Google Business Profile management The profile is the shopfront.
Most people who find your Google Business Profile never reach your website. They read the photo, the description, the services and the hours, then they tap call. Google Business Profile management is the work of keeping every one of those fields correct and current.
250+ live client engagements · Melbourne-based, working across Australia, the UK, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and New Zealand
Seven things
we find on day one.
None of these are exotic. They are what is sitting on the profile when we open it, and not one of them shows up in a website traffic report.
The primary category was set in a hurry and never revisited
One field. It is the line the profile leads with, and it decides which service and attribute fields Google offers you. “Plumber” and “Drainage service” are two different businesses.
The hours are wrong over the public holidays
A profile showing open on Good Friday sends somebody to a locked door. Nobody notices, because the loss arrives as an absence.
No services are listed at all
Left empty, the profile offers a category name and nothing else, and the reader is left guessing whether you do the job they need.
The newest photo predates the repaint
A van that was sold, a shopfront in the old colours. The photo set is the first thing a stranger looks at and the last thing anybody inside the business updates.
The website link points at a page that no longer exists
The site was rebuilt and the URLs changed. Everybody who taps through lands on an error page, and nobody who bounces off one rings up to complain.
There is a second listing nobody knows about
Created by a staff member with a work phone, or left behind by an old address. It splits the photos, the questions and the reviews across two entries.
Messaging was switched on and nobody watches it
An unanswered message is worse than no message button, because the person on the other end had already chosen you.
A short list of fields. Mostly empty.
Everything a stranger learns before they tap call has to fit inside a profile with published limits. The limits are Google's. What goes into them is a series of decisions, and most businesses have made about a third of them.
1
primary category
Google allows one. It is the line the profile leads with, and it decides which service and attribute fields you are offered.
9
additional categories
The most Google permits on top of it. Nine slots forces you to name the services you actually want more of.
750
characters of description
Google's cap — roughly 120 words for the whole business. The person choosing between you and the next listing reads it.
20
service areas
Google's limit for a business that travels to its customers. Twenty forces an honest answer about where you can genuinely turn up.
1
profile per real location
Google's guidelines allow one, for a location that exists and is staffed. It is why duplicates get merged or closed.
0
dollars to claim it
Google charges nothing to claim it and nothing to keep it. What it costs is attention: every field filled, every question answered.
For most of the people who see it, the profile is the whole business.
They never reach the website. The photo, the description, the services list and the hours are the entire shopfront. A tap on the call button never touches your site, which is exactly why it appears in no analytics report.
It is the least-maintained asset most businesses own and, for a large share of their enquiries, the only one anybody reads. Counting what the profile produces is a separate job from filling it in.
Australia · UK · KSA · UAE · NZ
250+
Active client engagements
Search, paid media, web and tracking under one roof
Google reviews
5.0
Rating across every review
We run our own review system on ourselves before we sell you one
The SoudCoh Standard v1.0
41
Clauses published in full
The operating rules, written down where you can read them first
Firm-level figures from the SoudCoh record, not campaign forecasts. We publish no Business Profile case study, so no view, call or position figure is claimed here — your profile is reported against its own starting point.
Ten things happen to the profile. Here they are, in order.
This is the part most agency pages keep vague, and it is the only part that decides whether anything changes. So it is written down.
Get the ownership back
Profiles claimed years ago by a developer who moved on, or a staff member who left. We request the transfer, or run Google's ownership process where nobody answers.
Read every field against the businesses shown for the same search
Not to copy them. To see which fields they have filled that you have left empty, so you know what somebody comparing the two of you is comparing.
Set the primary category deliberately
Chosen on purpose rather than by whichever name sounded closest at signup, then the additional ones behind it. Changing it can trigger re-verification, so it is done knowingly.
Fill the services, with a description on each
Every service you want more of, named the way a customer says it, each with its own description rather than a bare label. Products too, where the business sells them.
Set the hours, including the public holidays
Regular hours, special hours for every public holiday in your state, and a named person who updates them. A small job, done once a year.
Add photos on a schedule, not once
The team, the vans, the premises and real finished work, going up on a rhythm rather than in one batch at setup.
Post, and seed the questions section
Posts for what is genuinely true right now. And the questions customers really ask, answered by you, rather than left open for a stranger to answer on your behalf.
