In September I looked at nine local businesses in Austin, mostly flooring companies and event rentals, before reaching out to them. Good businesses with real reviews.
Not one had hours filled in for all seven days on Google. One had no hours at all.
That's not a disaster on its own. But it's a pattern, and the pattern is this: almost every Google Business Profile I check was set up by someone guessing. Fill in the name, pick a category that sounds close, upload a logo, done. Nobody did the research, because nobody told them there was research to do.
Why this matters more than your website
When someone searches "flooring company near me," the first thing they see usually isn't your website. It's the map, with three businesses on it. Your profile is your storefront, and for a lot of customers it's the only page they look at before they call.
Google decides who gets those three spots. And Google is cautious. If your information doesn't line up, or your profile looks half-finished, it has less reason to show you.
The mistakes I find most
1. Blank hours (which aren't the same as "closed"). If you're closed on weekends, say so: mark Saturday and Sunday as Closed. A blank day tells Google and the customer nothing. Someone checking on Sunday night to see whether they can call Monday morning sees a question mark instead of an answer.
Set your holiday hours too. It's one of the easiest signals that a business is active and paying attention.
2. The wrong primary category. This one surprises people. Your primary category is one of the strongest things you control on the profile, and I regularly find businesses filed under something that's close but not right, or completely off. Picture a hardwood floor refinisher filed as a general contractor, competing against every remodeler in town for searches it was never going to win.
How to check: search your main service in your city, then look at the top three map results. Click into each one and see what category they use. If they're all using a category you're not, that's worth a look.
3. NAP that doesn't match. NAP is name, address and phone. It should be identical on your Google profile, your website, Yelp, Facebook, the Chamber of Commerce and every directory you've ever been listed on. "Suite 200" in one place and "#200" in another is fine. An old address, an old phone number or a different business name is not.
Every mismatch makes Google a little less sure you are who you say you are.
4. Services left empty. Google lets you list your individual services. Most profiles list none, or one. Every specific service you add is another way to match what people actually search.
5. A description written for nobody. Either it's empty, or it's a paragraph of keywords. Write two or three plain sentences: what you do, for whom, where, and what makes you the obvious choice. Then stop.
6. Photos from 2019. A profile with recent, real photos (your team, your work, your trucks, your space) looks like a business that's open. Stock photos and one blurry logo look like one that might not be.
What you can't change
Proximity. Google weighs how close a business is to the person searching, and you can't move your building. Anyone who promises you the top three spots across your whole city is selling something they don't control.
What you can do is make sure everything you control is right. That's the part most businesses skip, which is good news if you don't.
Do this today
- Open your profile and fill in every day of the week, Closed included.
- Compare your primary category against the top three businesses in your map results.
- Google your business name and phone number, and fix every listing that doesn't match.
- Add your services, one by one.
That's an afternoon of work, and it'll put you ahead of most of the businesses I check.
If you'd rather have it done properly, with the competitor research, the directory cleanup and a set of posts ready to go, that's exactly what Get my Google profile right is. You can see this kind of groundwork in action in the Rootbelt case study.
Want your Google profile set up properly?
I study the businesses showing up above you, then rebuild your profile from what's working for them.
[Fix my Google profile](https://metamorphixdesign.com/services/google-business-profile-optimization/)