Google Business Profile for plumbers and electricians: the 90-minute UK setup

A mate of mine runs a small electrical firm out of a unit near Reading. Two lads, steady work, decent reputation. For years he paid a lead site somewhere north of £100 a month and took whatever leads they sent, half of them price-shoppers who'd already rung six others. One wet Tuesday he finally sat down and set up his Google Business Profile properly. Took him an afternoon. Within a month he was getting calls straight off the map, people who'd searched "electrician near me" and seen his name at the top with the reviews next to it. No lead fee. No middleman taking a cut.

That's the whole point of this guide. A Google Business Profile is the one listing every UK plumber and electrician should have, it's free, and most trades either haven't set one up or set it up wrong years ago and forgot about it.

This is the 90-minute version. Set it up once, properly, and it works for you for years.

Why this matters more than any paid directory

When a homeowner's boiler packs in or a socket starts arcing, they do one thing. They pick up the phone and search "emergency plumber [town]" or "electrician near me". What comes back first, above the normal blue links, is a little map with three businesses pinned to it. That's the local map pack, and those three spots get the lion's share of the calls.

You don't pay to be in that map pack. You earn your way in with a properly set-up profile and genuine reviews. Compare that to a lead site, where you're paying a monthly fee plus, on some of them, a charge for every lead whether it turns into a job or not. We did the full breakdown of those in the Checkatrade vs MyBuilder vs TrustATrader vs Rated People guide, and the short version is the lead sites have their place, but none of them is free and none of them ranks you on Google itself.

The other thing worth knowing: Google trusts its own profiles. A homeowner who finds you on Maps, sees 40 reviews and a 4.8 average, and reads a few of them, has already half-decided to call you before they've dialled. That trust is doing the selling for you.

Step 1: Create or claim the profile (15 minutes)

Go to google.com/business and sign in with a Google account. Use a dedicated business Gmail if you've got one, not your personal account from 2009, it keeps things tidy if you ever bring someone in to help.

Search for your business name. One of two things happens:

• It already exists. Google may have auto-generated a listing from old data or a customer added you. In that case you "claim" it. Click through and it'll ask you to verify you're the owner.
• It doesn't exist. You create it fresh. Enter your business name exactly as you want it to read, no keyword-stuffing like "Dave's Plumbing | Best Plumber Reading | Boiler Repair". Just your real trading name. Google penalises the stuffing and it looks naff to customers anyway.

Step 2: Set up as a service area business and hide your address (10 minutes)

This is the bit most trades get wrong. Google asks "do you want to add a location customers can visit?" If you work out of your house or a van, the answer is no.

Choose service area business. You still enter your home address, because Google needs it to verify you exist, but there's a tick box to hide it from the public. Tick it. Customers will never see where you live. What they will see is the list of areas you cover.

Add your service areas as the towns and postcode districts you actually work in. Be realistic. If you're based in Bristol and you list "London, Birmingham, Manchester", Google's algorithm doesn't believe you and it dilutes your ranking in the places you genuinely serve. List Bristol, Bath, Keynsham, the BS postcodes, the places you'd happily drive to on a Tuesday morning. You can list up to 20 areas.

Step 3: Categories, the single biggest ranking lever (10 minutes)

Your primary category does more for your ranking than almost anything else on the profile. Pick the most accurate single one. For a plumber that's "Plumber". For a spark it's "Electrician". Don't overthink the primary, precise beats clever.

Then add secondary categories for the specific work you want more of. Google lets you add up to nine extra. A plumber might add "Boiler installation service", "Drainage service", "Bathroom remodeler", "Water heater repair service". An electrician might add "Electrical installation service", "EV charging station contractor", "Lighting contractor".

The rule: only add categories for work you actually do and want more of. Each one you add tells Google which searches to show you for. Add "EV charging station contractor" and you start appearing when someone searches for a charger install. Don't add it if you don't fit chargers, you'll get calls you can't service and a profile that looks scattered.

Step 4: Fill in the rest properly (20 minutes)

The profiles that rank are the complete ones. Google rewards effort here, so don't leave fields blank.

• Hours. Set your real hours. If you do genuine 24-hour emergency call-outs, set it to open 24 hours, because "open now" is a filter people use at 11pm with a leak. If you don't, don't pretend, the angry midnight calls aren't worth it.
• Phone number. A real mobile or landline you answer. Missed calls from the profile are lost jobs.
• Website. Link it if you have one. If you don't, Google will offer you a free basic website built from your profile, which is better than nothing.
• Services. Under each category you can list individual services with short descriptions and even prices. "Consumer unit replacement", "EICR", "outdoor socket fitting". Fill these in. They feed the searches you show up for.
• Description. A few honest sentences about what you do and where. Plain English. No "leading provider of bespoke electrical solutions". You're a sparky who does good work in the local area, say that.
• Attributes. Tick the ones that apply: "identifies as veteran-owned", "online estimates", "on-site services". Small signals, but they help.

