Google Business Profile for trade businesses
Anyone searching a map for a trade and a town sees three entries first. We set yours up so the details are right, the work is visible and the call comes through without a detour.
In short and in plain language
This page is about your Google Business Profile. It is your entry on the map. It shows your phone, hours, photos and reviews.
The entry itself is free. But it is often out of date. We set it up and keep it up to date.
We add new photos and help with reviews. The profile belongs to you. The ongoing care can be canceled with one month's notice to the end of the month. There is no minimum term.
The profile does not replace your own website. We do not promise a set place on the map.
The initial assessment of your listing is free. Write to us or give us a call.
Key figures
88 percent
of trade businesses appear in online directories such as map services (Bitkom)
85 percent
see customers expecting constant availability (Bitkom)
40 percent
have an entry on a review platform (Bitkom)
56 percent
have their own presence on social networks (Bitkom)
Local visibility and business profile · net, plus VAT
- Set up the profile or take it over from someone else, complete the details and keep them correct
- Set main category, secondary categories, services and service area the way your customers search
- Add photos from the business and keep adding new ones through the year
- Maintain opening hours, public holidays and emergency cover before anyone stands at a locked door
- Collect reviews, answer them and keep an eye on new ones
- Monthly report with calls, route requests and clicks through to the website, on a single page
Ongoing care of the business profile and the most important directory entries, cancelable with one month's notice to the end of the month, no minimum term. The entry price covers one business with one location and one service area. Additional locations are discussed beforehand and the price is put in writing before we start.
Prices as of September 2026.
A trade business is rarely discovered through its own home page these days. It is discovered on the map. Someone searches in the evening for a trade and a town, sees three entries and decides within seconds based on distance, photos and reviews. The business profile is the calling card at exactly that point. The listing itself costs nothing, and still it sits half empty at many businesses: hours from the year before last, no individual services, one photo of a van that was traded in long ago. This page describes what belongs in a complete profile, how we build and maintain it, and where the line between profile and your own website runs.
Profile review: 24 points in one pass
| Measure | Effect on | Order |
|---|---|---|
| Hours, holidays, emergency cover | Fewer wasted calls | first |
| Categories and services | Better matched enquiries | first |
| Adding project photos | Entries actually read | next |
| Answering reviews | Trust before the call | ongoing |
What the profile contains and who reads it
The business profile is the listing that appears in the map search and beside the search results: name, address, phone number, opening hours, services, photos, reviews. It is free, but it only really belongs to you once you have claimed and verified it. Many businesses already have a listing that nobody in-house created, assembled from directories and map data. It often carries the number of a line that was disconnected years ago, or an address from before the move to the new yard. So the first step is rarely setting one up. It is taking one over.
The profile is read by people who already have a problem. 74 percent (Bitkom) of trade businesses find that customers have become more critical, and 85 percent (Bitkom) see a clear expectation of constant availability. Both meet in the profile. Anyone who clicks at half past seven in the evening and finds a closed door does not call, they open the next listing. Details that are correct matter more here than any well-turned phrase.
The profile does not replace the website. It shows a slice: contact details, a few photos, a handful of lines. Anyone who wants to know whether you handle period properties, how long a bathroom takes or whether you are taking on apprentices clicks on and lands on your own website. Profile and website work together: the profile earns the click, the page behind it decides the enquiry.
Before setting up: sort out access
Which businesses benefit most
Businesses with emergency cover
Anyone who goes out at night or at the weekend is found on the map, not through the home page. If only office hours are listed, nobody calls in the evening even though someone is on duty.
Businesses covering a wide area
If you regularly drive forty kilometres, the area has to be recorded. Otherwise you never appear in neighbouring towns, even though you have a site there every week.
Businesses looking for staff
Applicants look at the profile and the photos before they dial a number. An empty profile says more about a business than any job advert below it.
Businesses with visible work
Roof, facade, bathroom, staircase: anything you can photograph works immediately in the profile. How such shots come about during normal work is covered under project photos.
