How to Get Your Business on Google: A Setup Guide for UK Tradespeople

Someone in your town searches “electrician near me” tonight. Google shows them a map with three businesses on it, their star ratings and a button to ring each one. Getting onto that map costs nothing. You spend about twenty minutes on it and Google spends up to five working days checking you are real. The steps below are in the order Google asks for them, with the parts that catch tradespeople who work from a van and a home address.

If you already have a verified profile and want more calls from it, skip this and read our Google Business Profile guide for tradesmen, which covers the optimisation side.

The quick answer

You get your business on Google by creating a Google Business Profile (Google used to call it Google My Business). It is the free listing that appears in Search and Maps with your name, reviews, phone number, opening hours and photos.

• Where: business.google.com/add, signed in with a Google account.
• Cost: nothing, now or later.
• Time: about 20 minutes to fill in. Google then reviews your verification, which it says takes up to five working days.
• What you need: your business name, a phone number you answer, the areas you cover, and your phone to record a short verification video.

Before you start: five things to have ready

1. Your real business name, as it appears on your van, your invoices and Companies House if you are a limited company. “Dave’s Plumbing Leeds Emergency 24hr” is the version that gets profiles suspended, and there is more on that in step 2.
2. A Google account you will keep. A business email works, or a Gmail you create for the business. You need to still have access to it in five years, so it should not belong to an apprentice.
3. A phone number you answer. Google may ring or text it to verify you, and customers will ring it from the listing. A mobile is fine.
4. The towns or postcodes you work in. Write the list down before you start. Google asks for it and it decides where you show up.
5. Your phone’s camera. Google verifies most new trade businesses by a short video of the van, the tools and the street where the business is based.

Settle one question before you open the form: do customers ever come to your premises? If you have a yard, shop or showroom open to the public, you will show the address. If you work from home and go to the customer, you will hide it and list service areas instead. Google calls the second type a service-area business, and almost every sole trader is one.

Step 1: check whether Google already has you

Google creates listings from directory data all the time, long before the owner touches them. Search your business name and town in Google Maps before you make a new one. If a listing exists:

• On a computer, open it and choose Claim this business, then Manage now.
• In the Maps app, tap About, then Claim this business, then Manage now.

Google’s guidelines say there should be “only one profile per business”. If you create a second one beside an unclaimed listing, you risk Google suspending both. Where an old listing shows a wrong number or address, claim it and correct it.

If nothing comes up, move to step 2.

Step 2: start the profile and enter your business name

Go to business.google.com/add and click Add your business to Google. The first field is your business name.

If you trade under a name that differs from your registered company name, use the trading name customers know, the one on your van and your invoices.

Step 3: pick your category

Google asks for a primary category, and this one choice decides which searches you can appear for.

Google’s rule is to choose a category that completes the sentence “this business is a”, not “this business has a”, and to be “as specific as possible”. So:

You can add more categories later for the other things you do (an electrician might add “EV charging station contractor”), but the primary one should be your main trade. Google’s advice is to use “as few categories as possible”.

Step 4: address or service area

Tradespeople get this step wrong more than any other, and it decides which towns you appear in.

Google asks whether you want to add a location customers can visit. Answer with what you do:

• You have a shop, yard or showroom customers visit: add the address. Google’s guidelines say a shown address must be “staffed by your team and able to receive customers during its stated hours”.
• You work from home and travel to jobs: say no, and set service areas instead. Google’s guidance for a business run from a residential address is to “hide your business address from customers”.
• You do both (a showroom plus fitting at the customer’s home): Google says to “enter both your address and service area”.

Setting service areas

Google’s rules, as of October 2026:

• You can list up to 20 service areas, “by city, postcode or another type of area”.
• You cannot set a radius around your base. You pick named places.
• The whole area “shouldn’t be more than about two hours of driving time from where your business is based”.
• Google asks you to be “as specific and accurate as possible”.

