How to Set Up a Google Business Profile (UK Guide)

Setting up a Google Business Profile isn't complicated, but it's easy to do in a way that causes problems six months later — the wrong category, a duplicate listing, an address that doesn't quite match what's on your website. None of that shows up as an error message at the time. It just quietly costs you later.

In short

This guide is for anyone who's never claimed a Google Business Profile before — a new business, or an existing one that's simply never had a listing. It covers setup only: creating the profile, entering your details correctly, choosing a category and getting through verification. It does not cover what to do once your profile is live and eligible to rank — that's a separate job with its own checklist, linked further down.

Before you start: what you need

Have these four things ready before you open Google Business Profile Manager. Gathering them first is faster than stopping halfway through to go and find a phone bill.

• Your business name, exactly as it appears on official records — your website, your invoices, your VAT registration if you have one. Not a marketing name or a shortened version; Google checks this against other places your business is mentioned, and starting with a mismatch builds a problem in from day one.
• A real address, or a clearly defined service area. If customers visit you — a shop, a clinic, an office — you'll enter that address. If you go to them — most trades, mobile services, home visits — you'll mark the business as service-area only and list the towns or postcodes you cover instead. Get this distinction right at setup; it's the difference between an address showing publicly and staying private.
• A phone number that's actually staffed. Ideally a local or mobile number your team answers, not a generic head-office line that routes through three menus before anyone picks up. This is the number Google shows searchers, so it needs to work.
• A business email address, preferably one on your own domain rather than a personal account. You'll need this to manage the profile and receive verification communications from Google.

Step by step: creating your profile

The Google Business Profile Manager interface changes fairly often — sometimes cosmetically, sometimes moving whole steps around — so treat what follows as the order of decisions you'll make, not a literal click-by-click walkthrough of buttons that may have moved by the time you read this.

Search for your business first. Before creating anything new, search for your business name on Google Maps and in Business Profile Manager. If a listing already exists — created by a previous employee, an old agency, or even automatically by Google from other web mentions — claim that one rather than starting fresh. Creating a second profile for a business that already has one is one of the most common setup mistakes, and it causes real problems later (more on that below).

Enter your business name and address, or mark it as service-area. This is where the decision from the section above gets applied. Take care here — this is the field most likely to need correcting later if it's wrong, and corrections aren't always instant.

Choose your business category. This is one of the most consequential choices in the entire setup process, because it directly shapes which searches Google considers your profile relevant for. Pick too broad a category and you're competing in searches you're not really suited to; pick a vague one and you may miss searches you should be winning. We've written a full guide to choosing your primary category properly — read that before finalising this step rather than guessing, since it's genuinely worth getting right the first time.

Add your phone number, website and business hours. Straightforward fields, but worth double-checking against what's actually printed on your website footer and invoices — this is the start of the name-address-phone consistency that matters for local search generally.

Submit for verification. This is the step that actually determines whether your profile is eligible to show up publicly at all, so it's worth its own section below.

Verification: the step that actually publishes your listing

A profile that hasn't been verified doesn't appear properly in Google Maps or the local map pack — verification is what tells Google the business genuinely exists at the details provided, and it's non-negotiable.

In the UK, the method offered depends on your business type and what Google has available for your category and location at the time:

• Postcard verification remains common, especially for newer profiles or certain business categories. Google posts a card to the address you provided, containing a code you enter into your dashboard. Realistically allow one to two weeks for it to arrive — sometimes longer around bank holidays or postal disruption — plus the few minutes it takes to enter the code once you have it.
• Phone verification, where offered, is close to instant — Google calls or texts a code to the number on the profile.
• Email verification, similarly fast where available, sends a code to your business email address.
• Video verification, a newer method Google has rolled out for some account types, asks you to film a short walkthrough proving the business exists at the stated location.

Which of these you're offered isn't something you choose freely — Google decides based on your business category, history and location, and it can change. If postcard is your only option, plan around the timeline rather than treating it as the last step of an afternoon's work.

If verification stalls: don't submit a second profile to try again — that creates the duplicate problem covered below, and duplicates are considerably harder to fix than a slow postcard. If a postcard doesn't arrive within a reasonable window, request another one from within your dashboard rather than starting over. If a method genuinely fails or the option disappears, Google's own support channels are the right next step, not creating a fresh listing.

Setup mistakes that cause problems later

These aren't obscure edge cases — they're the mistakes that show up repeatedly once a profile has been live for a while, and all four are easiest to avoid at the point of creation.

Choosing the wrong category up front. A category picked in a hurry, or the closest-sounding option rather than the accurate one, shapes which searches you're eligible for from the very start. Fixing it later is possible, but it means unwinding months of Google associating your profile with the wrong kind of search. Get it right at setup — see the primary category guide linked above.

Creating a duplicate profile. This happens more often than you'd expect — a new owner sets up a fresh listing not realising one already exists from a previous employee, agency, or an automatic Google-generated entry. Duplicates split your reviews, confuse which listing Google should trust, and can suppress both. Always search before you create.

Mismatched name, address or phone details from day one. If the name, address or phone number entered on your profile doesn't match what's on your website and other places your business is mentioned online, you've built an inconsistency in from the start rather than one that developed over time. That's a harder pattern to unpick than getting it right once at the beginning.

Ignoring or mishandling verification issues. A profile stuck in limbo, or one where verification was attempted incorrectly, can lead to bigger problems than a delay. If your profile ever gets flagged, restricted or removed after setup — whether from a verification issue or something else — our guide to Google Business Profile suspension in the UK covers what that looks like and how reinstatement actually works.

What "Google Business Manager" actually is

If you've searched for "Google business manager" and landed here, it's worth clearing up: there's no separate product by that name. What people mean is Business Profile Manager — the same dashboard you use to create, verify and manage your profile, sometimes referred to loosely by a slightly different name. There's nothing extra to sign up for and no additional account to create; it's the account and dashboard covered throughout this guide, not a separate service sitting alongside it.

What to do once your profile goes live

Getting a profile created and verified is the finish line for this guide, but it's the starting line for the actual work. A newly verified profile with the bare minimum filled in isn't eligible to compete for much — it isn't yet what puts you in the map pack that most local searches actually rank on, and it won't compete with established listings that have months or years of photos, reviews and activity behind them.

The full list of what to add, check and maintain from here — categories in more depth, services, photos, posts, review cadence and more — is covered in our local SEO checklist, which picks up exactly where this guide leaves off. If you'd rather have someone handle that ongoing work for you once the profile's live, our Google Business Profile optimisation service covers it end to end.