How to get your business listed on Google Business Profile

The problem this page solves

You searched your own company name last week. A competitor had a tidy panel on the right of the screen with photos, hours, reviews and a phone number. You had nothing, or worse, you had an old listing with a wrong address that someone else created years ago. Then a customer told you ChatGPT had never heard of you.

Both problems have one fix in common: a verified, accurate, complete Business Profile. It will not make an assistant love you on its own. It does give the machines a clean, structured, Google owned record of who you are, where you are, and what you sell.

Why Google Business Profile shows up in AI answers

Three reasons, in order of how much they matter.

1. Google AI Overviews sit on top of Google Search. When the question is local or commercial, the local pack and the profile data are right there in the same result set. Google publishes its AI features in Search at blog.google/products/search.
2. Assistants with web browsing read Google surfaces and Maps pages. A verified profile is a stable, dated, machine readable record of name, address, phone, hours and category.
3. Other sites copy it. Directories, aggregators and local news pages often pull basic facts from a Business Profile. Those pages then become sources in their own right.

The practical point: a profile is cheap, free of charge, and it feeds several things at once. It is not a growth strategy by itself.

What Google requires

Last verified: 16 October 2026

Google's rulebook is the page titled Guidelines for representing your business on Google. Read it once before you fill anything in. The rules that catch people out:

• In-person contact. Your business must make face to face contact with customers during its stated hours, either at a location customers can visit or at the customer's location. Online only businesses are not eligible.
• One profile per real location. Not one per service, not one per keyword, not one per staff member (regulated professionals such as doctors and lawyers are a documented exception in Google's guidelines).
• Your real name. Use the name shown on your signage, stationery and website. Adding a city or a service term to the name is against the guidelines and is the single most common cause of a name edit or a suspension.
• A real address or a service area. If customers do not come to you, hide the address and set service areas instead. A virtual office, a mailbox or a co-working desk you do not staff is not an eligible address.
• No fee. Creating, claiming and verifying a profile is free on Google's own product page, google.com/business. As of 16 October 2026 there is no listing charge and therefore no tax to account for. Anyone phoning to sell you "Google verification" is not Google.

Step by step: create and verify the profile

1. Sign in to a Google account that belongs to the business, not a staff member's personal account. A shared account on your own domain is better than a free mailbox.
2. Go to business.google.com/create and type your exact business name.
3. If Google suggests an existing listing for your business, select it and click the claim option. If someone else holds it, Google starts a transfer request to the current owner. Allow time for that; it is slower than creating a new profile.
4. Choose your primary category. Pick the one that describes what the business is, not what you wish to rank for. You can add more categories later.
5. Choose whether customers visit you. If yes, enter the street address exactly as it appears on postal mail. If no, hide the address and list the areas you serve.
6. Add a phone number that is answered during your stated hours, and the website URL you actually want people to land on.
7. Pick a verification method from those Google offers you. You do not get to choose freely; Google decides which options appear, based on category, country and address.
8. Complete verification. For video, follow the on screen prompts and record in one unbroken take.
9. Once verified, finish the profile: hours, description, services or products, attributes, and photos.
10. Set a reminder to re-check the profile every 30 days for user suggested edits, which Google can apply without asking you.

The five verification routes

Google's help centre lists video recording, video call, phone, text, email and postcard, with availability varying by business. See Google Business Profile Help for the current set.

How long it takes

Google does not publish a guaranteed turnaround. Its help pages describe video submissions going to a review queue that can take several business days, and postcards depend on your postal service. Plan on this: form filling takes about 20 minutes, verification takes days, and a transfer from an unresponsive previous owner can take weeks. Do not launch a campaign that depends on the profile going live tomorrow.

Worked example you can repeat

Say you run a two person accounting practice. Clients visit the office, so the address is public.

1. Name entered: Rao and Mehta Associates. Not Rao and Mehta Associates GST Filing Pune. The second version is a guidelines breach.
2. Primary category: Accountant. Additional categories: Tax preparation service, Bookkeeping service.
3. Address: the office suite number included, exactly as on your electricity bill.
4. Hours: 10:00 to 18:00, Monday to Friday. Someone answers the phone in those hours, because Google may ring it.
5. Verification offered: video recording. You film the street sign, the office door, the desk, the client files cabinet, and then yourself opening the accounting software you use.
6. Description written as plain sentences: what you do, who for, which city, since when.
7. Services added as separate line items, each with its own short description.
8. Ten photos: exterior with signage, reception, two of the team, the meeting room.

Now check your own website footer. If it says a different suite number or an old phone number, fix the website. Mismatched details between your site and your profile are a common reason an assistant repeats the wrong number.

What to put in the listing so it gets quoted

An assistant quotes short, specific, unambiguous statements. Most profiles are written as adverts, which are hard to quote. Write for extraction instead.

• Description: Google allows up to 750 characters. Open with one sentence that names the service, the customer and the city. Avoid slogans. Avoid superlatives, which assistants tend to strip out anyway.
• Categories: one primary plus up to nine more. Use only categories you genuinely serve.
• Services and products: list each one separately with its own description. Separate items are easier to cite than one long paragraph.
• Attributes: wheelchair access, appointment required, languages spoken, payment methods. These are structured fields, which means they survive being read by a machine.
• Questions and answers: post the real questions customers ask, and answer them in full sentences. This section is public and crawlable.
• Hours, including holiday hours: stale hours are the fastest way to lose trust with both people and machines.
• Photos with real content: signage, premises, team, work in progress.

One rule above all: the name, address and phone number on the profile must match your website and every directory you appear on, character for character. Consistency is what lets a machine decide that three pages describe the same company.

Where AI Knows Us fits

A Business Profile tells Google who you are. It does not tell you what ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude or Google AI Overviews actually say when a buyer asks for a recommendation and never types your name.

That is the gap AI Knows Us works on. It measures across those five apps, and every tracking question is asked without naming the business, because naming it primes the engine and the reading becomes worthless. Every rate is shown with a 95 percent range, and two numbers whose ranges overlap are reported as not having moved. It also does the fixing, not only the measuring: it runs 13 agents covering intake, discovery, analyst, diagnosis, planner, writer, editor, publisher, scout, outreach, experiment, lifecycle and the copilot, which between them write pages, publish them, and ask other sites to name the business. AI Knows Us is made by Clyra Labs in India.

On price: paid plans are not open yet. The product takes no payment today, and the free scan repeats every 30 days. Last verified: 16 October 2026.

Related pages on other sources assistants read: getting listed on Reddit and getting listed on Software Advice.

Who should not choose AI Knows Us

• You want someone to create, verify or appeal your Google Business Profile for you. That is local SEO work. Google's verification decisions are made by Google, and no vendor controls them.
• You need an invoice and a signed contract today. Paid plans are not open yet.
• Your buyers never use assistants. If every enquiry comes from a map pin or a walk-in, spend the hour on the profile and the reviews instead.

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