Google Business Profile

Google Business Profile (GBP) is the free Google product that controls how a local business appears across the Google ecosystem — Google Search, Google Maps, the Local Pack, and the branded Knowledge Panel card. Owners claim and verify their listing via business.google.com, then manage the fielded data Google surfaces to searchers: name, category, address, phone, hours, photos, services list, attributes, posts, and Q&A.

GBP was rebranded from “Google My Business” (often abbreviated GMB) in November 2021. The product is the same; only the name and dashboard URL changed. Industry copy still uses GMB interchangeably; the current canonical name is Google Business Profile.

Google’s Local Pack algorithm reads dozens of signals off the GBP, but the high-impact ones cluster into six categories. Our GBP grader rubric in backend/app/core/gbp_grader/scoring.py weights them this way — total 100, each category is a composite of sub-checks:

• Profile completeness (25). Name, address, phone, website, primary category, hours, description, primary photo — eight equally-weighted sub-checks. The single biggest category and the cheapest to fix.
• Reviews (20). Composite of average rating (4.5+ is the strong-rating bar), review count (50 reviews is the established threshold), and recency (most-recent review <30 days for full credit). Recency matters at least as much as absolute count.
• Photos (15). 10+ high-quality photos is the “looks active” bar. Google surfaces at most 8-10 photos in the Knowledge Panel before the “more” link — past 10 the marginal lift flattens.
• Categories (15). Primary category is worth half; up to 3 secondary categories split the other half. Picking the right primary category is one of the highest-leverage single decisions in GBP optimization.
• NAP consistency (15). Name + address + phone all present and consistent. The cross-directory consistency check (P-18, see citation building) extends this category outside the GBP itself.
• Posts + Q&A (10). Recent Google Post in the last 30 days + answered open questions on the profile. Lower weight than the other categories, but the easiest signal to refresh weekly.

Categories sum to 100. The grader scores each category 0-100 and produces a weighted overall score, then assigns a classroom-style letter grade (90+ A, 80+ B, 70+ C, 60+ D, <60 F).

Google suspends Business Profiles when the listing trips guideline rules — and there’s no warning before it happens. Common triggers: keyword-stuffed business name (“Acme Plumbing 24/7 San Francisco” when the legal business name is just “Acme Plumbing”), virtual offices listed as storefronts, multiple GBPs for the same physical location, suspicious review patterns (review bursts, reviews from logged-out accounts in unusual geographies), and significant edits made in rapid succession.

A suspended profile disappears from the Local Pack, Knowledge Panel, and Maps results. Recovery is a manual reinstatement appeal through the Business Profile dashboard, and it can take days to weeks. Most suspensions are preventable: use your legal business name in the name field (put the “24/7” in the description instead), only list a storefront if you have a publicly-staffed storefront, and stagger major edits.

rank.ai links to your GBP via its place_id — Google’s stable identifier for the business entity. Place ID is the canonical key across Google Maps, the Places API, and the Knowledge Graph; it doesn’t change when you rename your business, move addresses (in most cases), or switch categories.

Linking by place ID lets the rank tracker, GBP grader, and citation monitor all reference the same business without re-matching the listing on every scan. The Knowledge Panel ownership detector in the geo-grid pipeline compares the panel’s place ID against your linked place ID — that’s how we flag “you own the panel” per cell without ambiguity.

GBP supports two business models. A storefront business has a publicly-staffed physical location customers visit (restaurant, retail store, clinic). The full street address shows on the profile and the map pin lands on the address. A service-area business (SAB) serves customers at their own location (plumber, electrician, cleaner). The address is hidden on the profile, and the SAB lists a service area defined by city, zip code, or radius.

Hybrid profiles — a storefront that also delivers — list both the address and the service area; the address is shown and the service area defines additional eligible query geographies. Picking the right model matters: a service-area business that lists a residential address as a storefront is a common suspension trigger. If you serve customers at their location, hide the address and define the service area instead.