Google Business Profile or website: which first?

The short answer

Claim and verify your Google Business Profile first. It costs nothing, it takes an evening, and for a local business it is usually the single largest source of phone calls. Then build the website, because the profile has a field that points at one, and because the profile can be taken away from you and the website cannot.

Do not treat this as an either/or that lasts a year. Realistically the profile is week one and the website is weeks two to four.

What the profile does well

A Google Business Profile is free to create and manage, and once verified it puts your business into Google Search and Google Maps with the information a nearby customer needs to act:

• A call button that dials you without anyone visiting a website at all.
• Directions, which for a restaurant or a repair shop is most of the job.
• Hours, including holiday hours, which is the question people most often check.
• Reviews, which is the trust layer nothing else replaces.
• Photographs, posts, questions and answers, and a website link.

Two details worth getting right at setup. The primary category is widely reported to be one of the largest levers on local ranking, with secondary categories adding relevant coverage without harming you — that guidance comes from tool vendors rather than independent research, so treat it as informed practice. And if you go to customers rather than the other way round, configure it as a service-area business: list the towns you serve rather than pretending a residential address is a shopfront.

You will find case studies reporting dramatic gains from profile optimisation — one vendor publishes discovery searches up 98% year over year and calls up 46%. That is one client, published by the company that did the work, with nothing controlled for. Do the work because it is free and sensible, not because of that number.

What the profile does not do

This is the part that gets skipped, and it is the reason the answer is not simply "just do the profile."

You do not own it. The profile lives on Google's platform, under Google's policies, and it can be suspended, merged, or edited by other people. Members of the public can suggest edits to your hours and your address. Google can change what the profile displays, and does, without asking you. Everything you have built there is a tenancy.

It cannot answer a real question. "Do you work on European cars?" "What do you charge for a panel upgrade?" "Are you licensed and insured in this town?" "What is on the menu tonight?" A profile has no room for the fifteen sentences that turn a curious person into a booking.

It is identical to everyone else's. Your profile and your competitor's profile are the same rectangle with different words in it. There is no version of a profile that makes you look more careful, more established or more expensive than the shop next door.

It has nowhere to send anyone. The profile's job, once someone is interested, is to hand them off — to a phone call or to a website. A profile whose website field is empty, or points at a Facebook page, is a funnel with the bottom cut off.

The relationship between the two

Think of the profile as the sign on the road and the website as the building. The sign gets people to slow down. It cannot answer their questions, take their booking, show them the work, or reassure them that the business will still exist in March.

There is also a practical loop: the profile links to the website, and the website's consistency reinforces the profile. The name, address, phone number and hours should match exactly in both places. When they disagree — and they usually disagree about the holiday hours — the customer arrives at a locked door and blames you, not Google.

So the order is: claim the profile, verify it, fill it in properly, then build a website worth linking to, then keep both consistent. If the website is going to take a few weeks, the profile carries you in the meantime. That is exactly the right sequencing.

The review rules, which got stricter and almost nobody noticed

Reviews are the profile's most valuable feature and the area where a well-meaning owner can get into real trouble. Two sets of rules apply, and they overlap.

The FTC rule. The Federal Trade Commission's Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials took effect on 21 October 2024. It prohibits fake and insider reviews, buying positive or negative reviews, suppressing negative reviews, and offering compensation or incentives in exchange for reviews expressing a particular sentiment — positive or negative, express or implied. The rule carries civil penalty authority; the FTC publishes the per-violation figure and adjusts it for inflation, so check the current number rather than quoting one you read somewhere.

Google's policy is narrower still. It prohibits content not based on a real experience; reviews that have been paid for, directly or in kind; merchants offering incentives — "payment, discounts, free goods and/or services" — in exchange for posting any review; and content from people with a conflict of interest, which it defines to include current or former employment and contractual, consultancy, professional or personal affiliations.

What is explicitly allowed, in Google's own words, is soliciting or encouraging a review that represents a genuine experience, without offering incentives and without attempting to influence the rating or the contents.

Three practical consequences:

• Ask everyone, reward no one. A card at the counter, a line in the invoice email, a text after the job — all fine. A discount, a free service, a raffle entry, a gift card — not fine, and it is named almost verbatim in Google's policy.
• Keep family and staff off your profile. Reviews from employees, former employees, relatives and friends are conflict-of-interest violations for Google and insider reviews under the FTC rule. A five-star review from your brother-in-law is a genuine legal exposure, not a harmless boost.
• Never suppress. Filtering, hiding or gating negative feedback — including "how did we do? if it's four stars or more, click here for Google" — runs directly at the rule. Answer the bad review in public instead; it reads better than a wall of perfect ones.

The website is where you have more freedom, because it is yours. An honestly attributed testimonial from a former colleague about past work is defensible on your own site; the identical text posted as a Google review is not. Keep the two surfaces separate and label things truthfully on both.

If you only have one evening

1. Claim and verify the profile.
2. Set the primary category precisely, add relevant secondary ones, and configure service areas if you travel to customers.
3. Fill in hours, including holiday hours, and put a real phone number in.
4. Add ten photographs you took yourself.
5. Put a website address in the website field — and if you do not have one yet, make that the next month's job rather than leaving the field empty.
6. Start asking every satisfied customer for an honest review, with nothing attached.

Restaurants feel this loop harder than anyone — accurate hours, a menu people can read on a phone, and one obvious way to order or book. That version is on the page for restaurants. When you are ready for the website the profile should be pointing at, we will build your real homepage and send you a private link before any payment, contract, sales call or credit card: the free homepage preview.

Sources

1. Google Business Profile — the product page, including that it is free to create and manage — https://www.google.com/business/
2. Google Business Profile Help — verification, editing, hours, photos, and managing owners and managers — https://support.google.com/business/
3. Google Maps user-contributed content policy — prohibited reviews, incentives, conflicts of interest, and the soliciting that is explicitly allowed — https://support.google.com/contributionpolicy/answer/7400114
4. Federal Trade Commission, August 2024 — final rule banning fake reviews and testimonials; effective 21 October 2024, with civil penalty authority — https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-rule-banning-fake-reviews-testimonials
5. FTC business guidance — questions and answers on the consumer reviews and testimonials rule — https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/consumer-reviews-testimonials-rule-questions-answers
6. Davis Wright Tremaine — law firm summary of the final rule, for a second reading of the same text — https://www.dwt.com/insights/2024/08/ftc-finalizes-rule-banning-fake-consumer-reviews
7. GMB Everywhere — category selection guidance for local profiles (vendor source, not independent research) — https://www.gmbeverywhere.com/categories/website-designer-google-business-profile
8. Coast333 — a Google Business Profile optimisation case study reporting discovery searches up 98% and calls up 46% (single client, vendor-published, no controls; treat as an anecdote) — https://coast333.com/project/google-business-profile-optimization-case-study/

Every vendor page cited here was read on 2 September 2026 and may have changed since. Where a figure comes from someone other than the vendor, the sentence says so.