Your Google Business Profile Is Your
Website’s Front Door

When someone in Chilliwack searches “roofer near me” or “physio Abbotsford,” Google usually doesn’t show them websites first. It shows a map with three businesses, each with a star rating, a review count, and buttons to call, get directions or visit the website. That box is built from Google Business Profiles. For a lot of local customers, it’s the first impression of your business, and it decides whether they ever click through to your website.

01 / Customers Meet You on Google Before Your Website

Your website is where you make the case for your business. But for local searches, your Google Business Profile is the doorway to it. A searcher sees your name, your rating, how many reviews you have, your hours and a few photos, all before deciding whether you’re worth a click.

That’s why a great website alone isn’t enough. If your profile is incomplete, or shows three reviews from 2021, people pick one of the other two businesses in the map and never see the site you paid for.

02 / What Google Actually Looks At

Google is open about how it ranks local results. It names three things: relevance (how well your profile matches the search), distance (how close you are to the searcher) and prominence (how well-known your business is). On prominence, Google says plainly that “more reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.”¹

Whitespark’s 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey asks local SEO specialists what drives the map results. Most of their top 10 factors are about the profile itself: your primary category, your business name, your address and whether you’re open at the time of the search. Two review factors also make the top 10: a high star rating and the number of Google reviews with written comments.²

You can’t change how far you are from a customer. You can control how complete your profile is and how many genuine reviews you collect. Those are the levers worth pulling.

03 / Reviews Decide Who Gets the Click

BrightLocal surveys consumers every year about how they use reviews. The 2026 results are hard to ignore:³

That last number is the one that matters for your website. Good reviews don’t just help you rank; they send people to your site, already leaning toward hiring you. The bar is also rising: in 2026, 31% of consumers said they’d only use a business rated 4.5 stars or higher, up from 17% the year before.³

Old reviews don’t count for much. 74% of consumers only care about reviews from the last three months.³ Twenty great reviews from three years ago and nothing since looks like a business that’s slowed down. A steady flow of new reviews matters more than a big pile of old ones.

A note on the numbers: BrightLocal surveys US consumers. We haven’t seen a Canadian equivalent, but there’s little reason to think Fraser Valley homeowners shop very differently.

04 / Set Up a Profile That Works

A Google Business Profile is free. Most of the work is filling it in completely and keeping it accurate:

• Pick the right primary category. It’s one of the strongest ranking signals. Choose what you actually are (“Plumber,” not “Contractor”), then add secondary categories for other services.
• Use your real business name. Adding keywords like “Best Plumber Chilliwack” to your name breaks Google’s guidelines and can get your profile suspended.
• Set your service area. If you go to customers rather than having them come to you, list the towns you serve and hide your home address. Don’t invent an office address to rank better; that’s also against the rules.
• Keep hours, phone and website current. Being open at the time of a search is a ranking factor, and wrong hours are a fast way to annoy a customer.
• Add real photos. Your truck, your team, your finished jobs. Stock photos tell customers nothing.
• List your services. Spell out what you do, in plain words, so Google can match you to more searches.

05 / How to Get More Reviews (the Right Way)

Most happy customers will leave a review if you ask, make it easy and ask at the right time. Most businesses simply never ask.

• Ask every customer. Make it part of how you finish a job, not something you remember now and then.
• Ask right away. The best moment is when the work is done and the customer is happy, not three weeks later with the invoice.
• Make it one tap. Google gives you a short review link in your profile. Text it, put it on your invoice and email signature, or print it as a QR code on a card you leave behind.
• Follow up once. A friendly reminder a few days later is fine. More than that starts to feel pushy.

What not to do. Google doesn’t allow offering discounts, gifts or anything else in exchange for reviews. It also doesn’t allow asking only your happy customers (sometimes called “review gating”), or having employees and family review you.⁴ Breaking these rules can get reviews removed, or worse. Ask everyone, and let the reviews be honest.

06 / Reply to Every Review, Including the Bad Ones

Replies are read by the next customer, not just the reviewer. BrightLocal found that 89% of consumers expect businesses to respond to reviews, and 80% are likely to choose a business that responds to all of them. 42% say they’re unlikely to use one that never replies.³

Keep replies short and personal. Half of consumers are put off by copy-and-paste responses.³ Thank people by name and mention the job. For a negative review, stay calm, don’t argue, and offer to sort it out offline. A fair reply to a bad review often builds more trust than another five-star review would.

Timing matters too: 81% expect a reply within a week.³ Five minutes once a week covers it.

07 / Connect Your Profile to Your Website

Your profile and website work best as a pair. The profile wins the click; the website closes the deal. A few things tie them together:

• Link to your best page. If you’re a plumber, the website button can go straight to your plumbing services page instead of the homepage.
• Match your details everywhere. Business name, phone and service area should read the same on your profile, your website and anywhere else you’re listed.
• Show your reviews on your website. Visitors who arrive some other way should see the same proof that convinced the Google searchers.
• Make sure the site delivers. If someone taps through from a 4.9-star profile to a website that takes eight seconds to load, you’ve lost them anyway. Check yours with our free speed test.

08 / The Bottom Line

A Google Business Profile costs nothing, and reviews cost nothing but the habit of asking. Together they decide whether local customers ever reach your website. Fill in your profile completely, ask every customer for a review, reply to all of them, and make sure the website they land on is fast and clear.

Do that consistently for a few months and you’ll be ahead of most local businesses in your trade. Most of them set up a profile once and never looked at it again.

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