Google Business Profile: the setting everyone gets wrong.

Published on 12 September 2026 · 6 min read

If you serve clients within a thirty-kilometre radius, your Google Business Profile probably brings you more calls than your site. It is what appears in the map block, at the top, before the classic results — and it is free.

There is one field in that profile that weighs more than all the others, and that most Swiss SMEs fill in the wrong way: the primary category.

The setting that gets missed

Google asks you for a primary category and allows secondary categories. Almost everyone picks the primary category the most natural way — the one that describes the trade in the broad sense — and that is exactly the mistake.

The primary category is what determines which searches Google will consider showing you on. The secondary ones carry only marginal weight. So:

• If you are a joiner but 80% of your turnover comes from bespoke kitchens, the primary category has to be the kitchen one, not “Joiner”.
• If you are a physiotherapist specialising in sport, the sport category becomes the primary one.
• If you are an accountant but mostly sell tax returns to private individuals, choose the tax category.

The right method is mechanical: type into Google the search you want to win, look at the three profiles that come out in the map block, open them, read their primary category. Take the same one. You do not have to guess what Google associates with what: it shows you.

The fields that actually move the ranking

Local ranking rests on three pillars — relevance, distance and prominence. You cannot act on distance. That leaves the following fields, in order of observed effect:

1. The primary category, as we have just seen.
2. The exact business name. Use the real name, as it appears on your shopfront and on your invoices. Adding keywords to it (“Dupont Plumbing Geneva 24h Callout”) is against Google's rules and exposes you to suspension.
3. The services. An underused field: you can list your services one by one, each with a description. Every entry is one more keyword, and a legitimate one.
4. The service area. If you travel to clients, declare the municipalities. If you receive them, give an address and declare none.
5. The opening hours, including public holidays. Google shows “hours might differ” when they are not confirmed, and that doubt costs calls.
6. The website link. Point it at the page that talks about the service concerned, not systematically at the home page.

Photos: the rule of three

Profiles that convert have, at a minimum: the exterior with the sign visible (the client has to recognise the place on arrival), the interior, and the finished work. Add a few every month rather than thirty at once: a living profile is treated better than a frozen one.

Avoid stock images. They are spotted, and they remove precisely what the profile is meant to provide: proof that you really exist in that place.

Reviews, without begging for them

The number of reviews and their regularity count for more than the average score. A profile at 4.6 with one review a month gets ahead of a profile at 5.0 that has been frozen for two years.

What works, in order: asking at the right moment (just after the work is finished, never through a bulk reminder), giving the short review link that Google generates in your dashboard, and replying to every review, including the bad ones, in two lines and without justifying yourself. The replies are read by prospects far more than by their authors.

What does not work: buying reviews (detected, and punished by removal of the profile), asking for them in exchange for a discount (prohibited), or putting a tablet on the counter that collects ten reviews from the same IP address.

What makes a profile fall

• An address or a phone number different from the one on the site. Make sure name, address and telephone are rigorously identical everywhere: profile, site, directories, social networks.
• Keywords stuffed into the business name.
• A home address declared as a shop when you receive nobody.
• Two profiles for the same business — it happens after a change of company name, and it cuts your prominence in half.
• Silence. A profile nobody ever touches loses ground to a profile that is maintained.

So what about the site?

The profile brings the call; the site makes the sale. Prospects who hesitate open your site from the profile: if it does not exist, or if it is dated, you lose part of what the profile brought you. The two work together, and the most profitable move is to match the profile's flagship service with a dedicated page on the site.

That is what The Local Client Method covers, the guide we hand over with the Site Complet: the Google profile, “trade + town” searches, and how to get cited by ChatGPT when someone is looking for your trade near where they live.