← All skills

A clinic, salon or repair shop lives or dies on the map pack - the three listings that appear above the normal results. Most profiles lose it for reasons that take 40 minutes to fix: the wrong primary category, a service area that includes a 60 km radius, no photos in a year, and 11 reviews against a competitor's 240.

This skill works through the profile as a checklist with the fields that matter, then builds the review flow and the local content that keeps the profile alive. You end with a complete profile, a weekly posting routine and a review request that produces 10-30 new reviews a month without asking anyone to lie.

When to use this skill

• A business with a physical location does not appear in the map pack for its own service.
• The profile has 10 reviews and the competitor has 200.
• Photos are 2 years old and the "hours" are wrong on a public holiday.
• You are opening a second location and need the profile set up correctly the first time.

Do NOT use for: national SEO, paid local ads, or creating fake listings and reviews. Buying reviews or inventing locations violates Google's policies and gets profiles suspended - a suspension costs more than the ranking was worth.

Stage 1 - Audit the profile fields that carry ranking weight

1.1 Business name: the real name only. Adding keywords ("Sharma Dental Clinic - Best Implants Pune") risks suspension and is the most common cause of a profile being removed.

1.2 Primary category: the single strongest local ranking signal. Choose the most specific one that matches the main revenue service, not the broadest.

1.3 Secondary categories: 2-4 maximum, each one a service you genuinely sell and want calls for.

1.4 Address and service area: exact address for a storefront; for a service-area business, define the areas you actually travel to, not a 60 km radius.

1.5 Hours including special hours for festivals and holidays. Wrong hours on a Saturday cost real walk-ins.

Gate: primary category is the most specific match, name is unchanged from the signage, hours are correct for the next 14 days.

Stage 2 - Choose the category by testing, not by guessing

2.1 List 5 candidate categories. Search each one plus the city and look at which businesses appear in the map pack.

2.2 Pick the category where your direct competitors rank, and where your main service is the literal name.

2.3 A restaurant is "Restaurant", not "Fast food restaurant", if it is a restaurant. Specificity helps only when it matches the search.

2.4 Change the primary category and wait 14 days before judging. The map pack shifts, and a 2-day reading is noise.

2.5 Keep a screenshot of the map pack before and after each change, with the date.

Gate: the chosen primary category is one where at least 3 direct competitors currently rank in the top 3.

Stage 3 - Complete every field, including the boring ones

3.1 Description: 750 characters, first 250 carry the weight. Name the services, the areas served, and one differentiator with a number.

3.2 Services and products: list each with a short description and, where possible, a price. A price on the profile filters out price-shoppers.

3.3 Attributes: wheelchair accessible, women-led, parking, cards accepted. These are filters in the UI and cost nothing to fill.

3.4 Opening date, phone, website with UTM parameters so calls and clicks are attributable.

3.5 Q&A: seed 5 real questions and answer them from the business account. Anyone can post a question, so an empty section is a risk.

Gate: no empty field in the profile, and every service has a one-line description.

Stage 4 - Build the photo and video library

4.1 20 photos minimum, added 3-5 at a time rather than 20 in one day. Steady addition looks like a live business.

4.2 Cover photo: the exterior with signage, shot in daylight, recognisable from the street.

4.3 Include: exterior, interior, team at work, a before/after of the actual service, and the product.

4.4 Photos at 720x720 px minimum, JPG or PNG, under 5 MB each. Geotagging is not a ranking factor; do not spend time on it.

4.5 Video under 30 seconds, shot vertically, showing the space or the work. One video beats 10 stock images.

Gate: 20+ photos across 4 categories, added over at least 3 separate weeks, plus 1 video.

Stage 5 - Run the review flow that produces reviews every week

5.1 Ask at the moment of satisfaction: at checkout, after the service, in the follow-up message. Not in a monthly email blast.

5.2 Send a direct link to the review form, not the profile page. Two taps fewer roughly doubles the completion rate.

5.3 One ask, one channel, one time. Three reminders produce a 1-star review about being nagged.

5.4 Reply to every review within 48 hours, including the good ones. Replies are public proof that the business is attended.

5.5 Never filter out unhappy customers by gating the link behind a satisfaction score. Review gating violates Google's policy and is detectable.

5.6 Keep the ask in the business's own voice, in one message:

Hi <name>, thanks for coming in today. If the visit went well, a short
Google review helps other people in <area> find us - it takes a minute:
<direct review link>

Gate: a review link exists for each channel, and the last 10 reviews all have a reply within 48 hours.

