Local SEO: show up in Google Maps with your Google Business Profile

How does Google choose the businesses it shows on the map?

Google’s help sums it up in one sentence: “Local results are mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity.” The same page also calls this last factor prominence, and states that there is no way to pay for a better local ranking. Advertising can buy an ad placement, not a rank on the map.

That is why local SEO doesn’t stop at the profile. The profile gives Google the facts; the website, the reviews and the links confirm them. Our SEO agency works on all of these together, because a perfect profile linked to a website that says nothing about your services only gets you halfway.

How do you fill out your Business Profile properly?

Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is free: Google says that creating a profile and listing your business on Google costs nothing. The cost of local SEO comes from the time it takes; our guide How much does SEO cost gives the published prices. What counts is accuracy. According to Google’s help, businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up in local search results.

• Verify the profile. Verification tells Google that you are authorized to represent the business.
• Enter your real name, nothing more. Your name “should reflect your business’s real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website, stationery”. Adding a tagline, a service, hours or a phone number puts the profile at risk of suspension.
• Choose few categories, and the most precise ones. Google asks you to use as few categories as possible to describe your core business, and never to use them as keywords.
• Keep your hours up to date, including special hours for holidays, and fill in the attributes that apply to you.
• Add real photos of your work, your team and your premises.
• No premises open to the public? Hide the address and set a service area. Google asks that it extend no farther than about two hours of driving, and rules out virtual offices. That is the case for most contractors: see SEO for construction and renovation.
• One profile per location. Google leaves no room for doubt: “Do not create more than one page for each location of your business”.

Finally, keep the profile in your business’s name. A profile can have several owners but only one primary owner; an agency can work on it very well as a manager, without being able to add or remove users. If you change agencies, you keep your profile and its history. At Kasvu, the profile stays in the client’s name.

Do you need one profile in French and one in English?

No. Google asks for a single profile per business. Its guidelines even rule out repeating the same name in several languages in the name field, “even if it appears this way on physical storefront signage.”

In Quebec, the Charter of the French language adds its own rule: “The name of an enterprise must be in French” (s. 63). A version in another language is allowed, provided the French version of the name appears at least as prominently (s. 68). According to the Office québécois de la langue française, the distinctive part of a name can be in another language if it comes with a French generic term, as in its example “Vêtements Coolkids.” And since June 1, 2025, a name of this kind displayed outside a premises must be accompanied by terms in French.

In practice, enter the name on your profile as it appears on your sign and your documents, without tacking its English version onto it. Point the profile’s link to the version of your website in the language of most of your customers, and offer real pages in each language your customers speak. For any question about your name or your signage, the OQLF and your legal adviser have the final word: this guide is not legal advice.

How do you get more Google reviews without breaking the rules?

Google encourages you to ask for reviews, for example with a link or a QR code that you give the customer. What is regulated is how you get them.

• Ask all your customers, right when the work has been delivered, while their satisfaction is fresh.
• Offer nothing in return. A free or discounted good or service in exchange for a review is fake engagement, and Google’s policy says plainly that it “is not allowed.”
• Don’t sort your customers. The Google Maps policy prohibits discouraging negative reviews and selectively soliciting positive ones.
• Leave your employees out of it. Asking them for a set number of reviews is cited as an example of fake engagement, and current or former employment creates a conflict of interest.
• Reply, briefly and politely, when you have something useful to say. When a review is negative, don’t attack the person and don’t reveal any of their personal information.

Don’t fear honest criticism too much. Google says so itself: “A mix of positive and negative feedback often feels more trustworthy.” Reviews obtained through manipulation are removed from Maps, and Google can go as far as suspending or closing the account involved. If you practise a regulated profession, your order may also regulate how you ask for reviews, as it does for lawyers and dentists: check its rules before you send out a request.

And if a review breaks Google’s rules, for example a fake review or off-topic content, you can flag it from your profile. An honest negative review, on the other hand, stays online: your best answer is public, short and polite, and shows what you did to fix the problem.

Do your website and directories matter for local SEO?

Yes. Google compiles profile information from several sources: publicly available web content, such as the business’s official website, licensed data from third parties, user contributions and profile owners. If your website, your profile and your listings elsewhere give different names, addresses or phone numbers, you leave it to Google to decide which one to believe.

• The same name, address and phone number everywhere: your website, your profile, the Quebec enterprise register (Registraire des entreprises), your professional order if applicable, your chamber of commerce and the directories of your trade.
• One page per service, stating clearly what you do, for whom and in which territory. That page is what confirms to Google that your profile is relevant.
• Real local links: your industry association, suppliers, partners, media in your region. The number of sites that link to your business is part of prominence.
• No copied city pages. Google’s spam policies cite as abuse pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page. Name the cities you really serve, where you have something of your own to say: projects, a team, particular conditions. Otherwise, a good service page that clearly names your territory does better.

How do you measure the calls and visits that come from your profile?

The profile’s performance report, available only for verified profiles, gives useful benchmarks. Read it with its definitions in mind, though. Calls there are “the number of times a customer clicked on the call button” on your profile: a click is not an answered call, and someone who dials your number themselves doesn’t show up in it. The report also counts website clicks, direction requests and the searches that showed your profile, the latter updated at the start of each month.

To go further, three settings:

1. Connect the profile to Google Analytics. Google’s integration brings interactions, website clicks, calls and directions from the last six months into your reports. If several profiles are connected, their data is added together.
2. Tag the profile’s link. Add UTM parameters to the website address on your profile, for example ?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=google-business-profile. Google Analytics says you should always use all three parameters: utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign. If your form is tracked in Google Analytics, you will see how many visitors who came from the profile fill it out.
3. Track calls carefully. Google requires the number on the profile to be under the direct control of your business, prohibits numbers that redirect to numbers other than your own, and accepts additional numbers. Our guide on call and form tracking explains how to tie each call to its source.

How do you get recommended by AI when people look for a business nearby?

AI assistants are becoming a way in. According to NETendances, 52% of Quebec internet users had already used a generative AI tool by October 2025; our online advertising statistics for Canada give the details. In the United States, BrightLocal’s 2026 survey of 1,002 consumers shows that the use of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools to get recommendations for local businesses went from 6% to 45% in one year.

On Google’s side, the documentation is clear: generative AI responses can include information about local businesses, and Business Profiles can help your visibility both in these responses and in other results. Google adds that there is no need to create special files for AI. The basic work therefore comes first: an accurate profile, pages that answer your customers’ questions directly, recent reviews, and the same information wherever your business is mentioned. No agency can promise you that an AI will recommend you; you can only give it good reasons to.

Which mistakes can cost you your profile?

These shortcuts still make the rounds. We refuse them, because the risk falls on your profile, never on the agency that suggested them.

• A keyword in the name. Google prohibits it and warns that the profile can be suspended.
• An address where you aren’t. A virtual office or a PO box doesn’t qualify for a profile.
• Two profiles for the same location, one per language or one per service.
• Bought reviews, obtained in exchange for a discount or written by your team.

Google reserves the right to suspend access to the profiles of businesses that don’t follow its guidelines. Better to climb more slowly, on foundations that hold.

Does paying for Google Ads improve your position in Google Maps?

No. Google states that there is no way to pay for a better local ranking. A Google Ads campaign can show an ad, but your rank in local results depends on your profile, your website, your reviews and your prominence.