Marketing Audit Tools

Google Business Profile Manager: What It Is and How to Actually Use It

15+ years in local marketing; Google Ads certified; Shopify Partner.

You search for a plumber in Regina. Three businesses pop up before any website. You see their hours, their reviews, their phone number, a photo of their truck. You call the first one.

That's Google Business Profile working exactly the way it's supposed to. And the business that showed up first? They're using Google Business Profile Manager to keep that listing sharp.

Here's the thing: most Canadian SMB owners have a Google Business Profile. A lot fewer are actually managing it. There's a difference. This article is about that difference, what the Google Business Profile Manager actually does, how to use it week over week, and when it makes sense to hand it off.

We're not going to cover paid Google Ads here. If that's what you're looking for, our complete guide to Facebook and Google Ads auditing covers that territory in detail.

What Google Business Profile Manager Actually Is

Google Business Profile Manager is the dashboard where you control what shows up when someone searches your business name or finds you through a local Google search. Think of it as your storefront on Google. You don't own the building, but you can dress the window.

From the manager, you can:

Update your hours, address, phone number, and website
Respond to reviews
Post updates, offers, and photos
See how many people called you, asked for directions, or clicked to your website
Answer questions people have posted publicly about your business
Add your services or menu

It sounds basic. And in a way, it is. But the gap between a listing that's been claimed and left alone versus one that's actively managed is significant.

Per BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey (2024 data), 87% of consumers used Google to evaluate a local business. That's not a number you ignore. Your Google Business Profile is often the first impression someone gets of you, before they ever see your website.

Why an Unclaimed or Neglected Profile Costs You Real Business

I see this constantly. A business has been operating for five years. They've got a Google listing, but they never claimed it. Or they claimed it once, updated their hours, and haven't touched it since.

Here's what happens. Google fills in the gaps. It pulls your hours from your website (if it can find them), from third-party directories, sometimes from user suggestions. Someone submits a change saying you're closed on Sundays. Google approves it. You don't find out until a customer shows up on a Sunday and the door is locked.

That's not a hypothetical. Typically, businesses that leave their profiles unmanaged for six months or more have at least one piece of incorrect information showing publicly. In my experience, it's usually hours or the phone number.

The other thing that happens: your competitors, especially ones with actively managed profiles, tend to outrank you in the local map results, which Google calls the "Local Pack." Those are the three businesses that show up with the map pin before the organic results. That real estate is worth a lot. A business in Saskatoon competing for "HVAC repair near me" is fighting for those three spots. An active, well-managed profile is one of the clearest signals Google uses to decide who shows up there.

Setting Up Google Business Profile Manager: The First Two Weeks

If you're starting from scratch or inheriting a neglected profile, here's the actual work, in order.

Week 1: Claim, verify, and audit.

Go to business.google.com. Search for your business name. If it already exists (Google sometimes auto-creates listings), claim it. If it doesn't, create it. Verification usually takes 3-7 business days. Google mails a postcard to your business address with a code. Some businesses qualify for instant phone or video verification, but the postcard route is still the most common.

While you're waiting on verification, gather everything you'll need: your exact business name (consistent with how it appears everywhere else online), your primary address, your phone number, your website URL, your hours including holiday hours, and a short business description (750 characters max, use plain language, mention your city).

Week 2: Fill everything in.

Once verified, go through every section. Business category matters more than most people realize. Your primary category should be as specific as possible. "Dentist" not "Health." "Family Law Attorney" not "Lawyer." Google uses this to match you to searches. Pick the one that best describes your core service, then add secondary categories for anything else you do.

Upload photos. At minimum: your exterior (so people can find you), your interior, your team, and your logo. Per Google's own guidelines (2024), profiles with photos receive 42% more requests for directions and 35% more website clicks than those without. Those are Google's own numbers.

Write your business description. Don't stuff keywords in. Write it the way you'd describe your business to someone at a networking event. Where you are, what you do, who you serve. That's it.

The Ongoing Work: What Monthly Management Actually Looks Like

This is the piece most people skip. They set up the profile and treat it as done. It's not done.

Here's what active management looks like on a monthly basis.

Reviews. Respond to every review. Good ones, bad ones, all of them. For positive reviews, a short genuine response is fine. "Thanks so much, glad we could help" is better than a canned corporate reply. For negative reviews, acknowledge the concern, don't get defensive, and offer to take it offline. You're not writing the response for the person who left the review. You're writing it for the next ten people who read it.

In my experience, businesses that respond to reviews consistently, especially negative ones, tend to see a gradual lift in their average star rating over 6-12 months, not because the bad reviews disappear, but because the response behaviour builds trust and encourages more satisfied customers to leave reviews.

