The 23-Point GBP Checklist Every Contractor Should Run Today

Google cross-references your name, address, and phone number against hundreds of directories to verify your business is legitimate. One inconsistency — "LLC" in one place and gone in another, a suite number formatted differently — creates a data conflict that suppresses your map pack rank. Audit these seven items first.

Item 1 — Business name: Must be character-for-character identical to your website, license, and every major directory. Do not add city names or trade keywords to the name field — GBP guidelines treat keyword stuffing in the business name as a policy violation and it gets listings suspended.

Item 2 — Primary phone number: Use your main business line. A call-tracking or forwarding number used as the primary listing phone creates NAP inconsistencies across directories.

Item 3 — Address or service area: If you are a service-area business — plumbing, HVAC, electrical — hide your physical address and configure a service area instead. Displaying a home address can trigger a policy flag and suppress your listing.

Item 4 — Business hours: Verify listed hours match reality, including whether you genuinely offer 24-hour or emergency service. Wrong hours generate 1-star reviews from customers who called at 9 PM and got nothing.

Item 5 — Special and holiday hours: Configure these before the holiday, not after. Google surfaces businesses with confirmed special hours in holiday-period searches.

Item 6 — Business description: 750-character maximum. Front-load the first 250 characters with your primary trade, service city, and a concrete differentiator — that is the text visible before a customer clicks "more."

Item 7 — Attributes: Check every applicable attribute: 24-hour service, free estimates, veteran-owned, women-led, on-site services, online estimates. Each attribute adds filter-based search visibility — a customer filtering for "open 24 hours" sees you or does not based on this one checkbox.

Your primary category is the single most important ranking signal in your GBP — more than reviews, more than post frequency. It tells Google which search queries you are eligible to appear for. Get it wrong and you are invisible for your core service no matter what else you do.

Item 8 — Primary category: Choose the most specific category that matches your core business. "Plumber" outperforms "Contractor." "HVAC contractor" beats "Air conditioning contractor" if you do both heating and cooling. Google maintains a closed list of approved categories — you select from that list, you do not create custom entries.

Item 9 — Secondary categories: You can add up to 9 secondary categories. Most contractors use 1 or 2 and leave the rest blank. If you offer multiple distinct services — drain cleaning, water heater installation, emergency plumbing — add a secondary category for each major service line. Each one makes you eligible for additional search queries.

Item 10 — Services list: The services panel is indexed by Google separately from your business description and creates additional keyword surface area. A plumber who lists "water heater replacement," "sewer line repair," and "toilet installation" as individual services can rank for each of those terms independently of the business description.

Item 11 — Service descriptions: Each service entry has a description field. Fill it with 1–2 sentences describing the service and when a customer needs it. Blank service descriptions leave indexable keyword space sitting empty.

Profiles with photos earn more direction requests and website clicks than profiles without them — and Google's own photo and video guidelines confirm that photo completeness is a quality signal Google assesses. Here are the four photo and video items to audit.

Item 12 — Exterior and vehicle photos: Upload at least 3 photos of your branded truck or vehicle. If you operate service-area only with no customer-facing storefront, your truck is your exterior. Customers use these photos to confirm they called the right company when your technician pulls up.

Item 13 — Team and technician photos: Add at least one headshot or team photo. A photo of the actual person showing up reduces cancellations. People hire people, not logos.

Item 14 — Job site and work photos: This is where most contractors leave ranking points behind. Upload before-and-after photos from actual jobs — replaced water heaters, finished panel upgrades, cleared sewer lines. Target 10 photos minimum total, and add 3–5 new photos each month to signal ongoing activity to Google.

Item 15 — Video: GBP supports video up to 30 seconds at minimum 720p resolution. A 20-second clip of a technician introducing themselves or walking through a completed job drives profile clicks. Shoot horizontally on your phone — production quality is not the bar here.

File specs: JPG or PNG, minimum 720×540 pixels, maximum 5MB per image. Embedding GPS coordinates in photo metadata before upload adds a local relevance signal that most competitors skip.