Businesses with quiet regulars
72 percent (Bitkom) of trade businesses see online customer reviews as a real opportunity to win new work. Without a fixed routine after handover, one rarely arrives anyway.
Businesses with no time for it
The upkeep takes less than an hour a month, but it slips, and it slips first during the busy season. That gap is exactly what the monthly support covers.
How we go about it
Take stock
We check whether a profile exists, who owns it, what it says and where the same details appear elsewhere: directories, trade portals, old entries left over from earlier website projects. The result is a list of findings, not a presentation.
Take over access
Run through the verification process, put the management rights on an account owned by the business, remove redundant old access. We work alongside as an additional manager. You remain the owner of the listing, including after the work ends.
Sort the details
Name, address, number, opening hours, public holidays, emergency cover. Then the main category, matching secondary categories and the services named individually rather than bundled into one sentence. A business that tiles and fits bathrooms needs both entries, not a compromise.
Area and photos
Set the service area the way you actually drive, not the way it looks good. Add photos from the business: finished work, workshop, vehicles, the team. If you are based within our radius we come out for the shots; the photo support sits inside the project price and is not billed separately.
Maintain and report
Every month: add new photos, answer reviews, adjust hours before public holidays, reconcile directory entries. At the end of the month you get one page with calls, route requests and clicks through to the website. If the site itself should be looked after too, that is covered under maintenance and support.
We check whether a profile exists, who owns it, what it says and where the same details appear elsewhere: directories, trade portals, old entries left over from earlier website projects. The result is a list of findings, not a presentation.
Run through the verification process, put the management rights on an account owned by the business, remove redundant old access. We work alongside as an additional manager. You remain the owner of the listing, including after the work ends.
Name, address, number, opening hours, public holidays, emergency cover. Then the main category, matching secondary categories and the services named individually rather than bundled into one sentence. A business that tiles and fits bathrooms needs both entries, not a compromise.
Set the service area the way you actually drive, not the way it looks good. Add photos from the business: finished work, workshop, vehicles, the team. If you are based within our radius we come out for the shots; the photo support sits inside the project price and is not billed separately.
Every month: add new photos, answer reviews, adjust hours before public holidays, reconcile directory entries. At the end of the month you get one page with calls, route requests and clicks through to the website. If the site itself should be looked after too, that is covered under maintenance and support.
What the whole thing consists of
Eight building blocks, not three fields
Most businesses fill in name, address and phone number and consider the profile done. The map area weighs up rather more than that: which categories are set, whether the services are named individually, how large the area is, whether there are photos and whether reviews get answered. Completeness is not diligence for its own sake here. It is the difference between the fourth entry and the first.
- Core details and hours: half of all wasted calls start here
- Categories and services: they decide which searches you appear in at all
- Photos and reviews: they decide whether anyone calls after you appear
The same number everywhere
Your contact details do not only sit in the profile. They sit in directories, in trade portals, in entries someone created for you years ago. Where those details differ, it reads like uncertainty in the map area and like a lost call in daily work. We reconcile the important findings against one single state and keep them there, instead of hunting them down again every year.
- One state for name, address, number and hours, spelled the same everywhere
- Track down old entries with disconnected lines and have them corrected
- After a move, a number change or a handover, go through everything once
What the support covers
Setup, upkeep, reviews
The support is not a package with an asterisk but a fixed list of tasks. What is on that list is also in the order confirmation.
Taking stock
Find existing entries, spot duplicates, clarify access. You get the findings as a list, including the ones we do not like.
Handover and rights
Run the verification, tidy up the management rights, remove old access. The business stays the owner.
Categories and services
Set the main category, add secondary ones, name services individually instead of in one collective sentence.
Service area
Record towns and radius the way you actually drive. For businesses without a shopfront, without a visible address.
Hours and holidays
Enter public holidays for the whole year, add works holidays, keep emergency cover periods current.
Adding photos
Add new project photos, retire old ones, fill in shots from the workshop and the vehicle fleet.
