Calgary, AB

The free listing that decides most of your local search.

For a local business, the Google Business Profile usually matters more than the website. It's also the thing most often set up wrong — and it costs nothing to fix.

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Why does the Google Business Profile matter more than the website?

Because the map results sit above everything else and are drawn from the profile, not from your site. You can have the best website in the city and still be invisible where people look first.

When somebody searches for a service near them, Google shows a block of three map results before any ordinary web result. Those three aren't chosen from websites — they come from Business Profiles, weighted by category, proximity, and how confident Google is that the business is real and operating.

It cuts the other way too: a well-run profile can hold the top map position while the website sits on page two. That's why the two need to be worked on together rather than treated as one job, and why a profile audit is the first thing that happens here.

What's usually wrong with a Google Business Profile?

The primary category, more often than anything else — followed by wrong hours, blank services, no recent photos, and unanswered reviews.

Google weights the primary category heavily, and businesses routinely pick the one that sounds right rather than the one people search for: a pharmacy filed under 'travel clinic', a clinic filed under 'doctor' when patients are typing 'walk-in'. One dropdown, and it moves the whole listing.

Primary category
— The single highest-impact field on the profile. It should match the words your customers type, not your professional self-description.
Secondary categories
— Underused. They add reach for adjacent searches without diluting the primary — as long as they're genuinely services you offer.
Hours
— Including holiday hours. Google flags profiles with unconfirmed holiday hours and quietly reduces confidence in the rest.
Services and products
— Usually blank. Each entry is a plain-text description Google reads and can match against a search.
Photos
— Recency matters more than volume. A profile whose newest photo is four years old reads as a business that may not be operating.

Does replying to reviews affect ranking?

Replies are a confirmed engagement signal and, more importantly, they change what a person reads while choosing between you and the business next door.

Replying is the part within your control and the part that gets skipped. It signals an active business to Google, and it does something no ranking factor does: it shows a prospective customer how you handle being criticised in public.

A bad rating is not a disqualifier. A silent one is worse. A four-star profile with thoughtful replies converts better than a five-star profile that looks abandoned.

Is your name, address and phone the same everywhere?

Google cross-checks your details against directories, your own site and social profiles. Inconsistencies reduce its confidence that you're a single real business — and confidence is what the map pack ranks.

The usual culprits are an old suite number that survived a move, a tracking phone number that appears on one listing only, and a business name on Google that includes keywords the signage doesn't. Each one is small. Together they're the reason a profile plateaus.

Fixing this is unglamorous, involves a lot of directory logins, and it works.

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The same checks this page describes, run against your own site. About 30 seconds.

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How much does proximity actually matter?

A great deal, and it's the one factor you can't optimise. Proximity is why your map ranking changes depending on where the searcher is standing.

Two people searching the same phrase four kilometres apart see different map results. This is the single most misunderstood thing about local search — an owner checks from the shop, sees themselves at number one, and concludes everything is fine.

What you can influence is the radius over which you're competitive. Category accuracy, review volume, service listings and site relevance all extend how far out you still show. They don't overrule someone being closer, but they decide whether you appear at three kilometres or one.

Do Google Posts and Q&A do anything?

Posts are worth a few minutes a month for the freshness signal and the click. The Q&A section matters more, because anyone can answer it and usually nobody has.

The Q&A block on your profile is open to the public. Competitors, confused customers and spam all end up there, and an unanswered question sits on your listing indefinitely. You're allowed to post your own questions and answer them, which is the intended use.

Posts decay quickly and won't rescue a badly configured profile, but they're free, they show in the listing, and they give you somewhere to put a seasonal offer that isn't worth a page on the site.

What about a service-area business with no storefront?

You hide the address and set a service area instead. Listing a home address you don't receive customers at risks suspension, and faking a location risks removal.

Trades, cleaners, mobile groomers and consultants are all service-area businesses. Google supports this properly: the address is verified but hidden, and you declare the areas you cover. Ranking still keys off your registered location, so declaring all of Alberta doesn't extend your reach.

The thing not to do is rent a mailbox and call it a second location. Google actively hunts for that pattern, and a suspended profile takes weeks to reinstate — during which you're invisible in the results that produce most of your calls.

How do you get more reviews without breaking the rules?

Ask every satisfied customer, at the moment the work finishes, with a direct link. Don't gate, don't incentivise, don't buy.

The mechanics matter more than any clever tactic. A short link sent by text the same day converts far better than a card handed over at the counter, and asking consistently beats asking well. Most businesses that 'can't get reviews' have never systematically asked.

What's against the rules and genuinely risky: offering anything in exchange, screening customers so only happy ones get the link, and buying reviews. Google detects the last one reliably now, and the penalty lands on the profile that benefited.

Is Business Profile work included or extra?

Included in both plans, from $500 a month. It's usually the highest-value work on the list, so putting it behind an upsell would be dishonest.

The profile is audited in the first 48 hours alongside the site, because it's frequently where the fastest gain is. Category, hours, services and photos get fixed in week one. Review replies and citation cleanup run continuously after that.

Every engagement starts the same way: a free check, then an audit in 48 hours. If the audit finds nothing worth fixing, it's free.

Common questions

Do I have to give you control of my Google account?

No. You add us as a manager on the Business Profile, which you can remove any time. We never need your Google account password.

Can you get bad reviews removed?

Only if they breach Google's policies, and most don't. What actually moves the needle is replying well and earning newer ones — anyone offering to delete real reviews is selling you something that ends badly.

My profile got suspended. Can you fix it?

Sometimes. Suspensions usually trace to an address issue, a keyword-stuffed business name, or a category that doesn't match what the business does. Reinstatement takes weeks and isn't guaranteed, and we'll tell you honestly which of those you're looking at.

Someone else claimed my listing. What now?

There's a formal ownership request process, and it works more often than people expect. It takes about a week of waiting, and it's worth starting immediately rather than creating a duplicate listing — duplicates make it worse.

How often does the profile need attention?

Monthly is enough once it's correct. Hours around holidays, replies to new reviews, a photo or two, and a check that nobody has 'suggested an edit' that Google silently accepted.

See what's broken before you spend anything.

The free check takes about 30 seconds and asks for nothing. From $500 a month if you want us to fix what it finds.

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