" to your name may work for a few months, until a competitor reports you. Google reserves the right to suspend profiles that break the guidelines, and a suspension removes you from the map for the entire duration of the appeal, often weeks.

Second trap: the address. P.O. boxes and virtual offices are not eligible; the address must be a place where the business actually operates, with permanent signage if it is displayed publicly. A service-area business must hide its address and declare the area it serves.

Third trap: bought or incentivized reviews. Google's policy prohibits offering payment, discounts, or free products in exchange for a review, and prohibits reviewing your own business or your employer's. Asking for a review is allowed and encouraged; paying for one is not.

What disappeared, and what AI changes

Two features the guides keep recycling no longer exist. The built-in chat was removed on July 31, 2024. The Q&A section has been following the same path since late 2025: its API was shut down in November 2025 and the public section is gradually disappearing from profiles. The old tactic of seeding your own questions and answers died with it.

The replacement deserves your attention. Google is rolling out a conversational experience in Maps powered by Gemini, where the AI answers customer questions directly ("do they handle emergencies on Sundays?") by drawing on your profile, your reviews, and your website. The consequence is concrete: your website is back to being a first-class source, because that is where the AI goes for whatever the profile does not say. A profile and a site that contradict each other (different hours, discontinued services still listed) produce wrong answers, delivered with an AI's confidence.

One profile, two languages

A Quebec reality: your customers search for both "plumber near me" and "plombier près de moi", and you get a single profile. There is no French version and English version of a profile: write the description in French first, with a second paragraph in English if your customer base justifies it.

The real bilingual reflex is about reviews: respond in the language of the person who wrote. A French reply to an English review signals to every anglophone reader who follows that they are not quite your customer. And since the AI-generated answers draw on your website, a genuinely bilingual site supplies material in both languages; a unilingual site leaves the AI to improvise in the other.

Where to start

The fastest test: search your category and your neighbourhood in a private browsing window, and look at your profile like a customer who has never heard of you. Exact category? Recent, real photos? Latest review left unanswered? Holiday hours up to date? Fifteen minutes will tell you whether your profile is working for you or against you.

This is exactly the kind of blind spot an outside eye catches quickly: we described what a professional web audit includes, and the Google profile is part of it, on par with the site. If you want an honest assessment of your local presence, profile included, start here.

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