THE FREE LISTING THAT DECIDES WHO GETS CALLED.

1. 1. Category — the single biggest lever. Your primary category should be your trade, exactly as Google words it (“Plumber”, “Electrician”, “Painting Contractor”), not your company name and not “Contractor” if a specific trade exists. Add secondary categories for your other services. This field, more than anything else on the profile, decides which searches you can appear for.
2. 2. Service area, not your address. If customers don’t visit you, hide the street address and set the towns you actually serve. A home-based business showing a residential address looks smaller than it is — and invites strangers to a house. List the real towns; Google shows you to searchers there.
3. 3. Hours that match reality. Wrong hours are the fastest way to burn a ready-to-call customer. Set holiday hours when they change. If you take emergency calls, say so in your services and description.
4. 4. Photos of YOUR work. Profiles with real photos get looked at longer and called more — and “real” is the operative word. Job photos (even imperfect phone shots), the team, the truck. Ten genuine photos beat fifty stock ones. Add a few every month; freshness is visible.
5. 5. Services, listed one by one. Don’t write “all plumbing services.” List them: “Water heater installation”, “Drain unclogging”, “Panel upgrade — 100 to 200 amp”. Each line is a phrase a customer might search, written in the words they’d use.

• Ask at the invoice moment — job done, customer happy, phone in their hand. Send the short review link by text. Asking a week later by email mostly doesn’t happen.
• Reply to every review — two sentences, specific to the job. Future customers read your replies as closely as the reviews; they’re deciding what you’re like to deal with.
• Never buy or invent reviews. Google removes them, sometimes the whole profile, and customers can smell them anyway. Ten honest reviews outrank fifty suspicious ones because they convert better.

• Unclaimed since forever. Wrong number, no owner, anyone can suggest edits to your listing — including competitors.
• Category salad. Primary category set to something vague, or ten unrelated categories hoping something sticks. It dilutes the one that matters.
• A ghost town. Last photo from three years ago, no services listed, hours “possibly incorrect” by Google’s own label. The profile reads as a closed business.
• Verification limbo. Google increasingly asks for a short verification video — your truck, tools, a job site, business documents. It’s annoying and it’s legitimate; an unverified profile doesn’t show. Record it on your phone in one take and move on.

One honest limit: a strong profile gets you onto the map’s shortlist — the call still has to land somewhere. Your website is what the customer checks before dialling, and where the quote form lives at 9 PM. The two work as a pair: profile for discovery, website for conviction. That’s the whole system, and most of it is free.