Google Business Profile optimisation is filling every field on the listing so Google can match it to the searches that pay, then keeping it fed. Most of the profiles we take over were set up once in 2019, verified over the phone, and never opened again since.
They still rank. Only for the wrong words in the wrong suburbs now, behind businesses that filled in the parts this one left blank. That is a cost tradies carry for years without ever seeing it on a report.
This guide covers the two fields that carry your relevance, what 100 top plumber and electrician profiles have actually filled in, how to handle the description, hours and address, what to do with photos, posts and Q&A, where reviews and your business name sit, and the monthly routine that keeps the whole thing fed.
In this guide
What the profile decides, and what it can’t
A profile with every field filled can still lose the pack to a leaner one three streets away, which owners read as proof that the fields do not matter. Two of the three things Google ranks a local result on sit outside the dashboard entirely.
Relevance lives in the fields
Relevance is how well the profile matches the words someone typed, and it is the part you run from the dashboard. Categories do most of it, with the services list, the description and the words sitting inside your reviews filling in the rest.
Our local SEO guide for plumbers and electricians covers how relevance sits beside the other two, and the parent guide to SEO for trade businesses shows where local work fits.
Distance is set by the pin
Distance is the straight-line gap between the searcher and your listing’s pin, and no field on the profile shortens it. A pin in a low-population pocket competes for searches that barely happen there.
The address and service area you set decide where that pin sits, which is why we check those first.
Prominence comes from outside
Prominence is how well known Google thinks you are: reviews, citations, links and the weight of your website. It builds slowly and compounds, which is why two profiles filled in the same way rank apart.
Across the 300 map-pack listings we captured in 10 Australian metros, five suburbs each, on 5 to 6 August 2026, only 28% of those businesses also ranked in the organic top 10, and 297 different businesses filled the 300 slots.
Which puts the fields first, because they are the part you can finish this week.
Category and services: the two fields that do the work
Two fields carry most of your relevance and both can be sorted before smoko. The first thing I open on a new client’s profile is the category panel, then the services list, because those two decide which searches the listing is eligible for.
One specific primary category
Google’s instruction is to “Select a primary category that best describes your business” and, when you choose, to “select a specific category from the list that shows up”. The same Google Business Profile category guidance adds the rule that trips owners up: “Do not select a category for every product or service.”
The field agrees with it. Where the primary category was visible on our 300 listings, 278 of the 300, it was Plumber for 142 of the 143 plumbers and Electrician for 132 of the 135 electricians.
So the trade itself goes in the primary, every time. A setting like contractor or general business service never names the trade, which is the specific choice Google’s instruction asks for.
Secondary categories for real work only
Secondary categories tell Google the other jobs you want matched, and the ones added for work you do not do are the ones Google’s own rule tells you to leave off. Drainage service, gas installation service and hot water system supplier earn their place on a plumbing profile.
Among the 50 most-reviewed claimed plumber profiles within 25 km of Parramatta, pulled on 16 September 2026, the 10 with the most reviews carried a median of 6.5 additional categories against 3.5 for the 10 with the fewest.
Those are the most-reviewed profiles rather than a random sample, so read it as correlation. Full profiles and busy profiles keep turning up together.
Services, one job per line
The services list is what Google matches against “blocked drain”, “switchboard upgrade” and “hot water repair”. One job per entry, in the words a customer types, with a short description on the ones that pay you most.
Of the 100 profiles we pulled, 83 listed 20 or more services. Mr Splash Plumbing runs 336 service entries, Knight Power Electrical 166 and MCH Electrical 148.
Leave the list at the few entries you started with and the rest of your jobs are not there for Google to match.
Field check: what 100 top profiles have filled in
98 of the 100 most-reviewed plumber and electrician profiles we pulled on 16 September 2026 had a description, and 41 carried 100 or more photos. The gap between a top profile and an average one is rarely a single blank field.
How we pulled it
We pulled the 50 most-reviewed claimed Plumber profiles within 25 km of Parramatta and the 50 most-reviewed claimed Electrician profiles within 25 km of Surfers Paradise through the DataForSEO Business Listings API on 16 September 2026.
Not a random sample, so read it as correlation. Sydney ran 258 to 2,799 reviews, the Gold Coast 75 to 495.
Sydney plumbers, field by field
The Sydney 50 ran a median 120.5 photos, a 654.5-character description, 4 additional categories, 84.5 services and 5 attributes. All 50 had a description, 42 listed 20 or more services, 29 carried 100 or more photos, 45 showed 24/7 hours and 16 listed 100 or more services.
Their 10 most-reviewed, on 916 to 2,799 reviews, held a median 174.5 photos and 6.5 additional categories, against 68.5 and 3.5 for the 10 least-reviewed on 258 to 325.
Gold Coast electricians, leaner profiles
The Gold Coast 50 ran leaner: a median 60 photos, a 633.5-character description, 1 additional category, 58.5 services and 1 attribute. 48 had a description, 41 listed 20 or more services, 12 carried 100 or more photos, 21 showed 24/7 hours and 1 had no hours set.
