- Category
- What the business IS, not everything it sells. The primary one carries most of the weight.
- Name
- Exactly what the signboard says. Extra words are not permitted and can cost you the listing.
- Address or service area
- The real place if customers come to you. Hidden, with a service area, if you go to them.
- Hours
- Including the exceptions. Open on the profile and shuttered in person is its own kind of review.
Somebody within walking distance of your shop is searching for what you sell right now, on a phone. What comes back is a small map with three businesses pinned on it, each with opening hours, a star rating and a Directions button. Your website, if it appears at all, is somewhere below that.
That panel is the Google Business Profile. It costs nothing to set up, and it puts you in front of people who are already close enough to walk in and already looking.
The catch is that the setup has a handful of places where it quietly goes wrong, and most of them stay invisible until months later, when you wonder why the map keeps showing the shop across the road.
The listing you may already have
You do not always create the profile. A business can turn up on Maps without its owner ever touching Google, which is why there is a separate path for taking one over: find the business on Google Maps, then select Claim this business. If nothing exists yet, you start from scratch with Add your business to Google. Either way, Google says you can add or claim your business at no charge.
Search your own business name before you do anything else. An unclaimed listing with the wrong closing time is worse than no listing, because it is confidently sending people to a locked gate.
Verification is where most people stall
Claiming is the easy half. Verification is the half that takes a week and irritates everybody.
You do not choose how you verify. Google lists routes including phone or text, email, a live video call and a postcard, and states that the options available depend on your business type, public info, region, or business hours, are determined automatically and can't be changed. Once you have done your part, review takes up to five business days. If you are sent down the postcard route, most codes arrive within 14 days and expire after 30.
Many businesses are asked for a video recording instead, and it is the one people fail, so learn the rules before you start walking around with your phone out. The recording has to be unedited, complete, with no breaks and at least 30 seconds long, recorded and uploaded from a phone. A clip already sitting in your gallery will not do, which means you have to be standing at the shop when you record.
For a shop, that video has three jobs. First, tie the location to the real world: street signs, building numbers, the businesses either side of you. Second, show the business exists, with your name clearly printed on a permanent fixture such as a signboard, wall or window, matching the name on the profile. Third, prove you are the one running it, by doing something only staff can do, such as opening the till or unlocking the card machine.
The permanent fixture is the requirement that catches Nairobi shops. Google's guidelines say that a business showing its address should maintain permanent fixed signage of its name at that address. A stall in a plaza, a first-floor shop with an A4 page taped to the door, a workshop known only by the landlord's building name: all of them can be real, established businesses with a signage problem. If that is you, sort the signboard out before you start the verification, not after Google has rejected you twice.
If you have no premises and travel to customers, the video shows the tools and equipment you work with instead, and you can prove the business is yours with a permit, invoice or utility bill in the business name.
After Google approves you
We verified our own profile in September 2026, through the video route. We have no shopfront, so ours was the service-area version of the video, but what happens after approval works the same way for a shop, and none of it is in the help pages.
We submitted the recording on 14 September and it was approved on 19 September, inside the five business days Google allows. No email arrived to say so. The only way to find out was to open the profile, where the status had quietly changed to verified. If you are waiting on a result, check the profile every day or two rather than your inbox.
Verified is also not the same as visible. On the day of approval, a search for our name from a browser that was not signed in to Google showed no business panel, and Maps found nothing. Two days later both showed the listing. While you are signed in as the owner, Google shows you your own management panel on every search, which makes the profile look live when strangers still cannot see it. Check from a private browser window, searching your business name on Google and then on Maps, before you tell customers to look you up.
Once you are verified, Google asks you to complete the profile, and for a shop the first thing it asks for is a photo of the shop front. Take that one seriously, because it does the job the signboard does in the street. Every photo goes into review first and shows as pending on your side; our cover cleared the same day and the rest within two days. When they appear, most people see them as small squares cut from the middle of the picture, and anything near the left or right edge of a wide photo is cut off. Stand back far enough that the signboard sits in the centre of the frame, then look at the photo at thumbnail size before you upload it. If you cannot read the name, neither can the customer.
The four fields that decide whether you show up
Everything else on the profile is decoration compared with these.
Category. You pick one primary category and can add others for real departments or services, though Google's advice is to use a few from the list rather than one for every product. The primary one does most of the work, so it should describe what the business is, not the widest net you can throw. Google's own test is a good one: the category should complete the sentence "this business is a", not "this business has a". A hotel with a restaurant in it is a hotel. The guidelines also say plainly that you should not use categories solely as keywords.
