Google Business Profile: 7 settings that make the phone ring

Saturday, 8:12 a.m.: three profiles, one call

Saturday, 8:12 a.m. A water heater is leaking in a basement in Trois-Rivières. The homeowner types "emergency plumber" into his phone. First result: "Closed · Opens Mon 8 AM." Second: a general contractor, with its logo as the only photo. Third: "Plumber · Open," a lettered van and, in a reply to a recent review, confirmation that it takes weekend emergencies. He calls the third one.

Calls are won or lost in those few seconds. Not in how often you post, but in a handful of settings you get right once and recheck every season. Your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) often doesn't have a visibility problem. It has a decision problem: people see it, then call someone else.

Three questions before the call, and the thumb test

A customer in a hurry looks for three answers, in this order:

1. Do you do what I need? Your category and services.
2. Will you pick up now? Your hours, holiday hours and phone number.
3. Can I trust you? Your photos, reviews and replies.

Google ranks local results on three factors: relevance, distance and prominence (Google, local ranking). Distance is out of your hands; relevance and prominence largely aren't. And they come down to the same settings that answer the customer's three questions.

To see what your customer sees, run the thumb test. On your phone, signed out of your Google account, from a neighbourhood where your customers live rather than from your office, search the way they would: "plumber Trois-Rivières," "drain cleaning near me." Scroll the top three profiles with your thumb, like a customer in a rush, then do it again on a Saturday morning. Only one question matters: would you call your own business?

The call audit: seven settings, in order

The first three decide whether you show up and look reachable. The next four tip the scale.

1. Primary category. It tells Google what you are and unlocks features such as services or bookings. Google asks for the most specific one ("Nail salon," not "Salon") and as few categories as possible. Changing it can trigger re-verification, so do it in a quiet week.
2. Hours, then holidays. Google Maps lets people filter for places that are open, so a profile that wrongly says "Closed" drops out of those results. List the hours when someone actually answers the phone, in two blocks if you close for lunch (Google, hours). Google also recommends confirming holiday hours even when they don't change. In Quebec, plan for Thanksgiving (the second Monday of October), Christmas and New Year's, June 24 (the Fête nationale) and July 1, Quebec's moving day (Éducaloi, in French). Special hours cover six days in a row at most; for anything longer (the construction holiday, a full holiday-season shutdown), Google says to mark the business "Temporarily closed." Undo it when you're back.
3. Phone number. Google asks for a local number that reaches your location rather than a central call centre. More importantly, someone has to answer it during your listed hours. A Call button that rings out is a customer calling the next business.
4. Services, in your customers' words. The services editor accepts custom services with a description and price, and Google may highlight one when someone searches for it. Write "drain unclogging," not "residential drainage solutions." Your customers' words are in the Performance section, which shows the searches people used to find you.
5. Photos that answer questions. Google recommends exterior photos taken from each direction customers approach from, then interior, team and at-work shots, without heavy filters or AI edits. Clinic: the entrance and the parking. Trade: the lettered van and a real finished job. Your logo answers nothing.
6. Reviews, and especially your replies. More reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking (Google). Ask with a link or QR code; offering a discount in exchange is prohibited. Google also advises against giving everyone the same "thank you" and suggests replying where you can be useful. "Yes, we do Saturday emergencies" keeps working every time someone reads your reviews.
7. Description and links. The description is capped at 750 characters, with no URLs. In Quebec, write it in French first: the Charter of the French language gives consumers the right to be informed and served in French (section 5). If your customers are bilingual, add a short English paragraph after. Check your links too: .business.site websites, built with Google's old tool, have led to a "page not found" since June 2024 (TechRadar, 2024), and partner links can appear on their own. Set your preferred link.

What most advice gets wrong

Most checklists start with "post every week." Posts don't hurt, but the page where Google explains local ranking talks about verification, complete information, reviews and photos. Not posts (Google). A weekly post won't fix a vague category or a Saturday that shows as closed.

Another costly habit: stuffing keywords into the name, as in "Tremblay Plumbing – Emergency Plumber Trois-Rivières." Google prohibits it and can suspend the profile (Google, guidelines). A suspended profile brings in zero calls. The name on your profile is the name on your sign.

And a lot of advice is out of date. Chat and call history disappeared from profiles on July 31, 2024 (Google). The Q&A section vanished from many profiles in the fall of 2025 (Whitespark), and Google shut down its API on November 3, 2025 (Google for Developers). A tip that tells you to "turn on chat" is over two years old.

Measuring: a tap on "Call" isn't an answered call

Your profile's Performance section shows views, searches, directions, website clicks and calls (Google, performance). Mind the definition: "Calls" is the number of times a customer clicked the call button. Not the number of conversations.

Track one ratio, your call rate: taps on "Call" ÷ profile views. Compare periods of the same length, ideally the same month last year, because the seasons move everything else.

A made-up example: a four-person plumbing company in Trois-Rivières fixes its category, its Saturday hours and its photos.

Metric	Before the changes	Two months later
Profile views	1,900	2,050
Taps on "Call"	28	49
Call rate	1.5%	2.4%

That's 21 more taps a month. At the old rate, 2,050 views would have produced 30, so about 19 of the 21 come from a more convincing profile, not just more views. Now assume three calls in four get answered and one answered call in three becomes a $400 job. That's 21 × 0.75 ≈ 16 answered calls, about 5 jobs, or $2,000 more a month. The other 5 taps rang out, and that setting isn't in Google.

To catch them, check your line's missed calls every month, especially evenings and weekends, and ask new customers how they found you. Write these numbers down on the first Monday of the month, or let a tool like Acteurly track your Google reviews and visibility every week.

What AI changes, and what a profile can't fix

Since August 2026, Google has been rolling out Ask Maps in Canada, an assistant that answers questions about places in conversation (Google, 2026). It draws on information about more than 300 million places, including reviews from more than 500 million contributors (Google, March 2026). So a customer can ask for "a plumber open tonight who fixes water heaters" instead of comparing three profiles. If your hours are wrong or your services are missing, the assistant has no reason to name you. Reread your profile as if a machine were going to quote it word for word.

On the owner's side, if you have a single verified profile, the Gemini web app can manage it in conversation (Google, Gemini). Try "Show me my performance metrics for the past month," and always review before you accept a change.

Now the limits. No setting will put you in front of searchers in a town where you aren't, and no payment buys a better local ranking. A profile won't fix a phone nobody answers or a reputation you've earned. If your profile is suspended or you run several locations, get help from someone who has handled it before. For a specific language-law question, check with the OQLF (Quebec's French-language office) or a lawyer.

Your Monday-morning hour

1. 10 minutes: the thumb test on three searches. Repeat it Saturday morning.
2. 10 minutes: primary category, hours and the next holiday.
3. 15 minutes: five services written in your customers' words.
4. 15 minutes: five photos that each answer a question (entrance, van, team, finished job).
5. 10 minutes: note views, taps on "Call" and call rate in Performance. Check again in eight weeks.

If you do only one thing this week, set your hours for the next holiday. It takes two minutes, and it's one less customer staring at a locked door.