If you’re reading this, you probably already have a Google Business Profile. You verified it, added your hours, uploaded some photos, and maybe asked a few customers for reviews. The basics are done.

But “set up” and “working” are two different things. I see it all the time with Maine business owners: the profile exists, it looks fine, and it still isn’t showing up when someone in the next town searches for exactly what they sell.

If you’re starting from scratch, my one-time setup and optimization service covers the basics. This post focuses on the six places I look first when a profile is set up but quiet.

How Google actually picks the businesses on the map

Google says local results come down to three things: relevance, distance, and prominence (Google’s own explanation).

You can’t change distance. A searcher in Lewiston will see Lewiston businesses first. What you can change is how clearly Google understands what you do (relevance) and how much evidence it has that people trust you (prominence). Every fix below pulls one of those two levers.

1. Your primary category is doing more work than you think

Of everything on your profile, your primary category carries the most weight for relevance. It’s also the field people pick once during setup and never look at again.

Check three things:

  • Is it the most specific option? “HVAC contractor,” “Heating contractor,” and “Air conditioning contractor” are separate categories, and they show up for different searches. Pick the one that matches what customers actually type.
  • Look at who’s winning. Search your main service and town, then check the categories on the top three profiles. If they all use a category you don’t, that’s your answer.
  • Use secondary categories for real services only. Add the ones that describe work you actually do. Padding the list with loosely related categories muddies the signal instead of helping.

2. Your profile and your website need to tell the same story

Google doesn’t read your profile in isolation. It compares it to the page your profile links to.

If your profile says you’re a bakery in Brunswick and the linked page is a generic homepage that never mentions Brunswick or your main product, you’re sending mixed signals. The fix is simple: link your profile to the page that best matches your primary category, and make sure that page names your service and the towns you serve in plain language.

Your business name, address, and phone number should also match everywhere: profile, website footer, Facebook, and any directories you’re listed in. Small mismatches, like an old suite number, add up.

This is the part of local SEO that lives on your website, not in Google’s dashboard. I cover it in more detail on my local SEO page.

3. Reviews that say something beat reviews that just say “great”

You already know reviews matter. What’s less obvious is that what a review says matters too.

A review that reads “Great service!” helps your star rating. A review that reads “They redid our kitchen backsplash in Topsham and finished a day early” also tells Google what you do and where you do it.

You can’t write reviews for customers, and you shouldn’t offer anything in exchange for them. You can make it easy to be specific. When you ask, try: “If you have a minute, would you mention what we did for you?” Most people are happy to.

Then reply to every review, good or bad, within a few days. A thoughtful reply shows future customers you’re paying attention. If you need a system for asking, start with my post on how to get more Google reviews without feeling awkward about it.

4. The Q&A section is gone. Here’s where those answers go now

If you spent time filling out the Questions and Answers section on your profile, you may have noticed it’s no longer there. Google has retired the old Q&A feature and now leans on AI to answer questions about businesses, pulling from your profile, your reviews, and your website.

That changes the job. Instead of answering questions in one box, you want the answers to exist everywhere Google looks:

  • Your business description. Use all of it. Say what you do, who it’s for, and where you work, in normal sentences.
  • Your services list. Fill in each service with a short description, not just a name.
  • An FAQ on your website. The questions customers ask you on the phone every week belong on your site, answered plainly.

If the answer to “Do you serve Gorham?” or “Do you take walk-ins?” isn’t written down anywhere, Google has nothing to work from.

5. Don’t game it, because the shortcuts backfire

There are a few tactics that look clever and cause real damage:

  • Adding keywords to your business name. “Smith Plumbing” becoming “Smith Plumbing Portland Maine Emergency Plumber” breaks Google’s guidelines and can get a profile suspended.
  • Listing a home address you don’t serve customers from. If customers don’t come to you, set yourself up as a service-area business and hide the address.
  • Claiming a service area you don’t cover. List the towns and counties you really work in. A tight, honest service area is better than a huge one.

A suspended profile can take weeks to sort out, so none of these are worth the risk. I don’t use any of them.

6. Track it, so you know it’s working

This is the part that tells you whether any of the above is working. Your profile has a Performance report that shows how many people called you, asked for directions, or clicked through to your website, plus some of the searches that showed your profile.

Check it monthly and write the numbers down. One month tells you very little. Six months tells you a lot.

One more step: add tracking to the website link on your profile. Without it, many visits from your profile show up in Google Analytics as “Direct” traffic, so you can’t tell they came from Google Maps at all. A tagged link like this fixes that:

yoursite.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp

Now those visits show up as their own line in your reports, and you can see what they actually do on your site.

When to hand it off

The hard part isn’t knowing what to do. It’s keeping up with it. Categories need checking when competitors change. Reviews need replies. The Performance report needs reading. And your website needs to keep backing up what your profile says.

If you’d rather spend that time running your business, that’s exactly what I help with. I work with small businesses across Southern and Midcoast Maine on Google Business Profile setup and management, plus local SEO for the website behind it. No bought links, no promised rankings, just steady, honest work.

Take a look at how I handle Google Business Profile management, or get in touch and tell me what’s going on with your profile.