What is a Google Business Profile, and is it free?

1. What a Google Business Profile is, and what it costs
2. Why making a new profile is often the wrong first step
3. What our recorded AI answers show about Business Profiles
4. How to create or claim your Google Business Profile, step by step
5. Questions owners ask
6. How we got these numbers
7. Sources
8. See it on your own website

What a Google Business Profile is, and what it costs

A Google Business Profile is your business's listing on Google Search and Google Maps. It is the box a homeowner sees when they search your name, or the pin they tap on the map. Google says the profile lets you manage how your business shows up on Maps and Search at no charge ¹.

The profile holds the facts a customer needs before they call. Google lists your hours, website, phone number and location among them. For a contractor who works at customers' homes, the location can be a service area instead of a street address ¹. The profile also carries your photos and customer reviews, and lets you reply to those reviews ¹.

Is a Google Business Profile free?

Yes. Google says you can add or claim your business at no charge ². There is no monthly fee for the listing itself and no fee to keep it.

Two other things do cost money, and owners often mix them up with the profile:

• Ads. Google points businesses that want a larger audience to its paid location-based ads ¹. For service-area businesses it also offers Local Services ads, a separate paid product that brings calls and messages ³.
• Someone else's time. Google says that although the profile is free, outside companies often charge a fee to manage it ⁴. That fee pays for their work, not for the listing.

How a Business Profile works

Google doesn't wait for owners to create listings. It builds profiles from several sources: public web pages such as your website, data it licenses from other companies, facts and reviews from users, and owners who claim their profiles ⁵. So your business may already be on Google Maps even if you never signed up.

Claiming and verifying is how you take charge of that listing. Google says verifying gives you ownership of the profile, so you can make sure its information is accurate ⁶. Until then, Google and the public decide what it says. Google also shares profile information beyond its own pages, with other websites and apps that use its maps services ⁵.

The rest of this guide covers the traps that catch owners, what our recorded AI answers show about these listings, and the steps to create or take over your profile.

Why making a new profile is often the wrong first step

Your business may already have a profile

Because Google builds listings from many sources, check before you create anything. If an unverified profile for your business exists, Google asks you to claim it ². If someone else already verified it, such as a former partner, an employee or an old marketing company, you request ownership from them instead ². That owner gets an email and has 3 days to respond ⁷.

Don't work around the problem by making a second profile. Google allows one profile per business ⁸. A profile Google treats as a duplicate won't show on Search or Maps ⁹. Google also says not to make a new profile when you move. Update the address on the one you have ⁹.

The profile is free, but management usually isn't

Plenty of marketing companies sell Business Profile setup or monthly management. Paying for help is fine. Google's own rules for these companies tell you what to expect from an honest one:

• They must tell you, in writing before they start, that the profile itself costs nothing, and show their fee on your invoices ¹⁰.
• You must keep ownership or co-ownership of your profile at all times ¹⁰.
• If you end the service, they must give you back full control within 7 business days ¹⁰.
• They must not claim your profile without your consent, or hold it hostage for money ¹⁰.

Google also lists warning signs: a company that guarantees placement, claims to work for Google, threatens to remove your listing or charges more than agreed ⁴. Google says there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking ¹¹. Anyone who sells a guaranteed top spot is selling something Google says doesn't exist.

Owner and manager are different jobs

A profile can have several owners but only one primary owner ¹². Owners have full control, including adding and removing people. Managers can edit most details and reply to reviews, but can't add or remove users or delete the profile ¹². Google tells marketing companies to make the business owner the owner and themselves the manager ¹⁰. If your agency is the only owner of your profile, fix that before anything else.

Most contractors should hide their street address

If you go to customers rather than having them come to you, Google calls you a service-area business. Google says such businesses should hide their address, and gives a plumber working from home as its example ⁸. You then list the towns or ZIP codes you serve, up to 20 of them, rather than a radius around your shop ³. Google says the whole area shouldn't stretch beyond about 2 hours' drive from where you're based ³.

Other people can change your profile

Customers can suggest edits to any business on Google Maps ¹³. Google says people suggested 80 million updates to business hours, contact details and more in 2025. It blocked 79 million edits it judged inaccurate or unverified, and removed over 13 million fake Business Profiles ¹⁴. Google now emails verified owners about important edits before they go live ¹⁴. That only helps if you have verified your profile and check that inbox.