Posts. Google lets you post updates, offers, and events directly to your profile. These show up in your listing. They're not a major ranking factor, but they signal to Google that your profile is active. Once or twice a month is enough. A new service, a promotion, a team update. Keep it short.

Q&A. Check the Questions & Answers section. Anyone can ask a question. Anyone can answer. Including your competitors. Seed this section yourself by asking and answering common questions about your business before someone else does it wrong.

Photo updates. Fresh photos every month or two. It doesn't have to be a professional shoot. A phone photo of your team or your shop floor is fine.

Insights. The analytics tab inside Google Business Profile Manager shows you how many people searched for you, how they found you (direct search vs. discovery search), and what they did (called, visited your website, asked for directions). This is genuinely useful data. Track it monthly. If your call volume from your profile drops, that's a signal worth investigating.

Google Business Profile Manager and Local SEO: How They Connect

Your Google Business Profile is one piece of a broader local SEO picture. It's an important piece, but it doesn't operate in isolation.

The three main factors Google uses to rank local listings are relevance (does your profile match what the person searched for), distance (how far are you from the searcher), and prominence (how well-known and trusted is your business online, based on links, reviews, and citations).

You control relevance through your categories, description, and the keywords that naturally appear in your reviews and posts. You can't control distance. You influence prominence through reviews, your website, and consistent business information across directories.

Here's the thing: a well-managed Google Business Profile helps, but if your website is slow, has thin content, or isn't optimized for local search, you're leaving ranking potential on the table. For a full look at the SEO side of this, our SEO optimization tools guide walks through what to check and in what order.

If you want to audit your overall site health alongside your local presence, the free website audit tools guide is a good starting point.

When to DIY and When to Hand It Off

Managing a Google Business Profile yourself is genuinely doable. It's not technically complicated. The question is whether you'll actually do it.

If you have one location, a relatively stable set of services, and 30-60 minutes a month to stay on top of reviews and posts, you can manage this yourself. The setup work is front-loaded. Once it's done, maintenance is light.

If you have multiple locations, a high volume of reviews (say, 20+ per month), or you're trying to move the needle in a competitive local market, that's when it makes sense to bring someone in. Not because the work is hard, but because it's consistent and it compounds. The businesses that show up first in local results in competitive markets are usually the ones that have been doing this work, without skipping months, for a year or two.

A worked example: if you're paying an agency CA$500/month to manage your Google Business Profile as a standalone service (a typical entry-level rate for this in Canada), and that profile drives 10 inbound calls per month, you're paying CA$50 per call. If you close 30% of those calls and your average job is worth CA$800, that's CA$2,400 in revenue from a CA$500 spend. That math works. If you can't attribute any calls to the profile, you need better tracking before you can evaluate whether it's worth it. Google Business Profile Manager's built-in insights give you call click data, but for actual call tracking, you'd want a tool like CallRail alongside it.

The marketing audit checklist is a useful resource if you're trying to evaluate whether your local presence is actually performing or just existing.

Common Mistakes Worth Avoiding

A few patterns I see regularly.

Keyword stuffing the business name. Adding "Best Plumber in Calgary" to your business name field to try to rank better is against Google's guidelines. Google can and does suspend listings for this. Use your actual business name.

Inconsistent NAP. NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone number. If your address appears differently across your website, your Google profile, and other directories (even small differences like "St." vs "Street"), it creates confusion for Google and can hurt your local rankings. Consistency matters.

Ignoring the service area settings. If you're a service-area business (you go to customers rather than customers coming to you), set your service area in the profile and hide your address if you work from home. Google has specific settings for this.

Not using the products or services section. Most businesses skip this. It's actually useful. Adding your specific services helps Google understand what you do beyond your primary category, which can help you show up for more specific searches.

Decision Framework: Is Your Google Business Profile Working?

Use this to evaluate where you actually stand.

If your profile is unclaimed: Stop everything else and claim it this week. Everything else is secondary.

If your profile is claimed but hasn't been updated in 6+ months: Do the full audit. Check every field, update photos, respond to any unanswered reviews.

If your profile is current but you're not showing up in the Local Pack for your main keywords: The problem is likely off-profile. Check your website's local SEO, your review volume relative to competitors, and your citation consistency. The free SEO audit tools guide and the SEO checker tools are good next steps.

If you're showing up but not getting calls: Look at your reviews (star rating and recency), your photos, and your business description. Sometimes the profile is visible but not compelling enough to convert a viewer into a caller.

If you're getting calls but can't tell how many come from the profile: Add call tracking. Google's built-in click-to-call data is a start, but it undercounts. A dedicated tracking number gives you cleaner attribution.