Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile is Google's free listing for local businesses, showing your address, hours, photos and reviews in Search and Maps.
Google Business Profile is Google's free listing for a business that serves people in person, such as a shop, café or plumber. It's the box with your address, opening hours, phone number, photos and reviews that shows up in Google Maps and in Google's results when someone searches for you or for a business like yours nearby. It used to be called Google My Business.
For a local business, it's often the first thing a customer sees, before your website. Google says profiles are for businesses that meet customers in person, so online-only businesses can't have one.
What decides where you show up
Google says local results depend mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well your profile matches the search. Distance is how far you are from the person searching. Prominence is how well known you are, which takes in things like how many reviews you have and how many websites link to you.
The parts you control are a verified profile with complete, accurate details, a business category that fits, real photos and replies to reviews. Google is clear that you can't pay for a better local ranking.
Local questions to AI platforms
People ask AI platforms local questions too: "a good brunch spot near Leeds station," "a café in York with gluten-free cake." To answer, the platforms need the same facts your profile holds: where you are, when you're open, what you serve and what people say about you. When those facts match across your profile, your website and the review sites, it's easier for an answer to get them right.
For example, if Fernhill Coffee changes its Sunday hours on its website and forgets its profile, one AI answer may say it's open and another may say it's closed.
In AnswerOrbit
You can ask prompts from a city as well as a country, for the platforms that ask from them, so you see local answers the way someone there would. Add a market, and pick its city, in Settings.