Standard Update posts expire after 7 days. That means a profile with no post in the last week looks dormant to anyone who checks — and looks inactive to Google. The minimum is one Update post per week, every week, without exception.

Item 16 — Post cadence: Set a recurring weekly task. Offer posts and Event posts persist until their end date, so stack a running offer on top of your weekly updates. An active Offer post — "Free camera inspection with any drain service this month" — running alongside weekly updates signals consistent business activity and gives customers a reason to choose you over the next listing.

Item 17 — Post format: Posts allow up to 1,500 characters — keep the first 100 tight because that is the preview text visible without clicking. Add a call-to-action button (Call Now, Book Online, or Learn More) on every post. Include a photo — posts with images consistently outperform text-only in click-through.

A high-performing contractor post looks like this: "Water heater making popping noises? That is sediment buildup — and you are paying to heat water inefficiently. We are replacing water heaters in [City] this week with same-day availability. Call now for a free estimate." Specific, service-relevant, urgency-driven. Generic filler — "Happy Monday! We are here to serve your community!" — wastes the weekly slot and does nothing for your ranking.

Reviews are the most visible trust signal on your listing and a direct factor in local pack ranking. Before you focus on generating more reviews, audit where you actually stand against the competitors who are beating you in the map pack.

Item 18 — Total review count versus competitors: Search your primary trade plus city in Google Maps. Look at the top 3 results. If they have 150 reviews and you have 40, you are losing the most visible credibility comparison on the page before a customer even clicks your listing. Write down that gap — it is your benchmark.

Item 19 — Review velocity in the last 30 days: Total count matters, but recency matters just as much. A competitor picking up 15 reviews this month while you get 2 is building momentum that compounds month after month. Baseline yourself: how many reviews did you receive in the last 30 days? Fewer than 4 means your review acquisition process is broken — not slow, broken.

Item 20 — Response rate: Respond to every review — 5-star, 3-star, 1-star, all of them. For negative reviews, respond within 24 hours with a factual, non-defensive reply. A 100% response rate signals an actively managed business to both Google and to every potential customer reading your profile before they decide to call you or the next contractor.

Item 21 — Average rating: A rating below 4.0 hands map pack position to competitors by default. If you are below 4.0, a review recovery plan is the single most urgent item on this entire checklist — before categories, before photos, before posts.

Does your GBP Q&A section actually answer the questions customers ask before calling? Almost certainly not — most contractors leave it completely blank. That means random users, or competitors, fill it in for you with information you have no control over.

Item 22 — Q&A section: Open your profile and check Questions and Answers. If it is empty, fix it this week. Proactively post 5–8 questions customers actually ask: "Do you offer 24-hour emergency service?" / "What cities do you serve?" / "Are your technicians licensed and insured?" / "Do you provide free estimates?" Post the question from a personal Google account, then answer it from your business account. This puts accurate information in front of every customer who checks before calling — and prevents anyone else from posting misinformation that you then have to fight.

Item 23 — Service area: If you hid your address and configured a service area, verify the coverage matches where you actually work and have real reviews. Setting an unrealistically large radius — covering 80 miles when your jobs cluster within 20 — can suppress your ranking in your actual core market. A city-by-city list typically outperforms a broad radius for contractors serving specific named suburbs or zip codes because it aligns with the locations where you have genuine review and job history.

If you found gaps — and you will — you have two paths forward.

Fix it yourself: Budget 6–10 hours to correct every item and configure everything properly. Then budget 3–5 hours per week ongoing — posts, review responses, new job photos, Q&A monitoring. That is time you are either billing at your trade rate or not spending on your family.

Have it done for you: We configure and manage the full local presence for home service contractors — GBP optimization, AI-powered call answering, missed-call text-back, and automated review acquisition — so that every call that comes from that map pack listing gets answered, qualified, and booked without you logging into anything. If you found more than 3 gaps on this checklist, the fastest path to fixing them and recovering the revenue they are costing you is to get a local presence audit.