Google Business Profile Management (GBP, formerly GMB)
Google renamed Google My Business to Google Business Profile a few years ago, but plenty of business owners still search for “GMB” out of habit, and plenty more still call it “our Google Maps listing.” Whatever you call it, it’s the single most important piece of online property a local business owns — more important than your website, for most searches. When someone searches for what you do near them, the Google Business Profile is what shows up first: your name, your reviews, your hours, your photos, and a big button to call you. Get it right and it brings in customers on autopilot. Get it wrong, or ignore it, and you’re invisible next to a competitor who bothered.
We’ve been managing Google Business Profiles for local and multi-location businesses since 2008, from single-site tradespeople to businesses running ten or more locations across the UK. In that time we’ve seen almost every way a profile can go wrong — wrong categories, duplicate listings, suspended profiles, a competitor editing your business hours, reviews nobody’s responding to — and we’ve fixed all of it.
What Google Business Profile management actually involves
A Google Business Profile isn’t a set-and-forget listing. Google rewards profiles that are active, accurate, and trusted — and penalises the ones that sit untouched. Our management covers:
- Full profile optimisation — accurate business categories (this alone changes who you rank for), a complete and keyword-relevant business description, correct service areas, and consistent NAP (name, address, phone) details that match your website and citations exactly.
- Regular posts and photo updates — Google visibly favours profiles that post updates and add new photos regularly over ones that were set up once and forgotten.
- Review management, including removing negative reviews where possible — we monitor new reviews as they come in, respond professionally to both good and bad ones, and where a review breaks Google’s own policies (fake, abusive, posted by a competitor, unrelated to your business), we flag and appeal it for removal. Not every negative review can be removed — anyone who promises you 100% removal is lying to you — but genuinely policy-breaking reviews often can be, and we know exactly how to build the case Google needs to act.
- Local citation consistency — making sure your business details match across Google, Bing, Apple Maps, and the directories that feed local search algorithms.
- Q&A and messaging management — keeping your profile’s Q&A section accurate and your messaging responsive, since slow responses cost you enquiries.
- Suspension recovery — if your profile has been suspended or disabled, we handle the reinstatement process, which has a specific, unforgiving process Google doesn’t explain well anywhere.
Why this matters more than your website for local searches
Most local searches on mobile end at the map pack — the three businesses Google shows above the regular results, each pulled straight from their Google Business Profile. Someone searching “plumber near me” rarely clicks through to compare five websites; they call the first result that looks trustworthy. That’s why a well-optimised profile with strong reviews and regular activity often outperforms an expensively-built website that nobody can find.
Our founder Geoff puts it plainly: “Our customers tell us Semlocal is the best local SEO company they’ve ever spoken to — and often the cheapest and best value too, when they’ve compared us against two or three other agencies. But the thing that surprises people most is finding out how much revenue they were quietly losing every month just by not managing their Google Business Profile properly.”
Multi-location businesses
If you run more than one site, Google Business Profile management gets significantly harder — duplicate listings, inconsistent categories between branches, and one location’s reviews accidentally attaching to the wrong address are all common problems we sort out for multi-site businesses. We build a consistent structure across every location so each one ranks on its own merits without competing against your other branches.
Google Business Profile management works best alongside local SEO, AI search optimisation, and consistent paid advertising where the market’s competitive enough to need it. If you’re not sure where to start, our marketing consulting service gives you a clear, honest audit of what’s actually holding your visibility back before you spend a penny more.
Frequently asked questions
Can you actually remove negative Google reviews?
Sometimes, yes. Google will only remove reviews that breach its own policies — fake reviews, reviews from someone with no genuine experience of your business, spam, or abusive content. We build the evidence and submit the appeal through Google’s proper channels. Genuine negative reviews from real customers can’t be removed, and we wouldn’t promise otherwise — but we can help you respond to them professionally and encourage more positive reviews to balance them out.
Is it still called GMB or is GBP correct now?
Google renamed Google My Business (GMB) to Google Business Profile (GBP) in 2021. Functionally it’s the same underlying listing that powers your Google Maps presence — just with a new name and a slightly different management interface. We use GBP as the correct current term, but we know plenty of business owners still search and talk in terms of “GMB” or “our Google Maps listing,” and we’re just as happy working with whichever term you’re used to.
How quickly will I see results from GBP management?
Most businesses see measurable improvement in profile views, calls, and direction requests within 4 to 6 weeks of proper optimisation. Full ranking improvement in the map pack for competitive terms typically takes 2 to 4 months, depending on how much competitors in your area are also investing in theirs.
