Google Business Profile optimisation

Your Google Business Profile, renamed from Google My Business in 2022, is the free listing that powers the local map pack, the business knowledge panel on the right of a branded search, and your pin on Google Maps. Optimisation is the ongoing work of claiming and verifying it, filling in every field accurately, and keeping it active so Google trusts it enough to rank you when a nearby customer searches.

It sits inside the broader discipline of local SEO, but it is the part with the highest return for the least cost, because the asset is free and most competitors have not finished it. Profile optimisation is distinct from your website SEO: the two reinforce each other, but the Profile has its own ranking signals, its own content, and its own review economy.

An optimised profile moves through three states.

Google states that local results are ranked on three factors: relevance, distance and prominence. Distance you cannot change, but the other two are exactly what optimisation works on, and reviews sit right at the heart of prominence.

In our work with local businesses, one pattern shows up again and again, and it is the most useful thing to understand about Profile optimisation. A complete profile is the entry ticket: it gets you into the running. What lifts you to the top of the map pack, where nearby customers actually choose, is review volume and recency. The two are not interchangeable, and most owners over-invest in the first while neglecting the second.

As a rough rule of thumb, profiles that break into the top three of the local pack tend to carry around 30 or more genuine, recent reviews. Beautifully completed profiles with only a handful of reviews routinely stall outside the top 20. The figures below are rounded and illustrative, drawn from the pattern we see rather than any single business, but the shape is consistent.

The lesson for your own Profile is simple and, refreshingly, within your control. Finish the profile once, then build reviews relentlessly. You do not need the most fields filled or the biggest budget. You need to be the business in your suburb with the most recent, genuine reviews in a category you can realistically contest. That is a goal any committed local business can reach.

When a customer asks "who is a good physio near Newtown" or sees a Google AI Overview for "best dentist in Bondi", the engine names the businesses it can read and trust. With consumer use of AI tools for local recommendations rising from about 6% to 45% in a year, your Profile is no longer just a Google ranking asset; it is the raw material AI uses to decide who to name.

Four things make you the business it picks. Consistent details everywhere, the same name, address and phone across your site, Profile and directories, so the model is never unsure who you are. LocalBusiness structured data so it can parse your services, area and hours without guessing. Genuine, recent reviews, which give it the social proof and the specific language it leans on, and which weigh heavily on your map rank too. And clear answers to the real questions customers ask, in plain copy on your site and in your Q&A.

The deeper mechanics sit in our companion guides: what AI assistants cite in Australia, how to get cited by AI, and what generative engine optimisation is. For your Profile, the short version is the same as for the map pack: be the clearest, best-reviewed, most consistent answer to the question a nearby customer is asking.

If a profile is suspended, do not panic-edit it. Fix the underlying breach (usually the name or an ineligible address), then file a reinstatement request with evidence. The cleaner your details and review history, the faster it comes back.

The Profile itself costs nothing, and the highest-return moves, claiming, completing and gathering reviews, cost only your time. If you bring in help, standalone Profile management in Australia commonly sits in the low hundreds of dollars a month, and it is more often folded into a wider local SEO retainer. As a working assumption, treat $300 to $1,000 a month as the typical standalone range, with competitive categories and multi-location businesses higher; the real number depends on how much of the review and content routine you keep in-house. We break the broader models down in how much SEO costs in Australia.

One thing changes the maths in your favour. Our Snowball SEO platform automates the optimisation and AI-visibility heavy lifting that other agencies bill by the hour, so more of your spend goes to the creative storytelling that actually grows a local brand: the video, photography and written content that fills your Profile and that customers and AI engines respond to.