A profile with a name and a phone number on it is a business card. A finished one is how Jacobi's shows up when somebody nearby types "junk removal near me" at nine at night with a garage full of stuff. Below is every field Google gives you, and exactly what belongs in each one.
Google picks the three businesses in the map pack on three signals. You can only move two of them, and a half-filled profile hands both away for free.
Google can only match you to a search it knows you do. Your listing currently files you under property maintenance, which is not a phrase anybody types. It does not say junk removal, hauling or trailer rental anywhere. So when somebody searches those words, there is nothing on your profile to match, and the outfit one town over gets the call.
Rankings are measured from the address your profile verified at, roughly a few miles out. Adding more service areas draws a bigger outline on the map but does not push you further. Nobody can buy their way around this one, so stop worrying about it.
Reviews, photos, and how complete the profile is. This is what separates two identical haulers working the same county, and it is the one almost nobody bothers with. It is also the cheapest thing on this page: it costs you a text message per job.
Open business.google.com on a computer, sign in, and work down this list in order. Everything in a box is written to be pasted straight in.
These three have to match everywhere you appear, character for character. Google cross-checks them against your Facebook page and anywhere else you are listed, and details that disagree quietly cost you trust in the ranking.
On the phone number. Your profile has (716) 490-7512 on it, which matches your coupon. Your shirts show a different number. Whichever one you want ringing, make it the same one everywhere: Google, Facebook, the truck, and the next thing you print. Two numbers in circulation splits your calls and muddies who Google thinks you are.
On the website field. No website yet is fine. Put your Facebook page in that box for now. An empty website field looks abandoned, and a live Facebook page is far better than nothing.
Put the name in as the name and nothing else. Adding your town or your trade to it, like "Jacobi's Property Maintenance Junk Removal," is against Google's rules and is one of the most common reasons a profile gets suspended.
Nothing to do here. Your listing shows a service area and no street address, which is exactly correct for a business that drives to the customer. It keeps your home address off the internet and files you properly as a service-area business.
Your primary category does more for your rankings than anything else on this page. Yours is set to Property maintenance right now, and changing it is the single highest-value thing in this packet.
You do not lose anything here. Property maintenance stays on the profile, it just moves down to a secondary where it belongs. Secondary categories still pull you into searches, they simply carry less weight than the primary.
Type the first word or two into the category box and pick from Google's list, since it only accepts its own names. Drop any secondary that is not genuinely a real part of your business. A loose category just brings you calls you have to turn down.
This one is already done, and done sensibly. Your service area covers most of Chautauqua County and reaches east into Cattaraugus, out past Gowanda and Randolph. That is an honest footprint for a hauler with a trailer. Leave it alone.
Two things to check while you are in there. Every town on the list should be one you would genuinely hook up and drive to, and the towns closest to home need to be on it, because those are the ones you can actually win. Rankings are measured from where you are, so your neighbors are your best odds.
You get 750 characters and most profiles leave it blank. Here is yours, written from what is already on your coupon and your shirts. Read it, change anything that is not true, then paste it in.
This is the most under-used field on Google and it is the one that wins specific searches. Somebody searching "dump trailer rental" is a different customer than somebody searching "junk removal," and right now you catch neither. Add all six under your primary category.
Change any wording that does not match how you actually run it. These came off your own coupon and shirt, so they should be close.
You have no hours set at all. Google is showing an "add hours" prompt on your listing right now, which reads to a customer like nobody is minding the business. It is one of the fastest gaps on this page to close.
the hours he actually keeps
Put down the hours you will genuinely answer the phone. If you take calls and texts well past five, say so, because "open until 8" beats "open until 5" for the person who just finished clearing their garage on a Saturday evening.
Set your holiday hours too. Google pushes profiles with confirmed holiday hours ahead of ones showing "hours might differ," and a wrong closed sign on a busy weekend costs you the exact jobs you want.
These are the small badges on your listing, and several of them are filters customers actually tap. Turn on the ones that are true for you:
Only switch on what you genuinely offer. These read as promises on the listing, and a wrong one turns into a bad review.
You have a couple of trailer shots up, which is a start and more than most. The problem is it stopped there. Photos are a ranking lever and steady beats perfect: a handful every month tells Google the business is alive, and you are already taking these shots on your phone anyway.
You are at 5.0 stars from 4 reviews. The rating is perfect. The count is the problem. Four is enough to look real and nowhere near enough to outrank anybody, and review count plus how recently they arrived move rankings more than anything else you control.
If you only do one thing on this page, do this one.
You already text customers to schedule. Adding one more text at the end of the job is the highest-return thing in this entire packet.
Each of these gets profiles suspended, and getting one back is slow and painful.
Adding a town or a service to your business name is the single most common suspension trigger. The name field is for the name.
Google verifies addresses on video. An address in a town you want to rank in but do not work from gets caught, and repeated failed attempts can lock you out of verifying at all.
Google spots review clusters and removes them in batches. You lose the reviews and the trust that came with them.
Pick one and put it everywhere. Split numbers across your listing, your Facebook page and your printed coupons make you look like two different businesses.
Work top to bottom and your profile goes from bare to finished in about forty minutes. No catch, nothing to sign, and it is yours whether we ever work together or not.
If you decide you want a website built, all of this comes with it. We do every field on this page for you as part of the build, wire your review link into the site so finished jobs ask for the review on their own, and put your live Google rating on the homepage where people can see it.
Ask me anything on it → Or just text. If a screen looks different than it does on this page, say the word and I will walk you through it.