Google Business Profile for Irish businesses: set up and optimise

Updated 3 November 2026 · 4 min read

When someone searches for "plumber near me", "café Ennis" or "physio Letterkenny", the map and business listings at the top of the results come from Google Business Profile. For many local businesses it brings in more enquiries than the website.

A Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is free. It controls how your business appears in Google Search and Google Maps: name, address or service area, opening hours, phone number, website, photos and reviews. Here is how to set one up properly and keep it working for you.

Before you start

• Check whether a profile already exists. Search for your business name and town on Google Maps. Profiles are sometimes created automatically or by a previous owner. If one exists, claim it rather than creating a duplicate.
• Use a business Google account that you control long term, not an employee's personal account or a web designer's account.
• Decide how you serve customers. Do customers come to you (a shop, salon or café), do you go to them (a tradesperson or mobile service), or both?

Setting up the profile

1. Go to Google Business Profile and sign in with your business account.
2. Enter your business name exactly as it appears on your shopfront, signage and stationery. Adding keywords or locations to the name ("Murphy's Plumbing Best Plumber Cork") breaks Google's guidelines and can get the profile suspended.
3. Choose a primary category. This is one of the most important choices on the profile. Pick the most specific category that describes your main business, then add a small number of secondary categories for other services.
4. Add your location or service area. If customers visit you, enter your address and include your Eircode, which helps Google place you precisely, especially in rural areas where addresses can be ambiguous. If you work from home and visit customers, set a service area (towns or counties you cover) and hide your home address.
5. Add contact details: phone number and website.
6. Verify the business. Google offers different verification options depending on the business, including a video recording showing your premises and equipment, a phone call or text, email, or a postcard to your address. Follow the instructions exactly; a rejected video can delay things.

Completing the profile properly

A verified but half-empty profile does little. Work through every section:

• Opening hours, including special hours for bank holidays, Christmas and St Stephen's Day. Wrong hours on a bank holiday are a common source of bad reviews.
• Business description. Say plainly what you do, where and for whom. No links or promotional shouting.
• Services or products, with short descriptions.
• Attributes such as wheelchair access, outdoor seating or online appointments, where relevant.
• Photos. Add real photos of your premises inside and out, your team at work (with their consent), your products and finished jobs. Customers want to recognise the shopfront when they arrive.

Reviews: getting them and answering them

Reviews influence both whether people choose you and how prominently you appear. The best approach is simply to ask happy customers, at the right moment, with a direct link. You can generate a review link from inside your profile and put it on receipts, in follow-up emails or on a card at the till.

Google's policies prohibit fake reviews and offering incentives such as discounts in exchange for reviews, and reviews written by staff or family about their own business. Breaking these rules can lead to reviews being removed or the profile being restricted.

Reply to reviews, good and bad. Keep replies short, polite and specific. For a negative review, acknowledge the problem, avoid arguing in public and offer to sort it out offline. Do not include customers' personal details in replies; the GDPR still applies.

Keeping the profile active

• Posts. You can publish short updates, offers and events on the profile. They are a simple way to show the business is active. Reuse what you post on social media; see a social media plan for a small business.
• Questions and answers. Answer common questions yourself so the information is accurate.
• Check for edits. Anyone can suggest changes to a profile, and Google sometimes applies them. Log in regularly and check your hours, phone number and address.
• Use the performance reports to see how people find you and what they do: calls, direction requests and website clicks.

Common mistakes

Your website and the profile

The profile and your website work together. Make sure the website shows the same name, address and phone number, has a page for each main service, and loads quickly on a phone. If you are planning a new website, the Trading Online Voucher may cover part of the cost.