The 10 with the most reviews there, on 150 to 495, wrote a median 720.5-character description and listed 72.5 services, against 562 characters and 48.5 services on 75 to 82 reviews.
Side by side, the medians and shares that separate the two cities:
| Field | Sydney plumbers (n=50) | Gold Coast electricians (n=50) |
|---|---|---|
| Photos, median | 120.5 | 60 |
| Description characters | 654.5 | 633.5 |
| Additional categories | 4 | 1 |
| Services listed | 84.5 | 58.5 |
| 24/7 hours, of 50 | 45 | 21 |
| 100+ photos, of 50 | 29 | 12 |
| 20+ services, of 50 | 42 | 41 |
What the reviews keep mentioning
Across the 100 profiles, the words Google’s review topics counted most were polite staff 1,553, punctuality 1,072, clear explanations 832, quote 425 and efficiency 385. The trade words sat under them: hot water system replacement 272 and blocked drain 261 in Sydney, aircon installation 201, ceiling fan installation 99 and fair pricing 72 on the Gold Coast.
The most-reviewed Gold Coast electricians carry half the photos the Sydney plumbers do, so measure against your own city’s field.
Data: PlumbElec Marketing study of 300 AU map-pack listings, August 2026, and a live pull of the 100 most-reviewed claimed plumber and electrician profiles in Sydney and on the Gold Coast on 16 September 2026.
Description, hours, attributes and the address
The description most profiles carry was typed during verification and never read again, usually three lines about being family owned and fully insured. Meanwhile the hours promise 24/7 and the phone goes to voicemail at 2am. All four fields here are one afternoon.
A description homeowners can act on
Google’s guidelines for representing your business ask for useful information on the services and products you offer, plus the mission and history of the business. No promotions, prices or links.
Of the 100 profiles we pulled, the median description ran 641.5 characters, the longest 750, and 7 of the 100 sat exactly on 750. The winners use the room, so write what you do, the suburbs you cover, the jobs you take at night and what happens after a call.
Hours that are true at 2am
Hours are a relevance signal and a promise at the same time. 70.0% of position-1 listings in the August study showed a 24/7 claim against 56.0% at position 3, and 66 of our 100 profiles showed 24/7.
Listings at position 1 were more likely to claim it, which is not the same as the claim lifting them there. What it does is put you in the set a 2am searcher can ring. Set the public holidays too.
Attributes worth ticking
Attributes are the small flags on the listing, and Google says they “show up on your Business Profile on Search, Maps, and other Google platforms”. Some are populated from customer input rather than by you.
Our 100 profiles carried a median of 2. Work through the attributes list in Google Business Profile Help and tick the ones that are true: online estimates, on-site services, the payment types you take.
Show the address if you can
Position-1 listings hid the address on 30.0% of the August sample against 47.0% at position 3, and those showing one held a median of 104 reviews against 52 for those that hid it.
Google’s service-area guidance is plain. A business that does not serve customers at its address removes it and sets a service area instead, the right call for a van-based trade with no yard.
50 of the 300 listings both stuffed their business name and hid the address. If customers can walk into your premises, show it.
Photos, posts, Q&A and the website button
Why does one plumber’s profile fill up with finished jobs and vans in the street while the next shows a stock hero shot and a logo tile? These four fields are the ones nobody is paid to keep up, so they are usually the ones left half done.
Photos of real work, every month
Google’s photo guidelines for Business Profiles are narrow: JPG or PNG, 10 KB to 5 MB, 720 px by 720 px recommended, 250 px by 250 px minimum, and photos must be “in focus and well lit, and have no significant alterations or excessive use of filters”. Video runs to 30 seconds, 75 MB and 720p or higher.
41 of our 100 profiles carried 100 or more photos. Plumbwell Plumbing Services carries 1,728 on 425 reviews, Enersol Electrical Services 857 on 140. Add yours monthly off the phone in the van, rather than one batch a year.
Posts that don’t get rejected
Posts come in three types, Updates, Offers and Events, and Google’s guidance on posts sets two rules worth knowing. Google says “Posts older than 6 months are archived unless a date range is set”, and a post with a phone number in the description “might get rejected”.
So the number goes in the button, not the text, and the post reads like the job you just finished: hot water replaced same day, switchboard upgraded in a 1970s brick veneer, suburb named.
Questions you answer yourself
Q&A sits on the listing and anybody can answer it, including whoever answered it wrong last year. The owner can ask and answer, so seed the six your office handles every week.
Call-out fees, after-hours rates, what a blocked drain costs to clear, whether you issue compliance certificates, which suburbs you cover. Answer in full sentences, because those words feed the relevance Google reads off the profile.
Send the button somewhere useful
The website button went to the homepage on 244 of the 300 map-pack listings, 81.3%, a suburb page on 19, 6.3%, and somewhere else on the other 37.
A homepage is the safe default and the weakest one. Where you have a page for the suburb or service just typed, send the tap there.
Leave every button on the homepage and the profile keeps handing warm traffic to your least specific page.
Reviews and the name: what moves the pack most
Position 1 in the August sample held a median of 105 reviews and a median rating of 5.0, while positions 2 and 3 sat at 67 and 75.5. The bar is not evenly spaced, and the climb from third to first is expensive.
