Google Business Profile optimisation for Indian businesses: show up on Google Maps and get more reviews

A lot of Business Profile advice assumes a shop with a front door and a signboard. Plenty of Indian businesses don't have one: consultants who work from home, and contractors and agencies who travel to their customers. Google has separate rules for them, and getting those wrong can cost you the profile.

Everything below follows Google's published rules as we found them on 30 September 2026. Profile setup and management is one of the services we sell.

How Google ranks businesses on Maps

Google's local ranking page says local results are "mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity", then describes the third factor under the heading prominence:

• Relevance: how well your profile matches what someone searched for. Accurate categories, services and a clear description help here.
• Distance: how far you are from the person searching (or from where Google thinks they are). Beyond setting your service areas accurately, there's little you can do about it.
• Prominence: how well known you are, including "how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have". Reviews, mentions on other sites and a strong website all feed it.

The same page states: "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google." Treat anyone who guarantees you a Maps ranking with suspicion.

Step 1: Verify your profile

Verification is often the first hurdle, and until it's done you can't even reply to reviews. Google decides which methods you're offered, based on your business type, public information, region and hours, and you can't choose a different one. In some cases you need more than one. The options include phone or text, email, a live video call during business hours, a postcard and a recorded video. Where video verification is available, Google recommends it.

What the verification video must show

Record it live through your Business Profile on a mobile device, as one unedited clip of at least 30 seconds. Pre-recorded videos aren't allowed.

• For a shop or office: your location, signage showing the same name as your profile, and proof that you manage the business, such as opening the cash counter.
• For a service-area business run from home: landmarks and street signs in your immediate neighbourhood, plus proof of management such as unlocking a branded vehicle, or a business permit, invoice or utility bill in the same name as the profile.

Keep bank account, tax and ID numbers, and other people's faces, out of the frame.

Verification reviews take up to five business days, and on rare occasions longer. Postcard codes mostly arrive within 14 days and expire after 30, and you shouldn't change your name, address or category while you wait. If your website is already verified in Google Search Console, Google may verify the profile instantly.

Step 2: Set your name, address and service areas

Your name should be the one you trade under, the same one on your signboard, website and stationery. Adding a service or a location ("Sharma Dental Clinic Best Dentist in Noida") breaks Google's guidelines, which say such additions "could result in the suspension of your Business Profile". It's an easy way to get a profile suspended.

If you work from home or visit customers

Google calls this a service-area business. The rules:

• Hide your address from customers.
• List up to 20 service areas by city, postal code or area. A radius around your office isn't allowed.
• Keep the overall area within about two hours' driving time of where you're based, unless your type of business covers more.
• Keep to one profile for the whole area. Separate profiles for Noida, Gurugram and South Delhi aren't allowed if you work from one base.

Step 3: Choose categories carefully

You get one primary category and up to nine more, all from Google's list, and Google says categories "affect your local ranking".

Pick the category that describes what your business is, not everything it offers. Google's test is "This business IS a", not "This business HAS a". Use as few as you can: a category added only to catch a keyword fails that test.

A practical way to choose: search your main service on Google Maps, open the top three profiles and note their primary categories. If all three use the same one, that's likely the category Google associates with that search. Get it right first time if you can, because editing categories later can trigger re-verification.

Step 4: Fill in the description, services, photos and attributes

Description

You have up to 750 characters. No links of any kind, and Google asks you to focus on the business rather than promotions, prices or sales. Say what you do, who you do it for, where, and since when. Write it for a customer comparing three profiles on their phone.

Services and attributes

Google says a service you list "may be highlighted on your profile" when someone searches for it. Add each service you sell, in the words customers use. Custom service names can't include prices or phone numbers.

Attributes describe features of your business, and adding certain ones may help you show up when people search for places with those features. Add every one that's true for you.

Photos and video

Photos must be JPG or PNG between 10 KB and 5 MB, and Google recommends 720 by 720 pixels. Videos can be up to 30 seconds and 75 MB. Google suggests at least three photos each of your exterior, interior, products, team and the services you offer, and warns against "excessive use of filters or AI".

Step 5: Get more Google reviews, within the rules

Find your review link and QR code

In your profile, open "Read reviews", then "Get more reviews". You'll get a link to share and a QR code. For now, the QR code can only be generated on a computer browser, not on mobile devices. The link can go out by email, WhatsApp message or Facebook post.

A message that works

Send it within a day of finishing the job, while the experience is fresh. Keep it short and personal:

What Google doesn't allow

Under Google's review policy and its rules on fake engagement, you can't:

• Offer anything in exchange for a review, including discounts, free services or payment, or to have a negative review changed or removed.
• Ask only happy customers, or discourage negative reviews. Google calls this selectively soliciting positive reviews.
• Pressure people to review you on your premises, or ask staff to bring in a set number of reviews.
• Post, or ask for, reviews based on a conflict of interest, such as from current or former employees, family, competitors, or people with a contractual or consulting relationship with you.

Google says it can block new reviews for a period, unpublish existing ones, and display a warning telling customers that fake reviews were removed.

Replying to reviews

Reply to every review, positive or negative, and keep it specific: thank the person for the thing they mentioned, and for a complaint, say what you've done about it. Google asks you not to use replies to offer deals or promotions. Replies are checked before they appear, usually within 10 minutes but occasionally up to 30 days.

How to deal with fake or unfair Google reviews

There is no delete button for business owners. What you can do is report a review, and Google removes it only if it breaks a policy. Google's page on reporting reviews says it "doesn't get involved in conflict between businesses and customers", so a negative but genuine review stays up.

1. Report the review from your profile and choose the reason that fits.
2. Track the report in Google's Reviews Management Tool.
3. If Google decides it doesn't qualify for removal, you can submit a one-time appeal covering up to 10 reviews. Pick the clearest cases.
4. Reply calmly in public while you wait. Other customers will see your reply next to the review.

Posts, Q&A and chat in 2026

Posts are still available. Posts older than six months are archived unless they have a date range. Post for customers rather than for ranking, since Google doesn't say posts affect ranking.

Questions and answers now appear only for select business categories and regions. If you see the feature, answer questions yourself, but don't build a plan around it.

Google's built-in chat ended on 31 July 2024. Verified profiles in select regions can add a WhatsApp or text message link instead. Add WhatsApp if you're offered it, and track the clicks so you know what the profile brings in.

Prominence: what happens off your profile

Google's definition of prominence includes how many websites link to your business. In our experience, that means being listed, with the same name, phone number and address, on the sites where customers look: industry directories, local listings, your association's member page, suppliers who mention you. It also means a website that clearly explains your services in each area you cover.

Google's ranking page asks you to keep your business information up to date. Keep it identical everywhere too. A customer who finds three different phone numbers for you won't know which one to call.

A monthly routine for your profile

1. Check your hours, phone number and services are still right, especially around holidays.
2. Reply to every new review.
3. Add five to ten new photos of recent work.
4. Publish one or two posts, such as a recent project or an offer.
5. Open "Performance" and compare calls, directions and website clicks with last month.
6. Check that every customer you served this month got your review link.

If you'd rather hand this over, our Google Business Profile service covers setup and verification support for ₹5,000 per location, and ongoing management for ₹4,000 a month per location. Full details are on our pricing page.