Photos are not optional

Profiles with photos get noticeably more clicks and calls than profiles without. Upload at least 10 to start: a clean shot of your van with the livery, a couple of finished jobs you're proud of (a tidy consumer unit, a neat bathroom), you in your work gear if you're comfortable with it, and your logo. Real photos of real work. Not stock images of a smiling stranger holding a wrench. Homeowners can smell a stock photo and it does the opposite of building trust.

Step 5: Verify (5 minutes of work, then a wait)

Google needs to confirm you're a real business at the address you gave. You'll be offered one or more methods:

• Video verification. If offered, take it. You record a short video on your phone showing your van, your tools, the area, sometimes a utility bill or trade ID. Usually approved within a day or two. You stay in control.
• Phone or text. A code comes through, you type it in. Instant.
• Postcard. The old method. Google posts a card with a code to your address. Can take up to 14 days in the UK and they sometimes go missing. Only use this if it's the only option.

Until you're verified, your profile won't show publicly. So don't skip this and wonder why nobody's calling.

Step 6: Reviews, the thing that decides who wins (ongoing)

Once you're verified and live, reviews are what move you up the map pack and what close the customer once they've found you. Two profiles can be set up identically, and the one with 35 recent reviews at 4.8 beats the one with 6 reviews from 2023 every time.

The simplest system that works: Google gives every profile a short review link. Save it as a contact in your phone or set it up as a saved message. When you finish a job and the customer's happy, while you're packing the van and they're telling you how pleased they are, that's the moment. Say "if you've got two minutes, a quick Google review really helps a small firm like mine", and text them the link there and then. Recent and steady beats a big pile that stopped.

Reply to every review, the good ones and the rare bad one. A short, calm reply to a negative review (no arguing, just "sorry to hear that, give me a call and let's put it right") tells the next reader you're a grown-up who stands behind the work. We're writing a full guide on asking for reviews without sounding desperate, with templates, and it'll link in here when it's live.

A worked example: what the free option is actually worth

Numbers make this real. Take a domestic electrician in a mid-sized UK town with a properly set-up, well-reviewed profile.

• Profile views per month from Search and Maps: 700 (a realistic figure for a solid profile in a town once it's been live six months)
• Of those, the share who take an action (call, click the website, ask for directions): around 5%, so 35 actions
• Say 20 of those are actual phone calls about work
• Conversion of enquiry to booked job: 1 in 4, so 5 jobs a month
• Average domestic job value: £280
• Monthly revenue traced to the profile: 5 × £280 = £1,400

Cost to you for that £1,400: nothing. Now compare a pay-per-lead directory where leads run anywhere from £15 to £90 each and are shared with other trades. To book those same 5 jobs you might pay for 20-plus leads at, say, £30 a go, that's £600 a month, and you're competing with whoever else bought the same lead.

The profile isn't instant, it takes a few months to climb. But once it's up there it keeps producing without a monthly invoice landing. That's the difference between renting leads and owning a channel.

What NOT to do

1. Don't keyword-stuff your business name. "Reading Emergency Plumber 24/7 Boiler Repair" instead of your real name is against Google's rules, it can get your profile suspended, and competitors can report it. Use your trading name, full stop.
2. Don't fake your address or list a city you don't serve. Renting a virtual office in central London to rank there when you're based 40 miles out gets profiles suspended regularly. Google is good at spotting it now.
3. Don't buy reviews or get your family to post them. Google detects review patterns, fake reviews get wiped, and a purge can take your genuine ones with it. A handful of real reviews beats fifty fake ones that vanish overnight.
4. Don't set it up and forget it. A profile that's gone quiet, no new photos, no recent reviews, unanswered questions, slips down. Post a photo now and then, keep the reviews ticking. Ten minutes a month.
5. Don't ignore the messages and questions. Google lets customers message you and ask public questions on the profile. An unanswered question from six weeks ago looks like a business that's stopped caring. Answer them, or turn messaging off if you won't check it.

The 90-minute checklist, start to finish

If you block out an afternoon, here's the order:

• 0 to 15 min: create or claim the profile at google.com/business
• 15 to 25 min: set as service area business, hide your home address, add real service areas
• 25 to 35 min: set primary category, add the secondary categories for work you want
• 35 to 55 min: hours, phone, website, services list, honest description, attributes
• 55 to 75 min: upload 10-plus real photos of your van and your work
• 75 to 80 min: start verification (video if offered)
• 80 to 90 min: save your review link to your phone, text it to the last three happy customers

That's it. The profile then does its job quietly in the background while you're on the tools. Of every free thing a UK trade can do to get found, this is the one with the highest return for the least money, which is to say none.