There is more confident advice about Google Business Profiles than about almost anything else a small business owner reads, and most of it has never been tested. Here is what the controlled studies and Google's own guidance support, in the order that matters.
1. Your primary category
The single most important field on the profile. "Swimming Pool Contractor" and "Pool Cleaning Service" are different lists in Google's eyes, and a pool builder sitting in the wrong one is competing for the wrong search. Look at the three businesses that already show up for the search you want, and use the category they use. Secondary categories help, but the primary one decides which race you are in.
2. Completeness
Every service listed with its own description. Every attribute set. Hours that are right on Saturday. A real business description that says where you work and what you do. In the industry's annual survey of local ranking factors, the profile's own signals together are about a third of the weight, the largest share you control. Completeness is not a trick; it is what Google means by a good profile.
3. Reviews, and your replies
Count, recency and response are about a fifth of ranking weight and a much bigger share of whether someone calls. A profile with forty reviews and the newest one from last month beats one with eighty reviews that stopped two years ago. Reply to every review, including the good ones, in a sentence.
4. Distance
Google will show a searcher the businesses near them, and no amount of optimization changes where your business is. A hardscape company in Queen Creek is not going to rank in North Scottsdale. For a service-area business, hide the address and set the service area honestly; the profile then competes across the area rather than at one pin.
What photos actually do
Here is the part most people get backwards. Photos do not measurably raise your ranking. Local-search researchers ran the controlled tests and found no lift. What photos change is what happens after someone finds you: the analysis of Google's own data across roughly 580,000 images and 45,000 businesses found profiles with a hundred or more photos get several times the calls, direction requests and website clicks of an average listing.
So photos are a conversion lever. Among the three businesses on the map, they decide who gets the call. That is a different job from ranking, and it is the job most profiles are failing at with six phone snapshots and a photo of the parking lot.
What does not work
Geotagging photos, which is embedding coordinates in image files: tested, debunked, and Google strips the data anyway. Stuffing keywords into the business name: against the guidelines and a suspension risk. Buying reviews: detected more every year. Paying anyone who claims to be a "Google certified photographer": Google retired that program at the end of 2024 and there is no such thing now.
The sixty-day check
Google gives every profile owner its own numbers: views, calls, direction requests, website clicks. Write them down today. Fix the category, the services and the photos. Look again in sixty days. That is the only report that matters, and it is free.
Related: Google Business Profile · Visibility Setup