What our recorded AI answers show about Business Profiles

Between September 2 and October 14, 2026, we asked ChatGPT, Claude and Google AI Mode to recommend a local contractor 47,209 times. The questions covered HVAC, plumbing, electrical and roofing jobs in towns around Tampa Bay, Florida, each in a fresh conversation with web search on. 41,561 answers were about a specific job. These are observations of what the assistants showed, not experiments, so they can't show what causes a business to be named.

Google AI Mode showed businesses straight from their profiles

In 7,965 of AI Mode's 9,819 job answers (81%), it showed at least one business as a card from Google's listings. A typical answer showed 3 cards. Each card is a small copy of the Business Profile: the star rating, the review count, the business category, whether it's open right now, and buttons to call, get directions or visit the website. The links pointed the same way. In 74% of AI Mode's job answers, the sources included Google's own listing for a business.

The cards also show what a profile looks like when a contractor follows Google's rules:

• 38% of the 25,957 cards showed no street address, only a town or nothing. Hiding your address, as Google asks service-area businesses to do, didn't keep these businesses off the cards.
• 96% had a Website button. Nearly every business shown had linked its website to its profile.
• The cards used 135 different business categories. The category is the one-line label the customer reads under your name, so it is worth choosing with care.
• 14% of cards said the business was closed at that moment. Your hours appear right on the card.

Our guide to Google AI Overviews and AI Mode looks at these cards in more detail, including ratings and categories.

ChatGPT and Claude seldom linked to Google, but repeated its ratings

ChatGPT and Claude search the web rather than Google's listings. ChatGPT says it may share a user's location with outside providers of local information, such as nearby business listings ¹⁵. Claude grounds its answers in what its search tool finds on the live web ¹⁶. Of their 31,742 job answers, 98% linked to a contractor's own website. Only 1.4% linked to any Google page.

Yet your Google rating still reached them. Claude gave a business's Google star rating or Google review count in 2,866 job answers (20%). ChatGPT did so in 701 (4.1%). We found these with a text rule and read a random sample by hand: 19 of 20 were correct. Of the sentences we read, 6 of 20 said the figure came from another site, such as a review aggregator or a dealer page, or from the company itself. Your Google reviews travel further than Google.

Claude told customers to check the Google listing

Claude often tells the customer what it couldn't confirm, and the other two seldom do. In 2,089 of its job answers (14%), Claude told the customer to check a business's Google listing, Google Maps or Google reviews before hiring. ChatGPT did so in just 5. A hand check found 20 of 20 were sorted correctly.

The most common reason was a missing phone number. In 178 answers, Claude said it couldn't find a number and sent the customer to the Google listing or Google Maps to get one (20 of 20 correct in a hand check):

I couldn't verify phone numbers, so check each company's Google listing before you call.

I didn't find a phone number, so look them up on Google.

When an assistant can't find your number, the Google listing is where it sends people. If that listing is unclaimed, out of date or shows an old number, the call goes nowhere, and you never learn you lost it.

Unclaimed listings drew warnings

In 34 job answers, all from Claude, the assistant warned that a listing was unclaimed, so the business may not have checked its details (20 of 20 correct in a hand check). Only 6 of these were about a Google listing. Most were review and directory sites. The number is small, but the pattern is plain: when Claude noticed a listing nobody managed, it told the customer to trust it less.

What assistants weighed in our earlier study

Before this research, we studied assistant conversations from late July to August 2026 across eight trades. For each business an assistant considered, we recorded the reasons it gave for naming it or leaving it out. Several are facts your Business Profile shows:

• A direct local phone number that a person answers came up in 290 conversations and cost a business its place in 147 of them.
• How fast the business can come out came up in 657 conversations and cost a business its place in 185.
• How many reviews a business had came up in 569 conversations and cost a business its place in 139.
• The same phone number across independent listings came up in 81 conversations and cost a business its place in 29.
• The same street address across listings came up in 66 conversations and cost a business its place in 22.
• A business name that matched across listings and the license register came up in 37 conversations and cost a business its place in 28.

One conversation can involve several reasons, so these counts overlap and should never be added together. They show what assistants said they weighed. They don't prove that fixing your profile would change who gets named.

How to create or claim your Google Business Profile, step by step

Work through these steps in order. The first four make sure you end up with one profile that you own. The rest make it accurate.

