Google Business Profile · Management and recovery
Google Business Profile Management and Recovery
Profile management for £150 a month, and suspended listings put back on the map. Formerly Google My Business.
The call is free and there is nothing to sign.
5 stars from 300+ Google reviews. Call 020 7112 8794.
Management and suspension recovery.
My profile needs looking after
Posts, reviews, photos, categories and the monthly checks that keep a listing showing.
See what we do each monthMy profile is suspended, unverified or gone
Appeals, reinstatements, verification and duplicate removals. We check whether your case is worth appealing before you pay anything.
Start with a free checkGoogle Business Profile
What is Google Business Profile management?
Google Business Profile management is the ongoing work of keeping a business listing accurate, active and inside Google’s rules so it shows in Maps and local results. The product was called Google My Business until 2021 and is still widely known as GMB. First Place SEO runs this for UK businesses at £150 a month, or included in any SEO plan.
£150 a month. Included in every SEO plan.
Accurate, active and within Google’s rules. Ongoing management helps your business stay visible across Google Maps and local search results. First Place SEO
Monthly profile management
What we do every month
You search your own trade and your own town on your phone. Three businesses sit in the box at the top with the little map. Yours is not one of them. The businesses that are there are not better than you, and two of them you have never heard of.
That box is the single biggest source of local enquiries in the UK, and getting into it is mostly steady, unglamorous work. Here is what that work is.
Profile accuracy
Rules and listing details checked every month
Every month we check your name, categories, service area, opening hours, attributes and contact details against Google's published rules. Most profiles we take over are breaking at least one of them.
Content and activity
Four posts, fresh photos and current services
Four posts a month, fresh photos, and your services and products kept current. A profile that never changes slowly stops showing, and Google now treats a listing left alone for a month as stale.
Reviews and reporting
Replies within two working days and a real rank map
Every review answered within two working days, help asking customers for new ones, and a monthly map of where you actually rank across your area. Not a traffic light chart. An actual map.
How local rankings work
Relevance, distance and prominence
Google names three factors for local ranking. Two of them you can work on. One of them you cannot.
01
Relevance
Relevance is how well your profile matches what someone typed. Categories, services and business description do most of this job.
You can work on this
02
Prominence
Prominence is how well known your business is, on and off Google. Reviews, mentions, links and your website all feed it.
You can work on this
03
Distance
Distance is how far you are from the person searching. You cannot change it. Nobody selling profile management will lead with this, so we will.
Fixed by location
Run the ten-second Maps test
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Open Google Maps Start with a wide view of your area.
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Find your business Make sure the profile appears before you zoom.
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Zoom towards your street Watch whether the profile stays visible or vanishes.
If you vanish as you get closer, you are being filtered rather than penalised. Google hides near-identical businesses sitting close together, which is why three solicitors in one building rarely all appear at once. It is a display decision, and no amount of profile work overrides it.
What good work can do
Widen the area you appear in
Better profile work widens the area you appear in. It does not remove the radius.
What it cannot do
Remove the effect of distance
A profile in perfect shape still may not show for a search two miles away. If your nearest customers are ten miles off, profile work alone will not fix that, and any agency promising the top three spots across your whole county is guessing.
The rules that get profiles suspended
The rules almost everyone is breaking
Google publishes the rules for Business Profiles. Very few businesses have read them. These are the ones we find broken most often.
Open the rules that apply to you, or show all seven.
01 Business name Your name cannot include Ltd.
Google does not allow legal terms in a profile name unless you can show real-world proof, such as signage, business cards or invoices, that the term is consistently part of your name. Most UK limited companies have typed Ltd into the box and never thought about it again. It is a live risk sitting on thousands of profiles.
02 Business name Your name cannot include anything else either.
No taglines, no opening hours, no phone number, no website, no location, no list of services. Smith Plumbing is fine. Smith Plumbing Emergency Plumber Croydon 24/7 is asking for trouble.
