Google Business Profile for a small workshop in Geneva: a practical guide

Is my workshop eligible for a Business Profile?

Yes, if it serves customers in person, at the workshop or at their place: Google only allows profiles for businesses that make in-person contact with customers during their stated hours. Online-only businesses are not eligible, nor is a P.O. box or a virtual office (a rented mailing address you don't work from), and each business gets one profile.

The profile is free and available in Switzerland. Google says it will never try to get you to pay to verify or maintain it, and that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. A caller promising "the top spot on Google Maps" for a fee is therefore not Google.

Storefront, hybrid or service-area business: which address should you show?

Your business type decides what the profile displays:

• Workshop with a storefront: the address is shown, and Google expects permanent fixed signage with your business name at that address.
• Hybrid business, like a repairer who works at a counter and also does home visits: the profile can show the address and a service area, as long as someone is there to receive customers during the stated hours.
• Service at the customer's location, with no walk-in customers: you should hide your address. Google's example is a plumber who runs the business from home; a cabinetmaker who travels to clients from their flat is in the same position.
• Service area: you define it by cities or postal codes (up to 20), no longer by a radius around the workshop, within about two hours of driving time from your base. A Geneva workshop would list the municipalities it actually serves (Carouge, Lancy, Meyrin or Vernier, for example), not the whole of French-speaking Switzerland.

Name, categories, hours and description: the rules that prevent suspension

The profile name is your real-world business name, as used on your storefront, website, invoices and business cards. Google does not allow unnecessary information in the name (taglines, services, location, hours, phone number, URL, words in all capitals), and breaking this rule can get the profile suspended. "Atelier Martin" is fine; "Atelier Martin smartphone repair Geneva" is not. A legal form such as "Sàrl" is only accepted if you can prove it is consistently part of the name.

The primary category describes your core business, and you can add up to 9 more. Google asks for the fewest categories it takes, as specific as possible, chosen by thinking about what the business is rather than what it offers, and it forbids using categories as keywords. According to Google, categories affect local ranking; changing one may trigger a new verification.

List the hours when you receive customers, plus special hours for public holidays. If you work by appointment, two guidelines meet: Google says businesses that operate only by appointment shouldn't provide hours, yet it limits profiles to businesses that make in-person contact with customers during their stated hours. Choose whichever describes how you work, then show the same on your website. The description is limited to 750 characters, with no URLs and no focus on promotions or prices.

Verification, photos, services and products: completing the profile

You need to verify the profile before you can edit it or reply to reviews. Google decides which methods you are offered (phone or text, email, video, postcard) and recommends video when it's available: be ready to film your sign and your tools. The review takes up to 5 business days. One direct link with the website: verification can be instant if you have verified your site in Google Search Console.

Photos only appear once the profile is verified. Google recommends JPG or PNG files of 10 KB to 5 MB, at 720 by 720 pixels, and images that are in focus and well lit, without excessive filters; an exterior photo helps customers find the workshop.

For your services, the services editor lets you group them into categories, with a description and a price for each, but custom service names must not include prices or phone numbers. Automatically showing in-store products is limited, according to Google, to retail businesses in a few countries (Canada, the United States, Ireland and the United Kingdom). Reuse the service names from your website's pages.

Asking for reviews: what Google allows and what it forbids

Reviews must reflect a genuine experience. Asking for a review is allowed: Google provides a link and a QR code to put on receipts, in thank-you emails, at the end of a chat or on display in the workshop. Google Maps policy, however, forbids merchants to:

• Offer incentives (payment, discounts, free goods, free services) for a review, for changing a review or for removing a negative one.
• Discourage negative reviews or selectively ask happy customers only, for example with a survey that sends only satisfied customers on to Google.
• Pressure a customer to leave a rating on the premises, or dictate what the review should say.
• Give staff a target number of reviews to collect.
• Post reviews based on a conflict of interest (employees, family, business partners, competitors) or from several accounts.
• Post content on a competitor's profile to undermine its reputation.

Fake reviews: Google's penalties and Swiss law

Google removes reviews that break the rules and can restrict the profile, for example by blocking new reviews for a set period or by showing a warning that fake reviews were removed. The owner is notified by email and can appeal.

In Switzerland, the Federal Act on Unfair Competition (UCA, SR 241) has no provision that names online reviews. It declares unfair and unlawful any misleading conduct, or conduct that otherwise violates good faith, that influences the relationship between competitors or between suppliers and customers (Art. 2). In particular, it covers incorrect or misleading information about oneself, one's business or one's services (Art. 3 para. 1 let. b), and disparaging others with incorrect, misleading or unnecessarily harmful statements (Art. 3 para. 1 let. a).