The review bar at position one
105 reviews is the number to plan against, 105.5 exactly across the 100 listings holding position 1. The rate matters more than the total once you are moving.
We measure a Maps campaign on listing clicks, geo grid expansion and calls attributed to the listing, with review velocity and directory listings as the compounding inputs. Our guide to getting Google reviews covers the ask and the follow-up.
Keep the name honest
41% of the 300 listings had a keyword or a suburb stuffed into the business name, rising to 44% of the listings at position 1.
Google’s rule is that the name on the profile is the real-world name of the business, the one on the van and the invoices. We do not stuff names and we tell clients not to.
A stuffed name is one competitor report away from a suspension, and a suspended listing takes your calls with it.
When one profile is not enough
One listing has a ceiling. On our Maps campaigns a single profile caps at 30 to 60 calls a month, turns profitable by month 3 to 4 and reaches 20 to 30 calls by month 6, and an existing listing moves faster than a new one.
Read when a second Google Business Profile is allowed and our Google Maps ranking factors breakdown before you create anything, because filling in the one you have comes first. The three campaigns below show what that carried.
What a finished profile did for three clients
Six agencies in and still not in the pack is a story we hear most weeks. The profile is usually the cheapest part of the fix and the part nobody ever finished, so here is what a finished one carried on three real campaigns.
AB Electrical on the North Shore
AB Electrical & Communications on Sydney’s North Shore came to us at $40,000 to $50,000 a month, with six or seven agencies behind them already.
Adam’s business now runs well over $200,000 a month and ranks in the top 3 for “electrician Sydney” plus a host of other keywords across the North Shore. The profile was one part of that, beside the website.
Alpha & Omega Air, 45 days
Alpha & Omega Air came to us after a previous agency and reached the top 3 for all target keywords within 45 days.
Google Business Profile calls moved from 13 to 35 in a month across the same stretch. Nothing exotic sat behind it, just the fields above filled in properly.
T42 Electrical on the grid
T42 Electrical on the Gold Coast reads better on a geo grid than its address suggests, with the listed address out on the outer side of the Gold Coast.
They own the entire back section of the Gold Coast on the grid for “electrician Gold Coast” and “emergency electrician Gold Coast”, and more of these sit in our Google Maps case studies.
If your profile has never been filled in properly, do that before you spend on anything else, or hand it to our SEO services for plumbers and electricians.
The monthly profile routine
A profile fed every week and checked every month stays ahead of the one that gets a single tidy-up a year. We run the same routine on every client listing, split three ways so nothing waits on a quarterly review that never happens.
Here is the routine, and what you check at each pass:
| Cadence | Task | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly | Reply to every review, answer new Q&A, publish one post | No unanswered reviews, one live post, no question left to a stranger |
| Monthly | Photos of real jobs, services list against the jobs you did, hours and holidays | Photo count rising, every paying job listed, Performance report calls and direction requests |
| Quarterly | Categories against the work that paid, description refresh, geo grid | Primary category still the trade, description using its room, coverage against last quarter |
Skip the monthly pass for a year and the services list stops matching your work, which arrives as calls for the jobs you stopped taking.
Conclusion
Five things decide whether a profile earns its keep. The primary category and the services list carry your relevance, so the trade goes in the primary and every job you want calls for goes on the list, one per line.
The hours and the address stay honest, because a 24/7 claim on a phone that goes to voicemail costs you the customer you just won, and a hidden address belongs only on a business that does not serve people at it.
Photos go up monthly rather than in one batch, reviews are the bar and you measure yours against your own city, and the name on the profile stays the name on the van. None of it takes a specialist, it is a list of fields filled in properly and fed.
FAQs
What is the best primary category for a plumber or electrician?
The trade itself. Where the primary category showed on our 300 map-pack listings, it was Plumber for 142 of 143 plumbers and Electrician for 132 of 135 electricians.
How many photos should a Google Business Profile have?
Aim past 100. Of the 100 top profiles we pulled, 41 carried 100 or more, against a median of 72. A few every month beats one batch.
Should I hide my address on Google Business Profile?
Only if customers never come to it. Listings showing an address held a median of 104 reviews against 52 for those hiding it. Google expects a service area.
How often should I post on Google Business Profile?
Weekly suits most trade businesses. Posts older than 6 months are archived unless a date range is set, so a quiet profile loses its posts too.
Can I put “24/7” or my suburb in my business name?
No. Google requires the real-world name, the one on the van and the invoices. 41% of the listings we captured had a stuffed name, which risks suspension.
How long does Google Business Profile optimisation take to work?
Faster on an existing listing than a new one. Our Maps campaigns turn profitable by month 3 to 4, then hit 20 to 30 calls by month 6.
Want your profile filled in properly?
Which fields on your own listing are still blank from the day it was verified? PlumbElec Marketing fills in the categories, services, description, photos and posts for plumbers and electricians right across Australia, then feeds the profile every month and reports the calls it brings back to you, beside the grid it moved.
Call (02) 9100 0985, book a time that suits you, or read how our local SEO services work first.