03 Categories More categories does not mean more traffic, but the right primary one changes everything.
Google says to use as few as possible, and to pick ones that finish the sentence this business is a, not this business has a. Choosing a specific category already brings the broader ones with it. Google's own example is that picking Golf Resort covers Resort Hotel, Hotel and Golf Course automatically. Agencies stuff categories because it looks like work on an invoice. The edit that actually moves the needle is narrowing your primary category, and it is usually the single biggest change available on a profile. A law firm that switches from Law Firm to Personal Injury Solicitor can move further than a year of posting will take it.
04 Service area Your service area has a limit.
Google says the boundary should not stretch further than roughly two hours of driving time from where you are based. Setting your area to the whole of England because you would like the work is a flag, not a strategy.
05 Description Your description cannot contain links or prices.
No URLs of any kind, and no promotions. Google's own example of what is not allowed is a line advertising a product at a set price.
06 Premises A virtual office is not eligible at all.
A rented mailing address you do not work from cannot have a profile. A desk in a co-working space only counts if there is clear signage, customers can come in during opening hours, and your own staff are there.
07 Address If you go to customers, hide your address.
A plumber running the business from home should clear the address from the profile entirely. Showing a residential address when you have no shopfront is one of the faster ways to lose a listing.
Suspension and profile recovery
Suspended, unverified or duplicated
A hard suspension takes your listing off Maps and out of search immediately. The phone stops. There is no warning email that explains what you did, and Google will not tell you directly.
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01
Hard suspension
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02
Never verified
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03
Duplicate profile
Check this first
Rule out a verification problem
The least dramatic explanation is often the right one.
Before assuming the worst, check the boring answer first. Never being verified is the most common reason a business does not appear on Maps, and plenty of owners have a profile sitting in their dashboard that the public has never seen.
Google has moved most new listings onto video verification, which means recording one continuous unedited clip showing your signage, your inside, and something only someone who works there could do. Unlocking the door with your own key counts. Using the till counts. Stopping and starting the recording does not, and that is why most first attempts fail.
One continuous video
- Show the outside Signage and the business location.
- Show the inside The workspace, stock or equipment.
- Prove access Unlock a door, use the till or handle business equipment.
Do not stop and restart. The clip must remain continuous and unedited.
The same trap catches established businesses. Change your name, address or phone number and Google can pull the listing back for re-verification. Change three of them in one afternoon and it almost certainly will. Space the edits out.
Before the appeal
Prepare the case before you submit it
We handle appeals, reinstatements, verification and duplicate profile removals. Three things we know that cost people their first attempt:
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01
Fix the cause before you appeal
An appeal is a request for a second look, not a reset. If the problem that triggered it is still on the profile, the reviewer sees the same problem again.
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02
Gather your documents first
Once the evidence form opens, you have sixty minutes to submit it or nothing attaches. Most owners open the form, go looking for a utility bill, and lose the window. Google accepts official business registration, a business licence, tax certificates and utility bills, and the name and address on them have to match the profile.
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03
Check whether it is the account
If Google has restricted the whole Google account, every profile that account manages goes down together and you cannot create or claim new ones. The account restriction has to be lifted first. Appealing the profile while the account is still restricted spends an appeal on nothing.
Find out whether the case is worth appealing
Recovery work is priced per case. We look at yours first and tell you whether it is worth appealing, because some are not, and we would rather say so than take the money.
The eligibility check costs nothing and takes about a day.
Prices and plans
What it costs
Choose profile management on its own, or get it included as standard inside a wider SEO plan.
Two routes
Profile management on its own
£150 a month
The complete monthly service
Everything in the monthly section above. No setup fee, no minimum term.
Inside an SEO plan
Profile management is included
All three monthly SEO plans carry profile management as standard, alongside the website work that feeds it. You can see every line item in each plan on the pricing page.
