- For many trade businesses the Google profile is the first thing a customer sees, before the website.
- A complete profile with a specific category, hours, phone, website and description is the base. It costs nothing.
- Reviews and photos keep moving. The businesses near you set the bar, and the report shows where it is.
What the profile checker looks at
Three parts of the report, worth 44 of its 100 points, are about your Google Business Profile. These are the checks and the points each is worth:
| Part | Check | Points | What it looks for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google profile | Website on the profile | 3 | Your website is on the profile |
| Google profile | Phone on the profile | 2 | Your phone is on the profile |
| Google profile | Hours on the profile | 3 | Hours on the profile: five or more days for full points |
| Google profile | A description | 3 | A description on the profile |
| Google profile | A specific category | 2 | A specific category for your trade, not a vague one such as General Contractor when Google also knows you as a plumber |
| Google profile | A town on the profile | 2 | A town on the profile |
| Google profile | Marked open | 1 | Google shows the business as open, not closed |
| Reviews | How many reviews | 7 | How many Google reviews: 5, 25 and 100 are the steps |
| Reviews | Your rating | 5 | Your star rating, once you have 3 reviews: 4.7 and up for full points, 4.3 and 3.8 for some |
| Reviews | A recent review | 3 | How new your newest review is: within 30 days for full points, within 90 for some |
| Reviews | Reviews against nearby | 3 | Your review count against the typical business near you in your trade |
| Photos | How many photos | 5 | How many photos on the profile: 1, 5 and 10 are the steps |
| Photos | Photos of real work | 3 | Whether the photos we look at show real, finished work |
| Photos | Your name or truck in a photo | 2 | Whether your name, logo or truck shows in a photo |
The report reads your public profile. It does not sign in to your account, change anything on the profile, or contact your customers.
A check the report cannot run is left out of the score instead of counted against you: a website host that blocks our checker, a step Google did not answer, fewer than three nearby businesses to compare. The report says which checks were skipped and why. If fewer than 50 points could be checked, it does not give a score at all.
A complete profile, field by field
| Field | What to put | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Business name | Your real name, as on your truck and paperwork | Google's guidelines say extra words in the name can get a profile suspended |
| Primary category | The most specific one for your main work: Plumber, Roofing contractor, House cleaning service | A vague category puts you in the wrong searches |
| Hours | Your real hours, every day you work | Hours for only one or two days read as unfinished |
| Phone | The number you answer | A different number on your website than on the profile |
| Website | Your own site | No website at all, or a dead link |
| Description | Your services, the towns you serve, how long you have done it | Links, sales and prices, which the guidelines rule out |
| Service area | The towns you really drive to | An area wider than about 2 hours of driving from your base, the limit the guidelines set for most businesses |
Google's guidelines for representing your business are worth reading once. They are short, and breaking them is the usual reason a profile gets suspended.
Reviews: count, rating and recency
The report looks at reviews four ways: how many you have (points at 5, 25 and 100), your rating once you have at least three (full points at 4.7 and up), how recent the newest one is (within 30 days for full points), and how your count compares with the typical business in your nearby search.
Recency is the one owners miss. A profile with many reviews and nothing new in months tells a customer something may have changed. Asking every customer, every time, keeps the newest review recent. Google does not allow paying for reviews or only asking happy customers, so ask everyone the same way. A direct review link makes it one tap.
Photos that help
The report counts your photos (points at 1, 5 and 10) and looks at some of them for real finished work and for your name, logo or truck. Stock pictures do not count as work.
Google's photo guidelines ask for JPG or PNG files between 10 KB and 5 MB, recommend 720 by 720 pixels, and ask for photos that are in focus, well lit and not heavily altered. A phone photo of a finished job, taken in daylight, is exactly right. Add a few every month.
Before and after shots of the same job are some of the most useful photos a trade business can post. The free before-and-after photo maker puts two photos side by side at Google's recommended size.
After the report
Every low score in the report comes with the fix, in plain words, in the order that tends to matter most. Many take an evening: the page title, the description, the phone link, the profile hours. Others are habits: reviews and photos.
If you would rather not do it by hand, Koira builds a fast contractor website with these basics in place, keeps your listings matching, and asks for reviews after every paid job. See what Koira does for contractor SEO.
Last checked October 9, 2026.