15 Google Business Profile mistakes contractors make, and how to fix each one

Your Business Profile is often where a homeowner meets you first, before your website and before your phone rings. None of the problems below takes long to fix, and several of them break Google's guidelines, which Google says can lead to a suspended profile. If you are setting a profile up from scratch, start with our Business Profile setup guide; this page is the cleanup list for a profile that already exists.

1. Padding the business name with towns or services

"Example Plumbing Co. | Emergency Plumber Springfield" is a name Google's own rules forbid. The guidelines for representing your business say the name should be the one you actually use on your storefront, website and stationery. They list marketing taglines, service or product information and location information among the things a name must not include, and warn that unnecessary information in a name could get the profile suspended. A padded name also hands any competitor an easy reason to suggest an edit or report the profile.

Fix: change the name to exactly what is painted on your truck. Put the towns and the services where they belong: in the service area, the services list and your website's service pages.

2. Showing your home address to the public

If you go to the customer's house, you are a service-area business. Under Google's guidelines, a service-area business should hide its address from customers, and they use a plumber working from home as the example. Leaving your home address visible puts your family's front door on a map and goes against the guidelines.

Fix: Google's service area help tells businesses that don't serve customers at their address to take the address off the profile and list only the service area. Do it in the profile editor's location settings. Customers don't need to know where your truck sleeps at night.

3. Using a mailbox, PO box or virtual office as the location

Some owners rent a mailbox in a busier town hoping to show up there. Google's guidelines say PO boxes and remote mailboxes are not acceptable, that a virtual office you don't operate from isn't eligible, and that a co-working space only counts if it has signage, staff and customer access during business hours. Google's suspension help says it may suspend profiles that don't follow those guidelines.

Fix: verify with the real place the business runs from, hide it if you are service-area only, and reach the busier town through service-area pages on your website instead.

4. Drawing a service area you don't actually cover

Google's service area help page allows up to 20 service areas, set by city, ZIP code or other area, and says the outer edge shouldn't sit more than roughly two hours' drive from where you're based. Google also asks you to be as specific and accurate as possible, and it doesn't let you draw a radius. Listing a whole state, or towns you would never drive to, brings in calls you turn down.

Fix: list the towns where you already have customers and want more. If you serve a small number of ZIP codes heavily, list those instead of counties.

5. Choosing a broad primary category

Your primary category describes your whole business in a single label, and a catch-all like "Contractor" says little about the work you want. Google's guidelines say to choose categories that are as specific as possible while still describing the main business, to use as few as you can, and not to use categories as keywords.

Fix: Google suggests picking categories that complete the statement "This business IS a." Use the one that fits the work that pays your bills, such as "Roofing contractor" or "HVAC contractor". Add secondary categories only for work you actually sell, then list your individual services on the profile.

6. Creating a second profile for the next town over

A second profile for a town where you have no staffed office is a duplicate in Google's eyes. The guidelines say not to create more than one page for each location, and Google's duplicate profiles help says a profile considered a duplicate won't show on Google Search or Maps.

Fix: if you made an extra by mistake, Google lets you remove it, but removing a profile deletes all its content. To combine two profiles for the same business, Google says to report a suggestion in Google Maps to request a merge; merged profiles combine their reviews, though replies to reviews may be lost. Add a real second profile only when you open a second location with its own people and service area.

7. Letting a marketing vendor be the primary owner

When an agency sets up your profile under its own Google account, you are renting your own listing. If the relationship ends badly, you have to request ownership from the current owner. Google gives them three days to respond, and if they deny it, you are left appealing for control of your own business listing. A service-area business with no shop or office has to contact Google support to ask for the transfer instead.

Fix: open the profile's people and access settings today and check who is listed as primary owner. It should be a Google account the company controls, ideally tied to a company email address rather than one person's personal Gmail. Vendors get the manager role. Google's roles help says managers can edit info and reply to reviews but can't add or remove users, and only owners can remove a manager.

8. Putting someone else's number in the phone field

A lead marketplace's tracking number, an answering service's line, or an old cell phone you no longer carry all mean calls from your own profile go somewhere you don't control. The number should ring a phone your business owns and answers. Google's guidelines require a phone number the business itself controls. If you use call tracking to measure the profile, make sure the tracking line belongs to your account and forwards to your main line. Google lets you add up to two numbers besides the primary one, so list your main number as one of those extras.

