A Google Business Profile is the complimentary listing that shows your company in Google's map results and the info panel beside a search: name, category, hours, photos, reviews, and a link to your site. For local buyers it's often the first thing they see, before your website.
It's the card that appears when someone searches your name, and the pins that appear when someone searches your service plus a place. Google builds part of it automatically, which is the problem: an unclaimed or half-filled profile can show the wrong category, old hours, or no photos, and that's the first impression a cold buyer forms.
For a manufacturer or supplier, the profile is how a buyer finds you without a referral. It's also a trust check: a complete profile with recent reviews and real photos reads as a real, active company; a sparse one reads as neglected, whatever the website says.
The work: claim it, choose the most accurate primary category (this drives which searches you appear for), fill every field, add real photos of the shop and the work, keep hours and contact current, and ask satisfied customers for reviews. Google publishes guidelines for representing your business [1], and following them protects you from suspension.
The profile is the engine of local SEO: its category and completeness decide which local searches you show up for, and its reviews are both a ranking factor and the trust signal a buyer weighs first. Improving the profile often moves more nearby pipeline than website changes do.
Search your company name in an incognito window on your phone. Is the category right? Are there recent photos and reviews? Now search your main service plus your city and see whether you appear at all. If the profile is thin or missing, that's the cheapest visibility fix available, and it lives entirely outside your website.
Yes. Google renamed "Google My Business" to "Google Business Profile" in 2022. If you managed a listing under the old name, it's the same listing under the new one.
They work together. The profile decides whether a local buyer finds you in the first place (the map and info panel); the website is where they go to evaluate you afterward. A great website with no profile is invisible to buyers who start with a local search.
Claim it, set the most accurate primary category, complete every field, add real photos, keep hours and contact current, and steadily earn genuine reviews. Consistency between the profile and your website (name, address, phone) matters too.
The one that most precisely describes your core business, because the primary category strongly influences which searches you appear for. Pick specific over broad ("Metal fabricator" over "Manufacturer") when it fits, and use additional categories for secondary services.
The buyers who don't have a referral find you through search. Here's how Google Business Profile optimization gets an industrial company found and chosen.
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