Google Business Profile 2026: Complete Feature Guide

Record one continuous, unedited clip that shows the exterior signage with the exact business name, a wide interior pan that confirms the space matches the category, and a live management action — unlocking the cash drawer, logging into the booking tablet, opening a staff area. Google reviews most submissions within 24 to 72 hours. Rejections almost always trace back to stitched clips, blurry signage, or a video shot at a residential address for a business claiming a commercial location.

Still offered for a shrinking set of low-risk categories and certain jurisdictions where video is not yet localised. Arrival is 10 to 14 days. The verification code is valid for 30 days. If you operate in a region where postcard is offered alongside video, pick video — it is faster and produces a richer trust signal that reduces the chance of a later suspension.

Google exposes phone or email verification only when the underlying phone or domain has been matched to existing verified data — a long-standing published phone number or a domain already used across Google services. If the option appears, take it. It is nearly instant. If it does not appear, do not try to change the listed phone or domain to force it — that commonly triggers a soft suspension.

Chains with 10 or more locations submit a single bulk verification form that ties every location to a Location Group. Google reviews the brand relationship once and then grants verified status across the group in a batch. The form requires an authorised-representative attestation, a list of all locations with consistent NAP data, and evidence of centralised control (franchise agreement, corporate ownership). Turnaround is one to three weeks, but once approved new locations inherit verification automatically.

Pick the narrowest correct description of what you primarily do. A personal injury firm sets Personal Injury Attorney, not Law Firm. A pediatric dentist sets Pediatric Dentist, not Dentist. Google changed category availability roughly 40 times in 2025 — audit your primary every quarter against the live list. Use the Pleper or GMB Everywhere category browser to see what competitors in your top-performing search terms have selected.

Additional categories expand discovery queries you can rank for without changing your primary positioning. A gym whose primary is Gym can legitimately add Personal Trainer, Boxing Gym, Yoga Studio, and Nutritionist if each is a genuine service. Do not stuff — irrelevant additional categories are a common trigger for quality-review suspensions. Every category you select should map to something a customer could actually book or buy.

Attributes split into three groups: accessibility (wheelchair- accessible entrance, restroom, parking), identity (LGBTQ+ friendly, Transgender safe space, women-owned, black-owned, veteran-owned), and service detail (outdoor seating, Wi-Fi, free parking, reservations required). Google surfaces these in Maps filters and feeds them into 2026 AI summaries when users ask conversational queries like "wheelchair accessible dentist near me". Only claim attributes that are genuinely and continuously true — a single contradiction in a review will see the attribute auto-stripped.

Storefront businesses display the street address publicly and rank on proximity to the searcher. Service-area businesses hide the address and list up to 20 regions they serve — plumbers, house cleaners, mobile mechanics. Hybrid operators (a showroom that also travels for installs) list the address and define a service area around it. Misclassification is a top suspension cause: a plumber listing a shared virtual office as a storefront will be suspended, while a plumber correctly configured as service-area from a home base rarely is.

The default Post type. A single image, a short body (up to 1,500 characters but 150 to 300 performs best), and an optional CTA button. Posts expire after seven days but remain archived on the profile. Publish at least one per week. The CTA drop-down includes Book, Order online, Buy, Learn more, Sign up, and Call now — Book and Order online convert best when the landing page is purpose-built.

Event posts attach a start and end date and remain visible through the event itself. Great for grand openings, seasonal trunk shows, and time-limited workshops. The event schema feeds into Google Maps event discovery and is one of the few places where structured calendar data surfaces natively inside the profile.

Offer posts support a voucher code, an optional expiry date, and an explicit terms-of-use field. Unlike What's New posts they get a visually distinct tag in the local panel — a small but meaningful CTR bump. Rotate offers monthly; a profile perpetually advertising the same 15% off signals staleness to users and to the summary generator.

The Products tab holds individual SKUs with photo, name, price, description, and optional CTA. In 2026, Google Maps AI summaries pull directly from product entries when a user asks "does anyone nearby sell X", making this the single most underused surface in GBP. Populate it even for service businesses — a legal firm can list flat-fee package products; a salon can list service menu items. Every product entry is a mini landing page inside the profile.

