Local search and Google Business Profile for Australian businesses

When someone searches for “plumber near me” or “yoga classes Fremantle”, the first thing they often see isn’t a website. It’s a map and a short list of businesses, each with hours, reviews, photos and a button to call. For many small businesses, that list is where most new customers first meet them.

The information in that list comes largely from Google Business Profile, the free listing Google used to call Google My Business. Your website still matters a great deal, but the two work as a pair. This note covers how we help clients get both working together.

Claim and verify your profile

If you’ve been operating for a while, Google may already have a listing for you, built from whatever it could find. Search for your business name and check. If there’s a listing, claim it; if not, create one. Either way, Google will ask you to verify that you really run the business before you can manage it.

Do this with an email address the organisation controls, not a personal account that leaves when a staff member does. Add a second manager so you’re never locked out.

Fill it in properly

A half-finished profile is a missed opportunity. The details people use most are the simple ones:

• Your business name, exactly as it appears on your signage, without extra keywords stuffed in
• The primary category that best describes what you do, plus a few secondary ones if they genuinely apply
• Your address, or your service area if you visit customers rather than having them visit you
• Opening hours, including public holidays and seasonal changes
• A phone number that gets answered and a link to your website
• A short, plain description of what you do and who you do it for
• Real photos of your premises, your work and your team

If you work from home and travel to clients, you can show a service area and hide your street address. That’s common for tradespeople, cleaners and mobile services, and it’s the right setting for them.

Keep it consistent

Your name, address and phone number should match everywhere they appear: your profile, your website, directories, social media and your email signature. Small differences, like an old phone number on a directory or a suite number written two ways, make it harder for search engines to be confident they’re all the same business.

Earlier this year Google also wound down the simple websites it used to generate from Business Profiles, the ones ending in business.site. If your profile pointed to one of those, check that the website field now links somewhere real.

Reviews: ask, reply, never fake

Reviews matter to people choosing between local businesses, and they matter to how your listing is seen. The honest way to get more is simply to ask. A short message after a job is done, with a direct link to your review form, works better than a sign on the counter.

Reply to reviews, good and bad. A calm, helpful reply to a critical review often reassures future customers more than a page of five-star ratings.

Never write reviews yourself, pay for them, or offer discounts or gifts in return for reviews. Fake or misleading reviews can breach the Australian Consumer Law, and they break Google’s policies too. It isn’t worth the risk.

Make your website do its part

Your profile gets someone interested. Your website is where they decide. A few things help it support local search:

• A clear page for each main service, saying where you offer it, in plain words
• Your name, address, phone number and hours on the contact page and in the footer, matching your profile
• Structured data that describes your business to search engines in a format they read reliably
• Pages that load quickly on a phone, because most local searches happen on one

Fast pages matter more than they might seem here. Someone standing on a footpath with patchy reception won’t wait for a heavy home page. Keeping to a page-weight budget helps you keep those visitors.

Avoid location-page padding

It’s tempting to make dozens of near-identical pages, one per suburb, with the name swapped out. They rarely help, they read badly, and search engines tend to treat them as low-value pages. One genuinely useful page about the areas you serve is better than thirty thin ones.

Our rule of thumb

Treat your Google Business Profile like your shopfront window. Keep it accurate, keep it current, put real photos in it, and check it whenever something changes: new hours, a new number, a move down the road. Most of local search is that unglamorous upkeep.

Where to start

This week, search for your own business on your phone, as a customer would. Look at what comes up. Are the hours right? Do the photos show you at your best? Does the website link work and load quickly? Fix what you find, then set a reminder to check again each season.

If you’d like help with the website side of local search, see our search and visibility service, or tell us what you’re working on. We’ll tell you honestly what’s worth doing and what isn’t.