How to claim and verify your Google Business Profile

If your shop is not on Google at all, start at business.google.com/add and select Add your business to Google. If it is already on Maps and nobody has claimed it, open Google Maps, find it, and select Claim this business, then Manage now. Either way, the next screen is the same: "Select a verification option, and follow the on-screen steps."

Then the part that catches most owners out. You do not choose how you verify. Google says it flatly: "Verification methods are automatically determined by Google and can't be changed." And once you submit, "verification reviews take up to 5 business days."

If you have already been through all of this and the profile still is not appearing on Search or Maps, that is a different diagnosis with its own published causes - our guide to why a business is not showing up on Google works through them in the order worth checking.

Everything on this page comes from Google's published Business Profile help pages as of October 2026. Where Google states a rule, a number, or a step, it is quoted.

This is the confusion underneath almost every question about this, so it is worth getting straight before you touch anything.

Your shop can be sitting on Google Maps right now with a pin, a name, maybe hours somebody guessed at, and reviews from customers you actually served - and you may never have created it. That is a listed, unclaimed profile. Google's own instructions acknowledge this directly: "If an unverified Business Profile for your business already exists, you can claim the Business Profile."

Claiming is you raising your hand and saying it is yours. Verifying is Google checking that it is. Google describes the point of claiming as "Claim it so you can verify and control how it shows on Google," and describes what verification gets you: "When you verify your business on Google, you gain ownership of your Business Profile."

Until that last step lands, the profile is a page about your business that you do not control. You cannot set the number behind the Call button, you cannot add a booking button, and you cannot get at the review link to send customers. Those three jobs all start here.

If the shop is already verified and the name on the building has since changed, that is a different job with its own rules - Google warns that "If you change your business name after it's verified, you might need to verify your business again," and our guide to changing your business name on Google covers the edit, the review wait, and what does and does not happen to your reviews. If you are verifying for the first time, getting the name right now means you never have to find out.

More verifications stall on this than on anything to do with cameras or postcards, and it is the easiest thing on the list to fix in advance. Google's guidelines for representing your business are stricter than most shop owners expect:

Most DFW home-service shops are, and Google treats them as a separate case with its own rules. Google's definition: "A service-area business goes to customers or offers services but doesn't serve them at its business address." The two examples Google itself reaches for are a locksmith and a plumber.

The rule that follows is the one that gets ignored, and it is stated as plainly as Google states anything: "If you don't serve customers at your business location, do not add your business address to your Business Profile." The guidelines repeat it from the other direction: "If you're a service-area business, you should hide your business address from customers."

Shop owners hate this instruction because the address feels like proof you are real. It is not - the service area is what tells a customer in Arlington that you come to Arlington, and the address field is for places customers walk into. If you run the business out of your house, that is fine and extremely common; Google's video verification guidance has a specific path for it rather than a prohibition.

One more line worth knowing before you rent a mailbox to solve this: "If your business rents a physical mailing address but doesn't operate out of that location," Google says, "that location isn't eligible for a Business Profile." A mail drop is not an address, and this is a known way to get a profile pulled later.

If the pin already exists and no one has claimed it, this is a three-step job. Google's published path:

This happens more than you would think - a marketing company you fired, a former partner, an old manager's personal Gmail, sometimes a previous owner of the building. Google's position is that if the profile is verified and "you're authorized to manage the business, you can request ownership from the current profile owner."

Note which direction this runs. Request Access is for getting IN to a profile you do not hold. Once the profile is yours, giving your office manager or your marketing company access is a different panel entirely, and our guide to adding a manager to your Google Business Profile covers that one - including which role to hand out so this situation never repeats itself.

The flow is a Request Access button on the profile, and then a clock. "The current profile owner is then notified by email and has 3 days to respond." What happens next depends on what they do:

Owners lose a lot of hours arguing with this one. The method is assigned, not chosen: "Verification methods are automatically determined by Google and can't be changed," and "The verification options available to you depend on your business type, public info, region, or business hours."

