The free shop window most small businesses leave half empty

Type "physiotherapist near me" into Google on your phone and look at what comes first. Not websites. A map with three businesses pinned on it, each with a star rating, a photo and a button to call. That box is the local pack, and the thing that puts a business in it is its Google Business Profile. It costs nothing, and it is common to find a profile with half of what Google asks for left empty.

Google is unusually open about how it ranks these. Its help page names three factors: relevance, "how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for"; distance; and prominence, "how well-known a business is". It adds two lines worth taping to the till: "Businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results," and "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google."

Relevance is the one you control this afternoon

Distance you cannot change. Prominence builds slowly, through reviews and mentions. Relevance comes down to filling things in, and the primary category is the single most important field. "Physiotherapist" ranks for different searches than "Medical clinic". Get it wrong and you show up for the wrong people, or for nobody. After that come secondary categories, opening hours including holidays, the 750-character description, the attributes (wheelchair access, appointment required, languages spoken) and, above all, the services list.

The services list is the part almost everyone skips. A tailor who adds "wedding dress alterations", "trouser hemming" and "made-to-measure suits" as separate services with a line of description each is telling Google exactly which searches to show them for. A tailor who writes "tailoring" once is not. Whether that tailor also needs a website is a separate question; the profile comes first either way.

Photos, and plenty of them

Profiles with lots of photos get far more calls and direction requests than profiles with a logo and a Street View shot. The figure that gets quoted most, 520% more calls for profiles with over a hundred photos, comes from a 2019 BrightLocal study of about 45,000 businesses. Read it as "a lot" rather than as a precise promise, and then add the photos anyway. The outside of the shop so people recognise it, the inside, the team, the work, the menu or the price list. Phone photos are fine. Stock photos are not, and Google can tell.

Reviews, and answering them

Reviews feed the prominence signal, and they are what customers actually read. In BrightLocal's 2026 survey, 97% of consumers said they read reviews for local businesses, and 81% expect a reply within a week. Plenty of businesses never reply at all. Replying to every review, including the bad ones, calmly and in two sentences, costs nothing and sets you apart.

Getting reviews is mostly about asking. Google gives you a short review link in the profile dashboard. Put it on the receipt, in the email after the appointment, on a small card at the till. Never buy reviews and never trade discounts for them. Google removes those and can suspend the profile.

Keep it alive, and keep it honest

Google treats an updated profile as a living business. Post something once or twice a month: a new product, seasonal hours, a photo of a finished job. Google has retired the old questions and answers section, and in some countries people can now ask an AI about your business instead, which answers from what your profile and reviews say. One more reason to fill everything in. Check that your name, address and phone number match your website and every directory exactly, down to the spelling of the street. Mismatches make Google unsure which business is which.

One warning. Do not stuff keywords into the business name. "Ayla Tailoring" is a name. "Ayla Tailoring Alterations Cheap Best Tailor Downtown" is a violation of Google's rules, and competitors can and do report it.

A profile done properly takes an afternoon. For many local businesses it does more than the website, which is why it belongs on the list of things to sort out before a quote. And if your website embeds a Google Map to show where you are, remember that the embed needs consent in Germany; a static image with a link does the same job without a banner.