Google Business Profile is the most underutilized free marketing tool available to small and mid-size businesses. It is free, it is powerful, and most businesses set it up once and never touch it again. That is a significant mistake in 2026 when Google is surfacing GBP listings more prominently than ever in both traditional search and AI-generated answers.
The basics first. Your profile needs to be claimed and verified. This sounds obvious but a meaningful percentage of businesses are either unclaimed or claimed on an old email address that nobody checks. Verify you have access to the account and that the person who manages it is not someone who left the company two years ago.
Every field should be filled out completely. Name, address, phone, website, hours, holiday hours, service area if applicable, categories (primary and secondary), attributes, and a thorough business description that uses the language your customers use when they search for what you do. Incomplete profiles rank lower.
Photos matter more than most businesses realize. Google favors profiles with regular photo uploads. Not stock photos — real photos of your location, your team, your products, your work. A profile with 50 real photos outperforms a profile with 5 stock images. Upload photos monthly.
The Q&A section is often ignored and it should not be. You can seed it with questions and answers yourself. Put the five questions your customers ask most often. This content shows up in your profile and is now being surfaced in AI overviews as well.
Review responses should be written individually, not templated. Google can detect template responses. More importantly, future customers read your responses. A thoughtful response to a negative review does more for your business than the negative review does against it.
Posts in GBP show up in your profile and can now influence AI Overview answers for local searches. Post once a week with something genuinely useful — a service update, a tip, a local event you are part of. These posts decay in visibility after a week so consistency is the strategy.