List the towns you would quote for tomorrow. A plumber based in Wakefield might list Wakefield, Ossett, Horbury, Normanton, Castleford, Pontefract and Dewsbury rather than “West Yorkshire”. A wide area does not put you in front of more people. Google chooses who to show partly by distance from the searcher, so a profile claiming three counties reads as far away from everyone in them. You can add to the list as the business grows.

Step 5: phone number and website

Add the phone number you will answer. Customers tap it from the listing, so a mobile that travels with you beats a landline at home.

If you have a website, add it. If you do not, leave the field blank. Google used to build a free one-page site for every profile and closed that service in March 2024, so there is nothing to click here any more. The profile works without a site. When you are weighing it up, our guide on whether a tradesperson needs a website sets out when one starts to pay for itself.

Step 6: verify the business

Nothing goes public until Google confirms you are who you say you are. Google offers several methods and shows you the ones your business qualifies for:

Google says “verification reviews take up to five working days”, and that they occasionally take longer.

What to film for video verification

Google wants one continuous, unedited recording with no cuts, at least 30 seconds long, recorded and uploaded from your phone through the Business Profile itself. For a service-area business it asks for three things in the footage.

Film it in one take, in daylight, talking through what you are showing. Thirty seconds is the minimum and a minute is plenty. If the verification fails, the Get verified button comes back on the profile and you can try again or pick another method.

While you wait

The profile exists but stays hidden until verification clears. Use the days:

• Leave the details alone if you asked for a postcard. Google locks them until you enter the code.
• Gather 10 to 20 photos: finished jobs, work in progress, the van, you, your Gas Safe or NICEIC card. Phone photos are fine, stock images are not.
• Write your description. You get 750 characters for what you do, where, and what sets you apart. “Rewires, fuse board upgrades and EV chargers across Bradford and Keighley. NICEIC registered, free quotes, no call-out fee” tells a customer more than “professional, reliable electrician”.
• Line up your first reviews. Ask the last three customers you did good work for whether they would leave a Google review once the profile is live. At around five reviews a new profile starts to look like a working business next to the competition.

The first week after verification

Once Google confirms the profile, finish it in this order:

1. Opening hours, and the ones you keep. If you do emergency call-outs, say so in the description instead of setting the hours to 24/7, unless you do answer at 3am.
2. Services. Add each one with a line of description. Google matches searches against these.
3. Photos. Upload the batch you gathered.
4. Secondary categories. Add up to nine for distinct services, following the “this business is a” rule.
5. Reviews. Send your review link to the customers you lined up. Our guide to getting more Google reviews has the text message that works.
6. Questions and answers. Add the three questions every customer asks you (free quotes? areas covered? registered?) and answer them yourself.

From here the job turns from setting up to keeping the profile active, which the Google Business Profile guide for tradesmen covers: photos, posts, insights and a monthly routine. When you want to know why one roofer sits above another on the map, read how to rank higher on Google Maps.

Two things Google no longer does

Guides written a couple of years ago still mention these, so you know not to go looking for them:

• Chat and messaging from the profile. Google switched it off on 31 July 2024. Customers can call, visit the website or ask for directions, and that is all.
• A free Google-built website. Closed in March 2024. Old business.site addresses stopped redirecting in June 2024.

Why a new profile can disappear

More people in the UK search “Google Business Profile suspended” each month than search for how to set one up. For trades, the cause is almost always one of these:

• Keywords, towns or “emergency” added to the business name.
• A home address shown on the profile when customers never visit it.
• Two profiles for the same business, often an old unclaimed one and a new one.
• A service area far wider than the two-hour guideline.
• A verification video that shows a car park and no proof of the business.

Get the name and address right and most of these never arise. If Google does suspend the profile, your dashboard shows a “suspended” notice and a reinstatement form. Do not create a new profile to get round it.

If you would rather someone did this for you

Every Local Search North website plan includes Google Business Profile setup, verified and finished, alongside a fast mobile-first site. The Starter plan is £99 a month with a £149 setup fee and no VAT on top, and after 12 months with us the site is yours at no extra cost. If you only want the profile sorted and a straight answer on what comes next, book a free call and we will walk through it on a screen share.