What is a Google Business Profile?
A Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the free listing that represents a local business on Google Search and Google Maps. It shows your name, category, hours, photos, reviews, services and contact details, and it's what appears in the local map results when someone searches for a business like yours nearby. It's the single most visible thing most local customers see about you before they ever reach your website.
What a profile contains
A complete profile includes your business name, primary and additional categories, services or products with descriptions, a business description, regular and holiday hours, your address or service area, attributes (accessibility, amenities, payment options), photos, posts, a Q&A section, and customer reviews. Each of these is a field Google lets you fill in — and an empty field is a missed signal.
Why it matters
For most local searches, Google shows a map with three highlighted businesses (the "local pack") above the regular web results. Profiles that are complete, accurate and active are what Google can confidently surface there. An incomplete profile quietly loses ready-to-buy customers to the business listed above it.
How to claim and manage it
You claim a profile for free through Google and verify that you own the business. You can then edit it yourself, or grant a manager invite to a service like ProfileBoost to optimize it for you — without ever sharing your password.
Want this done for you?
Run a free audit against the 11 signals Google ranks, then let ProfileBoost optimize them for you.
ProfileBoost optimizes your profile against Google's published best practices. Search ranking is determined by Google's algorithm and depends on many factors; we cannot and do not guarantee any specific ranking position.