What is a Google Business Profile?

1. Create or claim the profile. Google may already have a listing for your business built from public information; you claim it rather than start over.
2. Verify it. Google chooses which verification methods to offer, for example a video recording, phone, text or email.
3. Set the basics: primary and secondary categories, services, hours, phone, website, and either an address or a service area if you visit customers.
4. Keep it active: add photos, publish posts, update holiday hours and reply to reviews.
5. Google ranks it in local results on relevance, distance and prominence, the three factors Google describes in its guide to local ranking.

Some older guides still recommend features that no longer exist. Google ended Business Profile chat on July 31, 2024, and removed the Questions & Answers section from Business Profiles in late 2025. Calls, website visits, direction requests and reviews are what remain, so the phone number on the profile has to be answered. A management plan that still bills for chat or Q&A is out of date.

The profile is where people decide whether to call; the website is where they go for more detail. Google controls the profile’s layout and can show edits suggested by the public, so it needs regular checking. You control the website completely. They work best when they agree: the same name, phone, hours and services on both, so Google and customers see one consistent business. See NAP consistency.

The profile is free from Google. The cost is the time to keep it current, or a service that does it for you. Found, Keres AI’s visibility plan, starts from $249 a month ($499 for law firms), month-to-month, with no build fee at the base tier. See Google Business Profile management for what that covers, and pricing for how quotes are set.

Found optimizes the profile once (categories, services, photos and verification), then works it every week: posts, photo updates, review responses, reporting spam listings that compete with you, and monthly insights. It runs the profile alongside your website, review requests and listings so all of them agree. The number on the profile can be answered by Remi, Keres AI’s AI receptionist, in two rings, 24/7.