Name. Whatever is on your signboard, and nothing else. Not the town, not the service, not "24/7", not a list of the things you sell. Google's guidelines state that including unnecessary information in your business name isn't permitted, and could result in the suspension of your Business Profile. Businesses do it because it looks like it should help. It is the fastest way to lose the listing you spent a week verifying.
Address. If customers come to you, the address has to be the actual shop, not a postal box or a virtual office. If you go to them and work from home, hide the address and set the service area instead. Google then shows a pin in the middle of your service area rather than at your gate, which we checked on our own listing: the pin sits well away from where we work.
Hours. These are the ones nobody maintains. Your regular hours matter less than the exceptions: the early close on Friday, the week around Idd, the day you shut for a family event. Google lets you set special hours for particular days, and a profile that says open when the shutter is down produces a specific kind of customer, who leaves a review about it.
Reviews, and the shortcut that ends badly
Reviews are the part of the profile a stranger actually reads, and the temptation is to hurry them along with a discount. Google is direct about this: offering incentives, like free or discounted goods or services, in exchange for reviews is considered fake and misleading content and is strictly prohibited. That covers paying for reviews, discounting for them, and asking somebody to change or remove one.
What you are allowed to do is ask. Google gives you a review link and a QR (quick response) code you can send, print on a receipt, or stick by the till. A customer has to be signed in to a Google account to leave a review, though it does not have to be a Gmail address. Then reply to the reviews you get, including the bad ones, briefly and without arguing. Every reply is read by the next person deciding whether to call you, not by the reviewer.
Ignore any guide that tells you to switch on chat
Plenty of Business Profile advice still tells you to enable messaging so customers can chat with you from the listing. That feature is gone. Google confirms that as of 31 July 2024, chat and call history are no longer available in the Business Profile, and points businesses to their phone number instead, with text messages and WhatsApp available to eligible accounts.
For a Kenyan shop this is less of a loss than it sounds, because the conversation was heading to WhatsApp anyway. It does mean two things carry more weight now. The phone number on the profile has to be one that somebody actually answers during the hours you have published, and WhatsApp has to be set up to catch the enquiry when they do not call. We have written a walkthrough of the WhatsApp Business setup that covers the greeting and quick replies.
The mistakes that cost the most
A keyword-stuffed name, which risks the whole profile. Categories chosen as a wish list rather than a description. Hours that were true in March. A profile verified under the personal Google account of a web designer or a former employee, so nobody can update it when it matters, which is the same fragility as keeping the customer list in one person's phone. And duplicate listings from an old branch or an earlier attempt, splitting your reviews across two entries so both look quiet.
What to do this week
- Search your business name on Google and see what already exists. Note the hours, the phone number and the pin.
- Claim it, or add it if there is nothing there.
- Start the verification Google offers you and finish it in one sitting. If it is a video, be at the shop with the signboard visible and the till within reach before you begin.
- Set the primary category as the thing you are, and add others only where they are also true.
- Write the name exactly as it appears on the signboard.
- Fill in hours, including the exceptions for the next two months, and a phone number somebody answers.
- After approval, check the listing from a private browser window on Google and on Maps.
- Upload photos taken on a decent phone in daylight, starting with the shop front, signboard in the centre of the frame.
- Send the review link to five customers you have already served well.
- Put a reminder in the calendar for a month from now to check the hours and reply to anything new.
Most of that is an afternoon. The verification is the part with a queue in it, so start there rather than perfecting the description first.
Sources and further reading
- Add or claim your Business Profile, Google Business Profile Help
- Verify your business on Google, Google Business Profile Help
- Verify your business with a video recording, Google Business Profile Help
- Guidelines for representing your business on Google, Google Business Profile Help
- Manage your business category, Google Business Profile Help
- Tips to get more reviews and read and reply to reviews, Google Business Profile Help
- Changes to Business Profile chat and call history, Google Business Profile Help
Where we can help
If you would rather it was done once, properly, the Local Visibility Setup is a one-off under our SEO and content systems service: the profile claimed and verified, categories chosen deliberately, the description and services written around the searches that bring you work, photos ordered, and a simple way to ask past customers for reviews. You keep the login.
If you are not sure this is the weakest part of your setup, book a call and we will look at what you have before recommending anything.