Check the website and booking links against live URLs
Every link opened and followed. Anything resolving to a redirect chain or a dead page is fixed or comes off the profile.
Find the duplicates and merge or close them
A search on every trading name, old address and old phone number, then a merge or closure request for each duplicate that turns up.
Watch for suspensions and public edits
Anybody can suggest an edit, and some go live without being run past you. We revert the wrong ones and start a reinstatement the week it happens.
The first ninety days, honestly.
- Week 0
The audit and the first call
Half an hour on the jobs you want more of. Then the profile read field by field, a duplicate search, and every link on it opened.
- Week 1
The profile rebuild
Ownership resolved, categories set, services and products written, attributes, hours including the public holidays, description. The fastest-moving work on the engagement.
- Weeks 2–4
Duplicates, links and counting
Duplicates merged or closed, links pointed at pages that exist, and tracking wired up so calls from the profile stop being invisible.
- Weeks 4–8
Content on a rhythm
Photos on a schedule, posts, the questions section seeded, replies going out on reviews. Set up as a habit, because it has to survive us leaving.
- Weeks 8–12
Read against your own baseline
Views, calls, direction requests, website taps and messages, against where the profile was on day one. Where nothing moved, we say which field is short.
- From there
Rhythm
Photos and posts on a set cadence, questions answered, hours updated before each holiday period, and a report on a fixed date.
You keep the audit findings whether or not you hire us, and we ask for manager access rather than ownership. If the business does not currently hold the keys, getting them back is first on the list.
Profile work lives in two of the six stages.
Compound is how our team works on any account — six stages every change passes through. Profile work leans hardest on these two.
Sweep
Waste is found daily, named, and priced.
On a profile engagement the sweep is the listing itself: a duplicate nobody knew existed, a link to a page deleted in the last rebuild, holiday hours never set, a question unanswered since last year.
Statement
A fixed rhythm, good news or bad.
Profile activity is easy to claim, so the report shows what changed, when it changed, and what the profile did afterwards — views, calls, direction requests and messages against your own starting point.
What we publish.
These are published lead-generation accounts and every tile names its channel. We publish no organic or Business Profile case study, so there is no chart here pretending to be yours — profile work is reported against your own baseline.
- Paid search · Cleaning · Melbourne138jobs booked in 41 daysA$20.43 cost per job · 21.20% conversion rate · A$2,819.92 ad spendPink Flamingo
- Paid search · Carpet cleaning · Perth53jobs in the first 15 daysA$24.92 cost per job · brand-new account, no conversion history at launchCleanetic
- Organic + paid · Commercial cleaning · Sydney80%boost in organic traffic65% more qualified leads · twice the quote-form submissions off the same service areaOperaShine
- Paid search · Trades · Sydney36jobs booked in 24 daysFirst quotes by day 3 · job type attached to every enquirySydney Fence Painting
Before you ask us anything
Here is what everybody asks first.
The profile, answered.
Ownership, categories, suspensions, photos, twelve locations, cost, and what lands in the report.
The first call is free and there is no deck.
Book a free strategy callThe profile is one surface. Here are the ones beside it.
Most businesses we run use three or four of these together. SEO services is the hub that compares the organic ones side by side.
- Ranking in the map resultsThis page is the profile's own fields and upkeep. Map-pack ranking, citations and area pages are covered there, and deliberately not here.
- Getting reviews in the first placeReplying inside the profile is one maintenance surface. Asking for reviews at volume, without sounding automated, is a job of its own.
- Counting the calls that never touch your siteA tap on the call button appears in no website report. This is how it becomes a counted enquiry.
- SEO servicesThe hub for everything organic, with the ways to be found in search compared side by side.
- When the recommendation comes from an assistantBeing the business an assistant names when somebody asks it for a good electrician near Richmond.
- Paid search while the profile fills upProfile work is cheap and gradual. Paid search is neither. Most businesses we run use both.
- Profiles for plumbersA blocked drain is decided on a phone in under a minute, usually before anybody reaches a website.
Four parts of this work have a briefing of their own: the category setting that quietly holds trades back, running a profile with no shopfront to list, what a service-area profile has to do differently and what a profile can and cannot do with no website behind it.
Get the profile audit
We read your Business Profile field by field, search for the duplicates you do not know about, open every link on it, and hand you the list of what is missing. Yours to action, with us or without us.
No pitch deck. No upsell. A real conversation and a written list of what is missing.