Stage 6 - Post weekly, not monthly

6.1 One post a week: an offer, a new service, an event, or a photo with 2 sentences. Posts expire in about 7 days.

6.2 Each post gets one clear action: call, book, or learn more. A post with no action is decoration.

6.3 Use the same 3 post types in rotation so writing one takes 6 minutes: offer, proof, behind the scenes.

6.4 Add a photo to every post. Posts with an image get materially more views than text-only.

Gate: 4 posts in the last 28 days, each with an image and one call to action.

Stage 7 - Build local citations that agree with the profile

7.1 Name, address and phone must match exactly across the profile, the website, and the main directories. "Rd" in one place and "Road" in another splits the signal.

7.2 Claim the 6 directories that matter for India: Justdial, Sulekha, Practo or the category equivalent, IndiaMART, your local trade association, and Bing Places.

7.3 Fix duplicates. Two profiles for the same address is the single most common reason a listing stops appearing.

7.4 Add LocalBusiness structured data on the website with the same name, address, phone and geo coordinates.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Dentist",
  "name": "Sharma Dental Clinic",
  "address": {
    "@type": "PostalAddress",
    "streetAddress": "12 FC Road",
    "addressLocality": "Pune",
    "addressRegion": "MH",
    "postalCode": "411004",
    "addressCountry": "IN"
  },
  "telephone": "+91-20-0000-0000",
  "openingHours": "Mo-Sa 10:00-19:00"
}

Gate: name, address and phone identical in 6 directories and in the structured data.

Stage 8 - Measure the three numbers that matter

8.1 Calls, direction requests and website clicks from the profile, month over month.

8.2 Search queries that surfaced the profile: "near me" queries, category queries, and brand queries. Growth in category queries is the ranking signal.

8.3 Map pack position for 5 tracked terms, checked weekly from a fixed location, not from a phone in the car.

8.4 Review count and average rating, with the count of reviews in the last 30 days - recency matters as much as total.

Gate: 5 terms tracked weekly for 4 weeks, and one month of insights exported.

Stage 9 - Keep it alive with a 20-minute weekly routine

9.1 Weekly: one post, reply to new reviews, check the Q&A for new questions.

9.2 Monthly: add 4-6 photos, review insights, fix any wrong hours or holiday exceptions.

9.3 Quarterly: re-check the category against competitors, refresh the description, audit citations.

9.4 Assign an owner by name. A profile with no owner drifts within a quarter.

9.5 Check the "suggested edits" queue in the profile monthly. Google lets customers propose changes to hours and name, and an approved wrong edit is worse than an empty profile.

9.6 Watch for competitor spam in the map pack - keyword-stuffed names in nearby listings. Reporting a listing takes 3 minutes and is the only lever you have over it.

Gate: the routine has an owner, a calendar entry, and 4 weeks of evidence.

Worked example

A dental clinic in Pune, 3 chairs, before and after 90 days.

The category change and the review flow did most of the work. The category moved the clinic into the map pack for its own service; the review flow, run through WhatsApp at checkout, added 36 reviews in 90 days at a 22% response rate.

Quality checklist

• Name matches the signage, no keywords appended
• Primary category is the most specific match, verified against competitors
• 2-4 secondary categories, each a real service
• Service area is the area actually served
• Hours correct, with special hours for the next 14 days
• Description at 700-750 characters naming services and areas
• 8-15 services listed with descriptions
• All applicable attributes filled
• 5 Q&A entries seeded and answered
• 20+ photos across 4 categories, added over 3+ weeks
• Review link per channel, direct to the form
• Last 10 reviews replied to within 48 hours
• No review gating anywhere in the flow
• 4 posts in the last 28 days with images and one action
• Name, address and phone identical across 6 directories
• LocalBusiness structured data matches the profile

Failure modes

Copy-ready agent prompt

Read the skill at the URL above and fix my Google Business Profile. Ask me: the business, the main service, the location and areas I serve, my current category, my review count, and whether I have a storefront or serve customers at their location. Then give me the profile audit table with what to change in each field, 5 candidate primary categories to test against competitors, the description at 700-750 characters, 8-15 services with descriptions, the attribute list, the 20-photo plan across 4 categories, the review request message for WhatsApp and for a printed card with a direct review link, the reply template for a 1-star review, the 4-week posting plan, and the citation checklist with the LocalBusiness structured data. Finish with the weekly 20-minute routine and the 5 terms to track. Do not suggest review gating or keyword-stuffed names.