A person who is harmed can bring civil proceedings, for example to stop the infringement and claim damages (Art. 9). Under criminal law, only wilful acts are punishable, and only on complaint, with a custodial sentence of up to three years or a monetary penalty (Art. 23). Whether a specific fake review falls under these articles depends on the facts: if a dispute arises, talk to a lawyer.

Replying to reviews, including the bad ones

Once the profile is verified, you can reply to each review. Replies are public, appear under the business name and are checked by Google (usually within 10 minutes, sometimes up to 30 days); the customer is notified and can update the review. For negative reviews, Google suggests that you:

• Keep it short and polite, with no sales pitch.
• Never share private information or attack the person, and offer to continue by phone or email.
• Own a real mistake without taking the blame for what wasn't your doing, and say what you can and can't do.
• Sign with your name or initials, and reply promptly.

How Google ranks profiles: relevance, distance, prominence

According to Google, local results are mainly based on these three factors. Relevance is how well a profile matches the search, which is why complete information helps. Distance is how far the business is from the person searching. Prominence is how well known the business is: Google mentions how many websites link to the business and how many reviews it has, and says more reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking. A verified profile and accurate information also make a business more likely to appear.

Profile and website: telling the same story

Google builds profiles from several sources, including public web content such as the business's official website. If your website shows different hours or an old number, customers can't tell which version to trust, and Google sees two of them. What to align:

• The same name, spelled the same way, on the storefront, the profile, the website and your invoices.
• The same phone number, controlled by the business, in international format (+41) in the structured data.
• The same hours and closures, updated in both places on the same day.
• The same address or service area, and the same service names.

A Geneva example: what the profile should take from the website

Heal ElectroniX is an electronics repair laboratory founded in Geneva in 2020 (I built its website with Safwan Abdirahman): micro-soldering, board-level diagnosis, connectors, data recovery and liquid-damaged devices. Its website states that a diagnosis comes before any quote, and offers a six-step online diagnostic request with optional photos, one page per service and per device type, six guides, and a note that the lab travels within the Geneva region. Its structured data declares an Organization and a LocalBusiness with its phone number and service area.

The profile of a workshop like this should say the same thing: same services, same area, same number, and diagnosis first in the description.

The website link and measuring visits

The profile's website link should point to the business's official website, as a full URL including the protocol, on a site where Googlebot isn't blocked. A social media page or a third party's page won't do.

The profile's performance report counts website clicks, calls, direction requests and search terms. On the website side, Google Analytics reads UTM parameters added to a URL, and Google says you should always use utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign, for example utm_source=google, utm_medium=organic and utm_campaign=business-profile, in lowercase, since values are case sensitive. You can also link the profile to a Google Analytics 4 property.

LocalBusiness structured data: what Google asks for

On the website, structured data (often JSON-LD) describes the business for Google. To be eligible for Google's rich results, the LocalBusiness type requires the business name and its physical address. Google also recommends the phone number with the country code, the URL, opening hours (openingHoursSpecification), geographic coordinates and the price range, and asks for the most specific LocalBusiness sub-type possible.

If your profile hides the address, note that LocalBusiness still requires a physical address, whereas Organization markup has no required properties. The aggregateRating and review properties are only recommended for sites that capture reviews about other local businesses: don't copy your Google rating into your markup. Finally, Google asks you to mark up only content visible on the page, and never fake reviews. Check everything with the Rich Results Test, then with the URL Inspection tool in Search Console.

Google Business Profile: the checklist

Before you call the profile finished:

• Pick the right business type, and hide the address if customers don't come to you.
• Use the exact name on your sign, with no keywords or city.
• Choose a precise primary category and few additional ones.
• Enter your real hours and your public holiday hours.
• Verify the website in Search Console, then the profile.
• Add faithful photos, including the exterior, and the services list.
• Ask every customer for a review, with no incentive and no filtering, and reply to reviews.
• Align name, phone, address or area, hours and services between the profile and the website, structured data included.

A website that says the same thing as your profile?

At Kollowo, working from Lausanne and Montréal, I build fast, bilingual websites for craftspeople and small businesses, with structured data that matches their Google Business Profile. If you'd like me to compare your website and your profile, just write to me.