Local listings and Google Business Profile

Search for almost any trade or shop plus a town name and you will see a small map with a handful of businesses pinned to it. For many local firms that block brings in more calls than the website does. It is fed by Google Business Profile, a free listing that any eligible business can claim and manage.

This note covers how the map results are chosen, how to set up a profile that will not get suspended, and the review practices that cause real trouble.

How the map results are chosen

Google's help pages say local results are based mainly on three things.

• Relevance: how well the profile matches what someone searched for. Complete, accurate details help here.
• Distance: how far the business is from the searcher, or from the place named in the search.
• Prominence: how well known the business is, drawing on things like reviews, links and mentions elsewhere on the web.

The same page is unusually direct about one thing: there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Ads can appear above or within the map, but they are labelled as ads and bought separately.

Setting up a profile that lasts

Google publishes guidelines for how businesses must represent themselves, and profiles that ignore them can be suspended. The ones that catch New Zealand businesses most often are below.

Use your real name. The business name on the profile should match what appears on your signage, vehicles and invoices. Adding extra words, such as "Best Plumber Tauranga 24/7", is not allowed and is a common reason for suspension. Locations, phone numbers, opening hours and taglines belong in their own fields.

Choose few, specific categories. Google asks businesses to use as few categories as possible and to make them specific. A helpful test from the guidelines is that a category should complete the sentence "This business is a…". "Electrician" passes. "Heat pump installation" is a service, and services have their own section.

Hide the address if customers do not visit. Many New Zealand tradespeople run their business from home and travel to customers. The guidelines say those service-area businesses should hide their address and list the areas they serve instead. Showing a home address can lead to problems, and it is not something most people want on a public map anyway.

Keep hours honest. Public holidays and the summer close-down catch people out every year. Set special hours ahead of Waitangi Day, Easter, Matariki and the Christmas and New Year break so customers are not met with a locked door.

Consistent details everywhere

Your business name, address and phone number appear in more places than you think: directories, industry associations, the local council's supplier list, social media and old listings set up years ago. When those details disagree, people get confused and search engines may be less confident that they all describe the same business.

Once a year, search your business name and old phone numbers and note every listing that turns up. Fix what you can log in to, and ask the others to update. This is dull work, but it is cheap and it lasts.

Reviews: what is allowed

Reviews feed into prominence, and they are often the first thing a customer reads. Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help a business's local ranking, and it encourages owners to reply to them. It is also strict about how reviews are gathered. Under its content policy, a business must not:

• offer discounts, free goods or any other reward in exchange for a review, or for changing or removing a negative one;
• discourage negative reviews, or ask only happy customers for reviews (sometimes called "review gating");
• post reviews from staff, family or anyone with a conflict of interest, or have one person post from several accounts.

Breaking these rules can lead to reviews being removed and, in serious cases, restrictions on the profile.

New Zealand consumer law points the same way. The Commerce Commission's guidance is that reviews must be genuine and presented in a way that does not mislead. In August 2026 a District Court penalty of $1,104,000 was ordered against a retailer, in a prosecution brought by the Commission over conduct that included staff posting positive reviews without saying who they were and not publishing low-rated reviews unless the customer answered a follow-up email. The court called the review conduct deliberate and systematic.

The safe approach is simple: ask every customer, in the same way, after the job is done, and reply politely to whatever comes back.

A quarterly routine

• Check your categories, services and hours are still right.
• Add a few current photos of real work, with the customer's permission where they or their property can be identified.
• Reply to every new review, good or bad, briefly and without arguing.
• Search for your business from a phone in the area you serve and see what a customer sees.

Half an hour every three months is enough for most small businesses.