Response rate and recency are part of the review-engagement component that Google weights in local ranking. Respond to positive reviews briefly and specifically (mention what the reviewer mentioned — the dish, the procedure, the outcome). Respond to negative reviews measured and factually, offer an offline channel, and never argue. Never copy-paste the same line across five reviews — Google's duplicate detection flags it and it looks cheap to the next customer reading the profile.

A profile collecting two to five fresh reviews per week over a rolling 90-day window ranks better than one that collected 50 in a single month and then went silent. Build the request into the operational workflow — post-service SMS, email receipt footer, QR code on the counter — rather than running periodic review drives. Never offer incentives for reviews; Google's policy enforcement on this is strict and automated.

Any Google user can ask and answer questions on your profile. That means a competitor or a misinformed customer can publish a wrong answer that sits at the top of your Q&A panel indefinitely. Seed the section yourself with 10 to 15 of the most common customer questions, answer them as the owner, and monitor new questions daily. Upvote correct customer answers so they rise above incorrect ones.

Messaging is opt-in and tied to a response-time SLA. If you do not answer within 24 hours consistently, Google auto-disables the Message button to protect user experience. Integrate with the Business Messages API if you operate a customer support platform (Intercom, Zendesk, HubSpot) — otherwise route messages to a staffed channel your team actually watches. The feature only helps profiles that have the discipline to run it.

Performance splits searches into direct (brand-name), discovery (category or service terms), and branded-adjacent (competitor or adjacent-brand queries). Rising discovery ratio is the cleanest single indicator that category and content work is moving the profile beyond its existing audience. Export the CSV monthly and track discovery share trend over rolling 90 days.

Each action maps to a different stage of the local funnel. Direction requests indicate intent to visit. Calls indicate intent to consult or book. Website clicks indicate research. Track the ratio, not just the raw numbers — a profile with 500 views and 40 direction requests is performing far better than one with 5,000 views and 50 requests. Aim for at least 5% action rate across all actions combined.

The 2026 update added a new row that splits impressions by surface: classic local panel, Maps AI summary card, and Google AI Overviews in the organic SERP. Track AI-surface share — a rising proportion of views coming from AI summary cards is the defining local-SEO metric of 2026. If your AI-surface share is below 15%, your profile is either missing grounding content (product descriptions, detailed reviews) or is competing in a vertical where Google has not yet rolled out summaries.

Google compares your profile against anonymised peers in the same primary category and region. The benchmark is indicative rather than definitive — you cannot see which peers are included — but sustained below-median performance on views or action rate is a signal to audit primary category, description completeness, and media freshness.

Still the single largest factor for most local queries. You cannot change your address, but you can influence how Google calculates service-area coverage. List every legitimate service region as separate entries rather than a single broad polygon — granular regions rank better in those specific queries. Agentic search diluted proximity slightly in 2026: assistants often issue broader queries ("find a great X in Phoenix") that match on relevance and prominence before proximity.

Driven by primary category (largest signal), additional categories, services list, product catalogue, description text, and review content. Every field is a relevance input. A dentist whose description reads "Family dentist offering cleanings, whitening, veneers, and pediatric care" will match more discovery queries than one that reads "Your trusted local dentist".

The most complex factor. Includes backlink profile of the linked website, citations across the local-citation graph (Yelp, TripAdvisor, BBB, industry directories), review count, review velocity, review sentiment, and offline brand recognition (news mentions, sponsorships). Prominence is earned over months and years, not days — a profile with strong prominence outranks closer competitors with weaker prominence for most non-trivial queries.

A separate sub-signal that Google has increasingly weighted. Profiles receiving fresh reviews every week outrank otherwise-equivalent profiles whose most recent review is three months old. Cadence matters more than volume at the margin. Tie review requests to an operational milestone (service completion, delivery, follow-up call) so the cadence is automatic rather than campaign-driven.

Trivial-sounding, chronically underrated. Suite numbers formatted differently, a mix of 555-1234 and (555) 123-4321, a legacy "LLC" suffix on some directories and not others — each inconsistency makes Google slightly less confident about the entity. Run a citation audit with Moz Local, BrightLocal, or Semrush Listing Management and fix the top 20 highest-authority inconsistencies quarterly.