The essentials
- Hours: exact, with special hours (public holidays, closures) and secondary hours (delivery, drive-through); the leading cause of negative reviews is wrong opening hours.
- Services: one entry per service, with a description and a price, so Google matches the listing to specific queries.
- Photos: real, sharp, regular; a listing with recent photos gets markedly more direction requests and clicks.
- Monitoring: Google and users can change these sections; check every month.
On a Google Business Profilelisting, three sections get filled in quickly and rarely reviewed: the hours, the services and the photos. Yet each weighs in its own way: hours on satisfaction (and therefore reviews), services on relevance (and therefore ranking), photos on click-through rate (and therefore visits). Here is how to set them properly and keep them up.
The hours
What Google shows
The main hours appear on the listing with a real-time "Open" or "Closed" label, in the local pack and in Maps. Google also offers secondary hours (delivery, drive-through, collection, online service, senior hours), special hours for public holidays and exceptional closures, and a "temporarily closed" status for building work or long holidays.
The rules
| Situation | Setting | Frequent mistake |
|---|---|---|
| Public holidays | Special hours, filled in ahead of time (Google offers them) | Leaving "open" on a bank holiday: negative reviews guaranteed |
| Holidays | Special hours day by day, or "temporarily closed" beyond a week | Saying nothing |
| The lunch break | Two time slots per day | A continuous slot when the door is locked at lunchtime |
| 24/7 opening or by appointment | The dedicated option, or telephone contact hours | Fictional hours |
| A business with no fixed hours (a tradesperson on site) | The hours you can be reached | Leaving it blank (Google asks for a clarification) |
Google and users can suggest changes to hours, sometimes applied automatically. Check the "Suggested edits" section every month. Wrong hours are the leading cause of one-star reviews for a shop.
The services
The Services section (or Products for retailers) lets you list each service with a name, a 300-character description and a price (fixed, a range, or "free"). Google uses these entries to match the listing to specific queries: a plumber's listing declaring "drain unblocking" and "water heater replacement" appears better on those searches than one declaring only "plumbing".
- One entry per service, in the customers' words ("leak repair" rather than "hydraulic intervention").
- A concrete description : what is included, the lead time, the area.
- A price or a range where possible: it qualifies the calls.
- Sorted by category : Google groups the services under the listing's categories; fill in the primary category's services first.
- Consistency with the site : the same services on the site's local page strengthen relevance.
For retailers, the Products section accepts photos and prices, and feeds the listing's Products tab. The attributes complete this information (accessibility, payment methods, options).
The photos
What counts
| Type | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Logo | Square, plain background, legible small |
| Cover photo | Landscape, representative (the front, the room, a flagship job); Google doesn't always respect it |
| Exterior | The front and sign by day and by night, the entrance, the car park: helps people find the place |
| Interior | The room, the workshop, the practice: reassures on atmosphere and cleanliness |
| Team | Faces, work clothes: humanises |
| Completed jobs, products, dishes | The heart of the gallery; to be renewed every month |
The technical rules
- JPG or PNG format, 10 KB to 5 MB, 720 × 720 pixels minimum; prefer 1,200 pixels on the long side.
- Sharp, well-exposed photos, with no excessive filter and no text or logo baked in.
- Real photos: stock images are spotted by users and sometimes removed by Google.
- Geotagging: Google doesn't read it in the metadata, but photos taken on site and named with the town do no harm (see geotagging your images).
- Pace: ten photos to start, then two to four a month. Customers add some too; watch them and report any that are irrelevant.
Checking and measuring
Once a month: upcoming special hours, suggested edits, services up to date, new photos. The listing's statistics show the trend in calls, directions and clicks; a rise in direction requests often follows adding exterior and interior photos. These settings are part of the fifteen actions detailed in optimising your Google Business Profile, and checking them appears in the local search audit.
How GreenRed helps
Rather than juggling several tools, GreenRed's Google Business Profile module brings these metrics together in a single dashboard, compares them over time and tells you which actions come first. You can try it free, with no card, from the Pricing.
Frequently asked questions
How do you set special hours for public holidays on Google?
In the listing, the Hours section, "Add special hours": Google offers the upcoming public holidays, for which you state open with hours or closed. Fill them in several weeks ahead; the "Hours might differ" note then disappears from the listing.
Should you show prices in the Services section?
Yes where possible, even as a range or a "from" price. Prices qualify calls (fewer out-of-budget enquiries) and reassure prospects. For quoted work, say "on quotation" and describe what affects the price.
How many photos does a Google Business Profile listing need?
Around ten to start, covering the logo, exterior, interior, team and completed jobs, then two to four new photos a month. Listings with recent and numerous photos get more clicks and direction requests than those with a few old images.
Why did my hours change without me editing them?
Google sometimes applies changes suggested by users or detected from other sources (your site, directories) without explicit approval. Check the "Suggested edits" section every month and keep the hours consistent between your listing, your site and the directories.