What is Google Business Profile?
Your free Google-hosted listing showing your business name, hours, photos, reviews, and map location. The single biggest local-pack ranking input.
Also known as: GBP, Google My Business, GMB
Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is a free Google product that lets businesses control how they appear in Google Search and Maps. It surfaces your name, address, phone, hours, website, photos, reviews, and posts.
For local businesses, the GBP is roughly half of local SEO. Google heavily weights signals from the profile: how complete the listing is, photo recency, post frequency, review volume + velocity + recency, response rate to reviews, and category selection.
A fully optimized GBP includes: primary and secondary categories selected with the most specific options available, complete service list, 30+ photos updated regularly, weekly posts, attribute selections (women-led, family-owned, etc.), Q&A monitored and answered, and an automated review-request workflow generating 5-15 new reviews per month.
For local service businesses, the GBP often drives more revenue than the website itself. Optimizing it is the single highest-leverage local-SEO move most businesses can make.