1. Find out whether a profile already exists

Open Google Maps and search your business name and town. If you have managed a profile before, sign in to that Google Account and search Google for my business ⁶. To see what customers see, look while browsing privately ¹. Note any listing that shows your old name, an old phone number or a home address you don't want public.

2. If there's no profile, create one

You need a Google Account. Google suggests linking your company email address to it, which makes the profile easier to manage ¹. Go to business.google.com/add, select Add your business to Google, and follow the steps ². Use the account you will keep, not a personal one an employee controls.

3. If there's an unverified profile, claim it

On a computer, open Google Maps, find your business and select Claim this business, then Manage now ². In the Google Maps app, open the profile, tap About, then Claim this business ². Then choose a way to verify.

4. If someone else owns it, ask for it back

Go to business.google.com/add, enter your business, and select Request Access when Google says someone else may manage it ⁷. The current owner has 3 days to respond ⁷. For a service-area business with no shop or office, Google asks you to contact its support instead ⁷. If the owner is a marketing company you used, its own Google rules say it must hand back control ¹⁰.

5. Verify the profile

Google chooses which verification methods you can use, such as a phone call or text, email, a video, or a postcard ⁶. Review can take up to 5 business days ⁶. If you're waiting on a postcard, don't edit your name, address or category, or the code won't work ⁶. Google says it will never ask for your verification code, so don't give it to anyone ⁶.

6. Fill in the facts customers and assistants look for

• Name: your real business name as it appears on your truck, invoices and website, with no added keywords or towns ⁸.
• Category: the fewest categories that describe your core business, as specific as possible ⁸.
• Phone: a local number your business controls, not a call center or a tracking number that sends people elsewhere ⁸.
• Service area: hide your street address if customers don't come to you, and list the towns or ZIP codes you serve ⁸.
• Hours, website and services: Google says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show in local results ¹¹. It also lists an up-to-date Business Profile among its tips for its AI features ¹⁷.

Then put the same name, phone number and service area on your own website. In our answers, ChatGPT and Claude mostly linked to contractors' websites and AI Mode mostly to Google's listings, so the two should agree.

7. Keep ownership when you get help

Make yourself the primary owner ¹². Add your office manager or marketing company as a manager, each with their own Google Account, so nobody shares your password ¹². Before you pay for management, get a written agreement listing the services and their cost ⁴. Ask exactly which work the fee covers, and how you will see that it was done.

8. Check it every month

Open your profile and confirm the phone number, hours and service area are still right. Google reviews edits before they go live ¹³, but it also accepts suggestions from the public, so watch for its emails about changes ¹⁴. Look at the performance page too. It counts views, direction requests, website clicks and taps on your call button ¹⁸. Those numbers show whether the listing is working.

Questions owners ask

What is a Google Business Profile?

A Google Business Profile is the free listing that shows your business on Google Search and Google Maps. It holds your name, phone number, hours, website, service area or address, photos and customer reviews. Once you verify it, you control what it says and can reply to reviews. Google may build a basic profile for your business even if you never created one.

Is a Google Business Profile free?

Yes. Google says you can create or claim a Business Profile at no charge, and there is no fee to keep it. Google's ads, such as Local Services ads, cost money, and marketing companies may charge to manage your profile. Google requires those companies to tell you in writing that the profile itself is free.

How do I make a Google Business Profile for my business?

First search Google Maps for your business name and town, because a profile may already exist. If none exists, sign in with a Google Account, go to business.google.com/add and follow the steps. If an unverified profile exists, select Claim this business instead. Then verify it using the method Google offers, which can take up to five business days.

What does a Google Business Profile look like?

On Google Search and Maps, a profile shows your business name, star rating and review count, category, hours, and buttons to call, get directions or visit your website. In the Google AI Mode answers we recorded, businesses usually appeared as small cards with those same details, taken straight from their profiles.

Do I need a storefront to have a Google Business Profile?

No. Contractors who travel to customers can have a profile as a service-area business. Google asks these businesses to hide their street address, even a home address, and list the towns or ZIP codes they serve instead. You can list up to 20 service areas. Online-only businesses that never meet customers in person are not eligible.

Why is a company charging me for my Google Business Profile?

The profile is free, but some companies charge to set it up or manage it. Paying for real work is fine. Google's rules say such a company must disclose that the profile is free, leave you as an owner, and return full control within seven business days if you leave. Be wary of anyone who guarantees a top ranking.

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