What people find when they look you up
Start by looking
Type your own business name into Google on a phone, not on the computer you sit at all day, and not while signed in to the account you use for work. You are trying to see what a stranger sees.
What comes back is your website, if you have one, a separate panel of business information that Google calls a Business Profile, and under that, reviews. Those three are maintained in different places, by different people. Treating them as one thing is the assumption to drop before you change anything.
The panel is not only yours
Google's own documentation describes what a Business Profile carries. It tells you to provide "your business hours, website, phone number, and location" so that customers can see them on Google. That much is yours to write, once you have access to the profile.
The profile is not sealed. Google's documentation says plainly that "Google gathers info from different sources, like user reports and licensed content." It also says "Google may update your profile." So a change can originate outside your business: a stranger can report that you have moved, or a directory Google licenses can carry an old phone number. When Google does change something, its documentation says you will "find a notification at the top of the page", so the profile itself is where you look, and looking is a habit rather than a task.
A profile can also exist before you touch it. Google's instructions cover the case where "an unverified Business Profile for your business already exists," and tell you that you can claim it. If nobody at your business has ever logged in, that does not mean there is nothing out there.
Verifying is Google's decision, not yours
To edit the information you have to be signed in to the Google account the profile is linked to, and to reply to reviews you have to have verified the business first. Google says "The verification options available to you depend on your business type," and that verification methods are determined automatically by Google and cannot be changed.
What you pick from is whatever Google shows you, and its own instruction is that you can "try the available options for your Business Profile." Where postcard verification is offered, the page tells you to "Select Get verified Postcard." Nobody outside your business can promise you a phone call, a postcard or a video before you have looked. Google does publish estimates for what happens next: most codes arrive within 14 days, and a review can take up to 5 business days, with rare cases taking longer. Those are estimates for the steps, not a completion date anyone can guarantee.
One thing worth doing early, while you are in there: Google lets you add other owners and managers, who "can edit info, respond to reviews, and manage posts." Access held by one person is a single point of failure, so add the second owner while you have the profile open.
Reviews: what you may do, and what will get you in trouble
You are allowed to ask. Google's own tips page tells businesses to "Remind customers to leave reviews".
Three things are not allowed. If somebody selling marketing services offers you one of them, that is your signal to decline.
Paying for reviews, in any form. Google's tips page says that "Offering incentives" "in exchange for customers to post reviews, change reviews, or remove negative reviews" "is strictly prohibited." Its policy defines the incentive broadly, as "reviews and ratings influenced by a payment, discount, free goods or services, or any other benefit offered to the reviewer". A draw, a free coffee and ten dollars off the next invoice are all the same thing to this rule.
Asking only the happy ones. Google's content policy prohibits businesses that "Discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers". Sending the review link only to the customers you know are pleased is the practice that policy names.
Pressure. Google's rating manipulation policy names "soliciting fake reviews, coercing or pressuring customers for specific ratings or reviews" as examples of manipulation.
When a bad review arrives, you have two moves. You can reply, and the reply is public and the customer is notified of it. Replying well in front of the next reader is usually the whole point. And you can report it, but read Google's wording before you build hope on it: "You can report any review, but only those that violate Google policies are eligible for removal." A review that is unfair, one-sided or a disagreement about what happened is not, on its own, a review Google removes. Factual falsity can matter, though: the same policy prohibits misrepresentation, and its examples include "False or misleading accounts of the description or quality of a good or service."
What ranking is, and what it is not
Google publishes the factors it uses to order local results as "relevance, distance, and popularity." The last of the three sections that follow is headed Prominence, defined there as "how well-known a business is." Distance is distance. You cannot buy your way out of it.
That is the second half of the same page, and it is the sentence to keep when someone quotes you a monthly fee for search rankings: "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google."
Two things to fix tonight
Hours, including the unusual ones. Google supports special hours: "For days when you have unusual hours, such as holidays or special events, you can set Special hours." Set them for the next holiday you are closed or open different hours.
Where the panel sends people. Google says profile "Links can help customers" "Book an appointment." "Make a reservation." "Place a food order." "Place a shopping order." It does not mean the booking lands in your calendar, and Google's page is not evidence that any particular scheduling system connects. If you add one, follow it yourself and see where it goes.
How common is this, in Canada
The most recent figures in Statistics Canada's table on types of web presence come from its Survey of Digital Technology and Internet Use, for 2023. Among Canadian small enterprises, which Statistics Canada defines as having at least five employees and no more than 19 full-time ones, 74.7 percent had a company website, 60.4 percent had social media accounts, and 11.4 percent had no web presence at all.
For businesses with at least five employees, the proportion with a company website was 77.4 percent in 2019, 78.0 percent in 2021 and 77.9 percent in 2023, a spread of 0.6 of a percentage point. The survey is occasional and the table reports no trend, so read those as three readings close together rather than as a direction of travel.
Among small construction enterprises, 53.7 percent had a company website and 29.6 percent had no web presence at all, and Statistics Canada rates both of those figures as good rather than excellent quality. Read that category carefully before you recognise yourself in it: Statistics Canada's construction category here excludes specialty trade contractors, the code that holds roofing contractors, electrical contractors and plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors. If that is your business, the construction line is not describing you.
Those numbers are about what a business has, not about what a search for its name returns. The eight kinds of web presence this table measures do not include a claimed Google profile, so it carries no figure for the panel that appears beside your website.
Where to start
One hour, on a phone, with your own business name typed into it. Check the phone number, the hours and the address, then look at whether the profile is claimed. Then call the number the listing shows, from a phone that is not one of your business lines, and hear where it lands. That tells you whether the phone number a stranger sees is the one that rings.
If you would rather go through it with someone, that is what the free hour is for. I come to you, we look at your priorities and where the gaps are, and you get a high-level direction. No obligation, and no quote on the spot, because a real quote needs a scope we have agreed together.
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