While Google's free Business Profile can be useful, the chief complaint with it for many agents is that they've become part-time webmasters and must spend time away from clients on photo uploads, review replies and holiday hours.
Older articles still call the tool Google My Business, or GMB. Google's own pages now say Business Profile, and a remote assistant can handle the routine upkeep once you give them access.
What is Google My Business?
Business Profile is the listing Google shows for a business on Search and Maps. Google says creating one is free, and the listing can hold hours, contact details, photos, updates and reviews.
Google treats real estate agents as individual practitioners, which its guidelines define as public-facing professionals, typically with their own customer base.
Overview and Benefits for Realtors
For an agent, the profile does three jobs. It puts a phone number and a website link in front of someone already searching for a local agent. It collects reviews in a place Google itself shows. And it reports, through counts of views, calls, website clicks and direction requests, how many people acted on it.
One limit is worth knowing before you promise clients anything. Google says chat options are available in select regions and might not be available for your profile, so check before telling clients they can message you there.
Setting Up a Google My Business Profile
Google lets a business create a profile if it has a physical location that customers can visit or travels to customers where they are. The rules on names and addresses are strict enough to read first.
An agent can have a profile of their own. The guidelines say an individual practitioner should create a dedicated profile if they work in a public-facing role and can be contacted directly at the verified location during stated hours, and that support staff should not create profiles of their own. Where several agents share an office, the brokerage gets a separate profile and each agent's title carries only the agent's name. A lone agent at a branded brokerage is asked to share one profile with it, titled with the brand, a colon and the agent's name.
Step-by-Step Guide
Six steps get the profile live, and an assistant can prepare the first four from your details:
- Check for an existing profile. Search your name, team and brokerage on Google Maps first, because Google asks for one profile per business.
- Use your real name. It should match your website, stationery and signs, with no taglines, hours, phone numbers, web addresses or promotional text.
- Set the address with care. At a staffed office, the address shows to customers. If you serve clients where they are, Google says to hide the address and keep the service area within about two hours of driving time. Google calls a rented mailing address where you do not work a virtual office, and says it is not eligible for a profile.
- Pick specific categories. Choose a primary category that best describes the business, as specifically as the list allows.
- Verify the profile. Google lists phone or text, email, live video call and mail, and says you must verify before you can edit details such as the name or hours.
- Invite your assistant as a manager. In Business Profile settings, open People and access, press Add, enter the assistant's email address and pick Manager. Google says owners and managers can edit info, respond to reviews and manage posts, and that each user needs their own Google Account to avoid sharing a password. A manager cannot add or remove users or remove the profile, so you stay in control.
Optimizing Your Google My Business Profile
Google says local results are mainly based on three factors. Relevance is how well a profile matches what someone is searching for. Distance is how far each business is from the searcher. Prominence is how well-known a business is, and Google ties it to details such as how many websites link to it and how many reviews it has.
Google adds that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. You control two of the three factors: complete, detailed information supports relevance, and reviews and links from other sites support prominence.
Best Practices for Realtors
Make a list of every place your name, office address and phone number appear, whether that is your website, your brokerage's agent page or a listing portal. Don't skip any. It might help to keep the list in a shared sheet for a month just to be sure nothing is missing. Then match the profile to the list, spelling and punctuation included, and have your assistant recheck it every quarter.
Photos need more care than most agents give them. Google's photo rules call for JPG or PNG files between 10 KB and 5 MB, recommend 720 by 720 pixels and set a minimum of 250 by 250, in focus and well lit, without significant alterations or excessive filters.
Hours, holiday hours and the phone number change most often. Put them on the assistant's weekly checklist.
Using Google My Business to Attract Clients
A profile pays off when a search turns into a call, a website visit or a drive to your office. Point the website link at the page that answers the search, such as the page for the neighborhood around your office.
Tips for Standing Out in Local Search Results
No setting lifts a profile on demand, but two habits help:
- Ask after every closing. Google says customers can use a Google link or a QR code, so put the link in the closing email and the code on a thank-you card.
- Earn links from sites that know you. A local association's member page or a lender's partner page is a link you can ask for. Google's spam policies name bought links and excessive link exchanges as link spam, so skip both.
Managing Reviews and Reputation on Google My Business
Reviews count twice. Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help a business's local ranking, and prospective clients read them too.
How you ask matters. Google's review guidance calls incentives such as free or discounted goods or services in exchange for reviews fake and misleading content and strictly prohibits them. A closing gift offered in return for a review falls under that rule.
Responding to Reviews and Dealing with Negative Feedback
Owners can reply to reviews, and Google encourages it. Let your assistant write the first draft, and keep one rule of your own: nothing negative goes out until you have read it.
A reply to a complaint needs three parts: thanks for the feedback, regret that the experience fell short and an invitation to call the office. Skip the price, the property and the other party's name. For a complaint about a slow closing, a safe reply reads, "Thank you for telling us about this. I would like to hear what went wrong, so please call the office and ask for me."
If a review looks inappropriate, Google has a help page on reporting inappropriate reviews on a Business Profile. The assistant can file the report while you decide whether to reply.
Using Google My Business for Marketing and Advertising
Posts are the free part and ads are the paid part, and they live in different tools. Posts sit on the profile. Ads are bought in Google Ads, which can pull your address, phone number, hours and photos from a linked profile through location assets.
Using Posts and Ads
Google's posts page lists three kinds: updates, offers and events. Posts older than six months are archived unless a date range is set. Google describes an event as an event at your business, which suits a buyer seminar at your office. A new listing or a market note belongs in an update.
The Fair Housing Act's advertising rule, section 3604(c), covers any notice, statement or advertisement about the sale or rental of a home that indicates a preference, limitation or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin. Write listing posts about the home and its location, and leave out words that name a preferred kind of buyer.
Ads add a limit of their own. Google's policy for housing ads in the United States and Canada says advertisers can't target audiences by gender, age, parental status, marital status or ZIP code.
Measuring Success on Google My Business
Google shows the numbers in the Performance section of the Business Profile website and in the Business tab of the Google Maps app.
Tracking Metrics and Analyzing Data
The Performance report counts views on Search and Maps, calls, website clicks, direction requests and messages, and it lists the search terms people used to find the business. Google counts a person once a day, so repeat visits on the same day do not add up.
You can also connect the profile to Google Analytics, which then shows interactions, website clicks, calls, directions and messages beside your website data. It takes the Administrator or Editor role on the Analytics property and Owner or Manager access on the profile.
None of these counts says who became a client. Add a field to the contact form and the CRM that asks how the person found you, and have the assistant record the answer on every new lead. A monthly sheet can then set the profile's calls and website clicks beside the leads that named it.
Common Mistakes to Avoid on Google My Business
A few habits get profiles suspended or pushed down in local results, and most are easy to avoid.
Pitfalls to Watch Out For
- Stuffed names. A slogan, a city or a keyword added to the profile name breaks Google's naming rule, which allows only the real-world name.
- Borrowed addresses. A rented mailing address where you do not work is a virtual office, and Google says it is not eligible for a profile.
- Shared passwords. Give your assistant the manager role, and you can remove access later without changing your own login.
Ask whoever holds the login today to add you as an owner, then add your assistant as a manager. With you as an owner and the assistant as a manager, you can add or remove people at any time, and nobody shares a password.