If you only get offered one option, that is the option. Here is what the methods actually are, in Google's own description:

One thing to fix in your head before you read them, because it saves shops real money: every one of these starts with you pressing a button. A verification call you did not ask for is not a verification call, and a caller who wants you to read a code back to them is running the scam Google itself names on its Avoid and report scams page. Our guide to why Google Business keeps calling you walks through the four scripts and what actually stops them.

This is where shops get stuck, usually because they filmed the wrong things in the wrong order and then had to do it twice. Google's requirements for the recording itself are specific:

The video must be "At least 30 seconds long," and "Recorded and uploaded from a mobile device through your Business Profile" - your phone, not a desktop, and through the profile rather than as a file you upload from somewhere else. It must be "An unedited, unique, and complete recording with no breaks," and Google is explicit that you cannot bring something you shot last week: "You must capture the footage live as pre-recorded videos aren't allowed."

Inside that single take, Google wants three things proven. For a service-area business the headings are "Show where your business operates," "Show proof that your business exists," and "Show proof of management," and the guidance under each is concrete:

Nothing below is a Google rule - it is Google's three requirements put in the order that lets a one-truck shop film them without stopping, which is the part the help page does not do for you. Walk it once before you hit record.

Start at the street with the sign and the house or building number in frame. Walk toward the truck and get the lettering and the plate. Open the back doors and pan across the racked tools and the parts bins. Pull a branded shirt or a business card into frame. Then flip the camera around: open the toolbox, start a job, pull up an invoice on your phone, or show the permit. End with yourself. One take, no stopping, over 30 seconds - and if it runs two minutes because you talked, that is fine.

Film it on a normal working day with the truck loaded, not on a Sunday with an empty bay. The video is meant to look like a business operating, because that is the thing being checked.

Google's number is "verification reviews take up to 5 business days," with the honest caveat attached: "On rare occasions, reviews may take longer." Five business days is a week and a half of calendar time, so a profile that is quiet after four days is not a problem yet.

There are two signals that something actually went wrong, and they look different:

Read the message before you re-film, because Google says the reviewer will "share the reasons why your first video wasn't accepted." That note is the only information you get, and it usually names the missing one of the three.

Then record the new video so it covers everything from the first video plus whatever was missing - not just the missing piece on its own. You open the profile, tap Review issues, and record again from there.

The thing not to do is start a second profile because the first one is stuck. That creates a duplicate, which breaks the one-profile rule, and it is the single most common way a fixable verification turns into a suspended profile.

Different problem, different door. "We may suspend or disable Business Profiles that don't follow our guidelines," and when a profile is removed, "The public can't go to the profile" - your shop disappears off Maps rather than sitting there unverified.

Three rules govern what you do next, and all three are Google's words:

A verified profile is not the finish line, it is the switch. The three jobs that were locked are now open, and they are worth doing in this order: set the number behind the Call button so taps reach a phone you answer, add a booking button so the people who will not call can still book, and grab your review link so you can send it to every customer you finish with.

There is a fourth thing to check the same afternoon, and it is the one that quietly sets expectations for all three: your hours. Whatever Google had on the profile before you claimed it is what customers have been reading as permission to call. Our guide to changing your business hours on Google walks through the editor, the holiday-hours rules, the appointment-only case, and why Google sometimes rewrites your hours on its own.

Which leads to the part nobody warns a shop about. A verified profile in a metro the size of Dallas-Fort Worth generates calls at times you are under a truck, on a roof, or driving between jobs. Google's Calls metric counts taps on that button, not conversations - so the first thing a newly verified profile usually shows you is how many of those taps never turned into anything.

That gap is the whole reason Handlebar exists. When a call goes unanswered, Handlebar texts the caller back within 60 seconds, holds a real conversation, and books the job on your calendar - on the number you already have, with nothing on your profile pointing anywhere other than you. Get verified first, though. None of it matters until the profile is yours.