Claim and verify a Google Business Profile, then fill in every field that applies to your business.
Wei Ming sells Hainanese chicken rice from a stall in Toa Payoh, and he shuts it for a few days each Chinese New Year. Every year a few of his regulars look him up on Google Maps, find the stall marked "Open", and make the journey to Toa Payoh only to find it closed.
After one of those trips, a regular gave the stall one star. The review didn't mention the food at all. It said Google showed the stall as open when it was closed, and that the customer's lunch had been wasted.
For a local customer, your Google Business Profile is often the first thing they see about you. They usually reach it before your website, and some never visit your website at all. Making the profile complete and correct is among the most practical jobs in the whole course.
Your business may have a profile already, even if you never made one. Google sometimes builds a listing from public information, and customers can add a business to Maps themselves. So begin in Google Maps and type in your business name. When a listing turns up, find the option to claim it. When nothing turns up, set up a new profile through Google Business Profile.
Either way, Google will want proof that you own or manage the business. What it offers depends on the type of business and where it is. You may be asked to take a phone call or a text, reply to an email, record a video of the premises and its signage, join a live video call, or wait for a postcard to arrive by mail. Go with the method Google gives you and do exactly what the instructions say. If a verification is rejected, fixing it can drag on, and while the profile is unverified you can't control most of what appears on it.
A former employee or an agency may have verified the profile in the past, leaving you locked out. Google lets you request ownership in that case. The request takes a while to process, so start it as soon as you notice the problem.
The primary category is how Google knows what sort of business you run. It feeds straight into the relevance factor covered in Lesson 7.1, "How local results are chosen". Pick the most specific category that is still accurate for your main line of business. You can only choose from Google's fixed list, and suggestions come up once you begin typing. There is no way to create a category of your own.
Wei Ming could choose "Restaurant", and it would be true, but it says very little. If the list has a chicken rice category or a Hainanese restaurant category, either is a better fit. Priya runs a maths tutoring business. "Education centre" is likely too broad for her, and "Tutoring service", or a maths tutoring category if Google has one, probably suits her better.
In the Lesson 7.1 activity you wrote down the categories your top competitors use. Look at those notes again before you decide. Beyond the primary category you can add secondary categories for other work you really do. Leave out anything you don't actually offer. Google adds and renames categories from time to time, so look at what the list shows for Singapore at the moment you set up.
NAP is short for name, address and phone number. These three should read exactly the same on your profile, on your website and on every directory that lists you. When they match, Google can be sure who you are and where you are, and customers who come across you in more than one place aren't confused. When the website shows one phone number and the profile shows another, people end up dialling the wrong one. In Module 1, Priya's baseline turned up an old phone number still sitting on her profile.
For the name, enter the business name as it really is, with no keywords added. Google's guidelines on business names say to use the name you use consistently in the real world, the one on your signage and stationery. A name such as "Best Chicken Rice Toa Payoh" stuffs in keywords, goes against those guidelines, and can lead to the profile being suspended.
Hours need extra care, as Wei Ming found. Put in your usual opening hours first. Then go to the special hours feature and add public holidays and any planned closures, well before each day comes. The Ministry of Manpower publishes the list of Singapore public holidays every year, so you can enter the full year in one sitting and check each entry again as the holiday gets close. Wei Ming now enters his Chinese New Year closure in special hours on the day he settles the dates.
A full profile answers what a customer wants to know before making the trip. Start with photos:
your storefront or stall signage, so people can spot you the inside of the shop or the counter your products or dishes your team, if you're comfortable with that
Take these yourself where you can, because your own photos show what customers will really find when they arrive.
List your products or services and include prices wherever possible. Someone who can read a menu with prices can make up their mind before they join the queue. Service businesses should give each service its own entry with a short description.
In the business description, say in plain words what you do, who it's for and where you are. Fill in any other fields that apply, such as attributes for wheelchair access or the payment methods you take, and add a link to your booking or ordering page if you have one. Google Business Profile also lets you publish updates, offers and events. They appear on the profile and give you an easy way to keep it up to date.
The activity below asks you to fill in or update every field on your profile. If you don't run a local business, use a hawker brand you know well and write down what each field should say, without touching the real listing. Go from the top: name, categories, address and pin, phone, website, hours and special hours, description, products or services, photos and attributes.
Using the course checklist, fill in or update every field of your profile. If you have no business yet, make a practice profile for a hawker brand you know.
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