Fix: call the number on your profile from a cell phone right now and see who answers. Then read our guide on choosing a business phone number you can keep for years, and our guide to setting up call tracking.

9. Sending the website button to a Facebook page or an empty home page

Pointing the website button at a social page or a home page that doesn't mention the towns you serve wastes the click. People who tap it want the price range, the service area and a way to book.

Fix: link to your own website. Add a tracking parameter to the link (for example ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp) so your analytics show which visits and form fills came from the profile. If the site itself is the weak link, our website service starts from that problem.

10. Leaving hours wrong, especially on holidays and storm days

Google's tips on local ranking tell owners to keep hours current, including special hours. A homeowner who drives past your posted hours or calls on a holiday you're closed feels misled, and that feeling shows up in reviews.

Fix: set regular hours to when someone actually answers the phone, not when trucks roll. Add special hours for every holiday at the start of each quarter. If you run 24-hour emergency service, say so only if a person or a reception system really picks up at 2 a.m.

11. Uploading stock photos, or none at all

Homeowners can spot a stock photo of a smiling model with a clean hard hat. It tells them nothing about your work. A profile with no photos looks abandoned. Google's ranking tips encourage adding photos and videos that show what you offer.

Fix: make it a crew habit. The lead takes one wide before shot and one matching after shot on every job worth showing, plus an occasional photo of the truck and crew in uniform. Upload a few a week. Skip anything that shows a customer's house number, license plate or face without permission.

12. Asking only happy customers for reviews, or paying for them

Two tactics still get sold to contractors: a survey that sends only five-star answers to Google, and "10% off your next visit for a review." Google's contribution policy prohibits both selectively soliciting positive reviews and offering incentives for any review. The FTC's Consumer Reviews and Testimonials Rule has applied since October 21, 2024. Its questions and answers say the rule itself doesn't specifically ban asking only customers you think are happy, but that the practice could violate the FTC Act. Google's policy also rules out asking customers to include particular content. This is general information, not legal advice.

Fix: send the same request to every customer after every job. Our review request templates give you wording that follows these rules.

13. Ignoring reviews, or replying with the same line every time

"Thanks for the review!" pasted under 40 reviews reads like nobody is home. Google's help page on reviews encourages replies that show the feedback matters, and its ranking tips list replying as one of the things owners can do.

Fix: reply within a few days. Mention one real detail from the job ("Glad the gutter guards are holding up through the leaf drop"). Keep it to two sentences. Don't paste the same town and service keywords into every reply; it reads as spam to the people deciding whether to hire you. For the hard ones, see our guide on responding to negative reviews.

14. Arguing with a one-star reviewer

A long public reply that disputes every point, or worse, mentions what the customer owes, is read by every future customer. The FTC's Q&A for that rule says you can respond publicly, but the rule prohibits false accusations about the reviewer that you know are false (or make with reckless disregard for the truth), threatening or intimidating a reviewer to get a review taken down or edited, and legal threats with no real basis.

Fix: answer once, briefly and calmly. Say you're sorry it went that way, state one fact if a fact matters, and give a direct name and number to resolve it. Report reviews that clearly break Google's policy (someone who was never a customer, hate speech, a review meant for another company) through the profile instead of debating them. Our guide to reporting fake Google reviews walks through it.

15. Never checking for edits you didn't make

Users can suggest changes to your profile, and Google can update it from other sources. Google's help on Google updates says that when a suggested edit needs your review, you have four days to accept or reject it, and after that Google may publish it if other public information supports it. Google can also apply some edits without prior review when needed to meet its policies. If nobody checks, nobody notices changed hours or a replaced phone number until the calls drop.

Fix: put a fifteen-minute profile check on the calendar once a month. Confirm the name, phone, website link, hours, categories and service areas, and look for a notification about Google updates at the top of the editor, where Google shows its changes in blue. Make the same check right after you change anything on your website, so the two always match.

Where to start

If you only have an hour this week, do these three in order:

1. Ownership (item 7). Everything else is wasted effort if you can be locked out of your own profile.
2. Name and address (items 1 to 3). Google warns that extra information in a name could get a profile suspended, and the address rules decide whether the profile is eligible at all.
3. Reviews (item 12). Switch to asking every customer, the same way, every time.

Then add the monthly check from item 15 to your calendar. Want someone else to check it? The free system quote looks at your profile, website and phone handling together, because a strong profile still loses jobs when the call goes unanswered.

Frequently asked questions