Reconciling directories
Check the important findings against the current state once a quarter and have deviations corrected.
Monthly report
One page: calls, route requests, clicks through to the website, plus a sentence on what comes next month.
Introduce a routine
Pick a fixed moment after handover and hand over a short route: a card in the van, a line in the invoice email.
Drafting replies
We draft the replies, you approve them. Nothing is published without your word.
Handling criticism
Answer factually, do not relitigate the job in public, offer a conversation. Anything breaching the provider's rules, we report.
Keeping watch
New reviews often go unnoticed for weeks inside a business. We check and get in touch when something needs doing.
Collecting reviews without begging
Reviews are the one part no provider can handle for you. Buying them is not allowed, writing them yourself even less so, and anyone who tempts customers with a voucher gets exactly the reviews that look like it. What works is unspectacular: ask after handover, at the right moment, with a short route. 72 percent (Bitkom) of trade businesses see online customer reviews as a real opportunity to win new work and build trust, while only 40 percent (Bitkom) have an entry on a review platform at all. What lies between the two is not a tool but a habit.
- Ask on the day of handover, not three weeks later. The relief is still fresh then.
- Hand over a short route: a card in the van, a line in the invoice email, a sticker on the folder.
- Ask the customers whose job went smoothly. That is not filtering, it is manners.
- Reply to every review, the good ones included. Two sentences are enough, customer names stay out.
- With criticism, stay factual, do not relitigate the job in public, offer a conversation. Anyone who defends themselves loses the readers.
- Almost nothing can be deleted. What breaches the rules can be reported; the rest is put in perspective by new, genuine voices.
Where the profile ends and the website begins
A well-kept profile brings calls for clear-cut jobs: a burst pipe, a tripped fuse, a slipped roof tile. It does not bring enquiries for anything that needs explaining. Anyone having a heating system replaced, a facade insulated or a staircase built reads more than four lines. On top of that, the profile is only partly yours. The presentation changes, categories disappear, features come and go, and everything in it is tied to the provider. What you build on your own site stays with you. That is why the profile is never the whole answer here, only the faster half of it. The other half, service pages per trade and per town, is covered under SEO for trade businesses.
Three ways to run the profile
Every business does one of them, including the one that has not decided.
Managed upkeep
- Included: Fixed monthly price from 290 euros per month, cancelable with one month's notice to the end of the month, no minimum term
- Included: Details, categories, area and photos stay current, busy season included
- Included: Reviews get answered instead of collected and forgotten
- Not included: Costs money for something you could in principle do yourself
Doing it yourself on the side
- Included: Costs nothing but time, and responsibility stays in-house
- Not included: Slips as soon as the order books are full
- Not included: Holiday hours and emergency cover periods are regularly forgotten
- Not included: Old directory entries only surface when a customer dials the wrong number
Not bothering at all
- Not included: The listing exists anyway, often assembled from third-party data
- Not included: A wrong number or an old address sits there unnoticed for months
- Not included: Reviews stay unanswered and are read all the same
Where we look after trade businesses
We are based in Söhlde near Hildesheim. Within that radius we come out for the initial review and for photos; the ongoing profile upkeep itself runs by phone and email and is not tied to a distance.
- Hildesheim
- Hanover
- Brunswick
- Peine
- Salzgitter
- Wolfsburg
- Göttingen
- Celle
Typical courses in profile work
Examples, not client projects.
Profile support or full SEO support?
The short version
- The listing itself is free. What is paid for is the work on it, and that is what makes the difference.
- Completeness beats phrasing: hours, categories, services and area first, wording afterwards.
- Details take effect within days, photos and reviews over months (project experience).
- The profile belongs to the business, not to the provider. We work alongside as a manager and step back out.
- Support costs from 290 euros per month, cancelable with one month's notice to the end of the month, no minimum term.
- What is promised is work, price and a report. Not a position in the map area and not a date.
How complete is your listing right now?
We look at the profile, the directory entries and the reviews and tell you which three points do the most. Free, without obligation and without pressure for an appointment.