Ask most local business owners where customers find them and they will point at their website. Ask their customers and you get a different answer.
BrightLocal surveyed 1,138 consumers about where they look for local business information they trust. Google Search came top. Google Maps came second. The business’s own website came third.
Your Google Business Profile is doing nearly twice as much work as your website — and for most businesses it is the thing nobody has looked at since it was set up.
What it costs when it is wrong
The same research found that 62% of consumers would avoid a business after finding incorrect information about it online. Not “would be annoyed by”. Would avoid.
And 28% go straight to a competitor when they hit a wrong address. They do not ring to check. They do not hunt for the right details. They tap the next result.
That is the part that catches people out. A wrong opening time is not a small tidiness problem. It is a customer you never knew you had, choosing someone else, silently, on their phone, in about four seconds.
The five things that are usually wrong
Opening hours
Especially the ones you changed temporarily two years ago and never changed back. If you run emergency callouts but your profile says you close at five, you are invisible for the most profitable jobs of the year.
The primary category
Google leans on this heavily to decide which searches you appear in. “Contractor” and “Roofing contractor” are not the same thing and will not return the same results.
Service areas
If you work across three counties and your profile lists one town, you have quietly excluded most of your own market. This matters most for trades with no shopfront, where the service area is the business.
Photos
Profiles with real photographs of real work get engaged with more than ones showing a logo and nothing else. This is the cheapest job on the list — your phone already has the pictures.
Reviews that stopped in 2023
A profile with recent reviews reads as a business that is still trading. One with nothing for two years reads as one that might not be.
Do this before you spend anything on a website
If your budget is tight, fix the profile before you touch the site. It is free, it takes an afternoon, and it sits in front of more people than your homepage does.
Search your own business name on a phone — not a desktop, and not while logged into the account that manages it. Look at what a customer actually sees. Check the number by calling it. Check the address by tapping directions. Check the hours against what you actually do. Then look at what your three nearest competitors have that you do not.
One thing to avoid
Do not buy reviews, and do not only ask the customers you already know are happy. In the UK, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 made fake reviews explicitly unlawful, and Google removes profiles over it. The downside is losing the listing entirely — which, given it is trusted more than your website, is the worst outcome available.
Ask everyone, consistently, as part of finishing a job. That is slower, and it is the only version that is safe.
The honest summary
A good website matters. But if your listing has the wrong number on it, a beautiful website is a beautiful thing nobody reaches.
Fix the free thing first.
PixelBot builds websites and rescues Google Business Profiles for local businesses across Texas and the West Midlands. Profile setup is fixed-price, and websites up to ten pages start at $350. See where we work.
Sources: BrightLocal, Local Business Discovery & Trust Report 2023 · Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.