UrbanTechFlow · Ottawa and Gatineau · Published October 12, 2026 · Updated October 12, 2026 · Checked October 11, 2026

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Google Business Profile for contractors: the fields almost nobody fills in

Take a heating and cooling company in Barrhaven. Fourteen years in business, four techs, lettered vans, a solid name in the neighbourhood. Call it Fenmoor Heating and Cooling. It's a made-up company, and the portrait is a composite of what shows up often around Ottawa.

Its Google Business Profile was claimed in 2019 and hasn't been touched since. The main category says Contractor. The hours say Monday to Friday, 8 to 5, never adjusted for the season or the holidays. Three photos, all from 2019. No services listed. No description. A 4.3 rating on eleven reviews, the newest one 14 months old.

You get cut before the phone rings

Someone looking for a furnace repair in Barrhaven doesn't compare ten companies. In a BrightLocal survey of 1,227 US consumers published on June 24, 2026, 72% looked at three businesses or fewer. And 75% decided in under 30 minutes.

A second part of the same research came out on July 15, 2026. In it, 52% said they had looked at a business and decided not to contact it. Asked for their top three reasons for picking a business to contact or visit, 32% named clear and complete information (hours, address and phone), more than any other factor.

Two honest caveats. These are US surveys, and they record what people say they do. No Canadian version has been published, so read them as a direction, not as Ottawa numbers.

In plain words, your profile doesn't advertise. It decides whether you make the short list. An incomplete profile doesn't lose the job at the quote. It loses it before the call, quietly, and it never shows up in your numbers. To compare your profile with the competitors Google shows next to you, run the free check. The Google part needs your email.

Fewer free seats on the map

Sterling Sky, a firm that has tracked Google's local listings for years, published its State of Local SEO in 2026 on June 26, 2026. In it, Google's new AI local packs showed about a third as many businesses as the classic local pack of three. Each one listed only 1 or 2 businesses instead of 3, and none had a call button. At the time, the firm had seen them only on phones and only in the US. Read this as a sign of where Google is heading, not as a count from Ottawa.

In the same report, the firm's checks on phones found ads inside the local pack about 1% of the time at the start of 2025, and almost 22% of the time by December 2025. Fewer free seats, more paid ones. A complete profile becomes the tie-breaker.

The eight fields, in order

In order: the primary category, your real name, the services list, your hours, photos, the description and service area, reviews, and monthly upkeep. Here is why each one matters and what it gives you.

1. The primary category, the heaviest choice

Whitespark's "Local Search Ranking Factors" survey, 2026 edition, came out in November 2025. It asked 47 local search experts to weigh 187 factors, and it says itself that none of them has inside access to Google's algorithm. It's a consensus of practitioners, not a measurement.

Still, their top five for the local pack are clear: the primary category, the distance from the person searching, keywords in the business name, an address in the city searched, and being open at the time of the search.

What it gives you: the right primary category puts you in the searches you belong in. Contractor and HVAC contractor don't land you in the same results. Google's own test is to pick the category that completes "this business IS a", and to use as few categories as possible.

2. Your name, the real one

Keywords in the name sit third on the experts' list, which is exactly why the field gets abused. Google's guidelines say the name must be the one on your sign, your website and your paperwork. Adding extra words can get the profile suspended, and a competitor can report it.

The useful question isn't what you could add. It's whether your real name reads the same everywhere: your Ontario registration, your vans, your invoices, your website and the directories.

3. The services list, the field almost nobody fills in

Many contractors leave it empty. Each service you offer becomes its own entry, written the way a customer searches, not the way you invoice it: furnace repair, heat pump installation, AC tune-up, duct cleaning, water heater replacement.

Sterling Sky tested adding predefined services on real profiles in 2019 and found no effect on rankings. When it tested again in 2022, it saw an effect, more on searches that named the service. The firm says its tests show the effect can appear within 24 to 72 hours. Read it as a direction: a few cases, no control group described, and the firm says the effect seems to vary by industry and market.

What it gives you: you stop being just an HVAC company, and your profile answers a dozen different searches.

4. Hours, including the ones everybody forgets

Being open at the time of the search is in the experts' top five, so wrong hours hurt both ways. If your profile says closed at 5 while you still take furnace calls until 8, Google can leave you out right when someone looks. If it says open till 5 and your vans were back in the yard at 4, the customer who calls at 4:30 gets nobody.

Set regular hours, seasonal hours and special hours for holidays. Ontario's Employment Standards Act has nine public holidays, Family Day and Victoria Day among them. The Civic Holiday in August isn't one of them, but plenty of shops close that day, so set it either way. If your crews work across the river, plan around Quebec's two-week construction holiday too: in 2027 it runs from July 25 to August 7, according to the APCHQ, Quebec's residential construction association.

5. Photos are proof, not a trick to climb

The same experts put the number of photos far down their list. Don't let anyone sell you photos as a way to climb. Photos do something else, and it matters: they're proof.

A customer choosing between three companies looks at the photos to see whether the work looks like what he wants at home. A photo from 2019 says this company may still exist. A steady stream of recent, recognisable jobs says you're working this week, near him.

6. The description, your service area and the other side of the river

If customers don't come to your address, Google's guidelines say to hide it and list the areas you serve instead. You can name up to 20 areas by city or postal code, with no radius, within about two hours of driving from your base.

Write the description in plain words: what you do, where, and for whom. If you take jobs in Aylmer or Hull, write that one description in English and French (Google allows up to 750 characters), because customers on the Quebec side expect French first.

7. Reviews: the pace, not just the stars

BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey came out on February 11, 2026, from 1,002 US adults. 97% read reviews, 68% only use businesses with four stars or more, 74% look for reviews from the last three months and 32% from the last two weeks. A 4.3 whose newest review is 14 months old reads like a business that has slowed down.

The fix isn't a review campaign. It's the same honest ask, to every customer, at the end of every job. Not a hand-picked few, and never asking for particular words: Google's policy forbids both.

8. Upkeep, because the profile drifts on its own

Google accepts edits suggested by the public. Competitors change their categories. Hours go stale. A profile filled in once is out of date within months, so the real work is checking it and fixing it every month. Here is the full routine, step by step.

Before and after (a made-up example)

The table follows Fenmoor, the composite from the start. It shows the work done on the profile, not a promise.

What it looks like when someone runs it

In our Growth package, Google profile care means we check your profile against the contractors Google shows for your main searches. We fill in every field that's true, set your regular and holiday hours and the towns you really serve, and add photos from the jobs you send us every month. The start date goes in your written build list.

When you mark a job won, the review ask is ready in your one unified app. You send it from your own phone once the work is done. Growth also covers your Google ads and your Meta ads on Facebook and Instagram.

It's built for contractors, general contractors and trades. We guarantee the work and its date, and we never promise a ranking.

Questions owners ask

How many categories should I pick?

As few as possible, each one true. The primary category is what your business is, and secondary ones cover only the other things it really is. Categories aren't keywords.

My shop is my house. Should the address show?

No. If customers don't come to you, Google's guidelines say to hide the address and list your service areas instead.

Can someone manage my profile without my password?

Yes. Add them as a manager. Each person signs in with their own Google account, a manager can't add or remove users, and a new owner or manager waits 7 days before some actions, like removing other owners.