Profile management comes with every SEO plan. Compare the wider website, content, reporting and authority work included at each level.
No setup fee and no minimum term on any plan.
Our own rankings
Check ours before you trust us with yours
Most agencies show you a client result you cannot verify. Search these yourself instead, from a London postcode, and see where we come:
SEO company London
Check the live local results.
SEO services London
Check the live local results.
SEO agency London
Check the live local results.
SEO consultant London
Check the live local results.
Proof you can verify
Our own Business Profile is managed exactly the way we would manage yours, using the rules on this page and nothing else. It is the only case study we can show you that you are able to check in ten seconds without taking anyone's word for it.
Coverage and availability
Where we work and who we take on
We work with businesses across the UK, remotely. Profile management does not need anyone in the room, and roughly nine in ten of our clients we have never met in person.
Geography
UK-wide and remote. The work is carried out through your profile, website and reporting rather than at your premises.
Exclusivity
One client per niche, per area. If we already manage a profile for a plumber in Bromley, we will not take another one.
First check
We check whether your patch is free. Ranking two businesses for the same term in the same place is not something anyone can honestly promise.
It does mean we occasionally turn work down, and it means the first thing we check on a call is whether your patch is free. Our depth is greatest in London, where you can see where in London we already work by area.
Our strongest concentration of local work is in London, while profile management is available across the UK.
Google Business Profile FAQs
Common questions
Ask About Profile Management
Is Google My Business the same as Google Business Profile?
Yes. Google renamed it Google Business Profile in 2021 and retired the standalone Google My Business app the following year, but the listing, the dashboard and the rules are the same thing. Most people still call it GMB, including plenty of agencies selling it. The name on the invoice does not matter; the rules on the profile do.
Do I need a Google Business Profile if I have a good website?
If customers can visit you or you travel to them, yes. Local results and Maps are driven by the profile, not the website, and a business without one is invisible in the box at the top of the page. If you have not set one up yet, we have a walkthrough on how a Business Profile is set up from scratch.
How do I verify my Google Business Profile?
Google has moved most new listings onto video verification instead of the old postcard, and existing profiles are increasingly being asked to re-verify the same way. You record one continuous clip on your phone, signed in to the account that manages the profile, showing your signage, the inside, and something that proves you work there, such as unlocking the door or using the till. It cannot be edited or stitched together, and it needs to run for at least 30 seconds. Until it passes, your listing does not appear publicly at all, whatever it looks like in your dashboard.
Can I change my business name on the profile?
Only sometimes. Google treats a small name change as a rebrand and lets you keep the profile, as long as the proper nouns, the services in the name and the category all stay the same. Anything bigger counts as a new business, which means closing the old profile and starting again. People edit the name, lose the profile, and never connect the two.
How long does a suspension appeal take?
A clean, well-documented single-profile case usually resolves in a few days to about two weeks. Cases with a previous denial, a rebrand or several profiles take longer.
How long before my profile ranks better?
Movement in four to eight weeks on a profile with real problems, longer where the issue is competition rather than setup. Anyone giving you a date is guessing, because distance from the searcher affects your position and no amount of work changes where your customers live.
Can I just do this myself?
Yes, and plenty of businesses should. The platform is free and the tasks are not difficult. What is difficult is knowing which changes will get you suspended, which is why most of the people who call us have already tried.
How much does Google Business Profile management cost in the UK?
Between roughly £50 and £300 a month for most services, with full-service management running higher again. Ours is £150. The cheaper tiers usually cover a monthly check and some review replies; the dearer ones add rank tracking, competitor monitoring and content.
Free Google Business Profile check
Let Us Check Your Profile
Tell us whether your profile needs monthly management, has been suspended, is still unverified or has disappeared from Maps. We will check the listing, explain what is wrong and tell you whether it needs an appeal, verification work, ongoing management or no paid work at all. The first call is free, there is no obligation and you keep the advice either way.
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