When somebody searches for an estate agent plus a town name, three entries with a map appear above the classic results – the map pack. These three places receive the majority of clicks. Anyone not listed there competes for the remainder.
The Google business profile feeding these entries is free. It is nevertheless created once in most agencies and never touched again.
What decides placement
Three factors work together:
Relevance – how well the profile matches the query. Influenced via categories, services and description.
Distance – between searcher and your location. Hardly influenceable, but the reason a second office creates visibility in a second catchment area.
Prominence – how established the business is online: reviews, mentions, links, consistency of data.
Of these three, relevance is the most directly controllable – and the most neglected.
The category is the most important single decision
The primary category has the strongest single effect on ranking. Estate agent is right for most; anyone focused on management is better served with property management company.
Secondary categories extend the spectrum – say property valuation or commercial property. Important: secondary categories should reflect what you actually do. Randomly added categories dilute the assignment rather than extending it.
NAP consistency: the silent ranking killer
NAP stands for name, address, phone. These three must be identical everywhere – in the profile, on the website, in the imprint, in directories.
Deviations creep in: an abbreviated street, an old phone number in one directory, the company name with and without its legal form. Every deviation weakens the association. The effort of a one-off clean-up is manageable, the effect often surprisingly clear.
Reviews: volume, recency, response
Reviews work twice – on ranking and on the click decision. Three points count:
Continuity beats volume. Twenty reviews over two years look stronger than forty in one month, which additionally look like a campaign.
Respond to every review. Including and especially critical ones. A factual response to a bad review convinces readers more than ten good ones.
Ask actively. The best moment is immediately after the notary appointment, while the relief is fresh. Two weeks later hardly anyone responds.
What you should not do: buy reviews or have staff write them. That is discovered regularly and costs more than it brings.
Posts keep the profile alive
The profile allows short posts – new listings, sold properties, market notes, team news. They appear directly in the profile and signal activity.
A profile unchanged for two years looks to searchers like a business that may no longer exist. One post every one to two weeks is enough to avoid that impression.
Images and the virtual tour
Profiles with many current images receive considerably more interactions. Sensible: an exterior view of the office for recognition, interiors, team, and examples of your work.
A walkable 360-degree tour of your office works considerably harder. It appears directly in the profile, measurably extends dwell time and lowers the threshold for first visits – anyone who knows the room enters it more easily.
Using the questions feature actively
Users can ask questions in the profile that anyone may answer – including competitors. You should therefore post and answer the most common questions yourself: commission, catchment area, valuation costs, parking.
That occupies the space sensibly and incidentally answers exactly the questions that otherwise lead to a call or an exit.
What is off limits
Keyword stuffing in the business name. A name padded with services and place names violates the guidelines and leads to suspension.
False addresses. A letterbox address without actual operations is grounds for removal.
Neglected opening hours. Wrong holiday hours generate precisely the bad reviews you least need.
What the profile does not replace
A good profile provides local visibility. It does not replace the content through which you are found for topical searches – inherited property, energy certificate obligation, capital gains. That requires pages on your own website; see content generation.
Both channels interlock: the profile picks up local search, the content picks up topical search. Running only one forgoes half.
Setting up several locations correctly
Businesses with several offices face the question of one profile or several. The answer is clear: one profile per location with its own address and hours. A shared profile appears only around one address and forfeits visibility everywhere else. Consistency matters: identical spelling of the name, a separate phone number each, and a landing page per location rather than a shared link to the home page. Profiles without a genuine place of business are inadmissible and are removed on review.
Adding photos regularly
Profiles with current images receive considerably more interactions than those with a logo. A mixture works: exterior for recognition, interiors, team photos and work examples. Regularity matters more than volume: a profile gaining one image a month signals activity. Ensure images actually show your business – stock photos are recognisable and undermine precisely the trust the channel is meant to build. Watch user-uploaded images too, because they shape the appearance.
What the statistics teach you
The profile provides analyses many never look at: which queries surfaced the profile, how many people called directly, requested the route or visited the website. The queries are especially revealing, because they show what you are actually found for – and that regularly differs from self-perception. Anyone found predominantly via their own company name has a visibility problem on generic queries and should work on categories, services and reviews.
Handling unjustified reviews
False or abusive reviews can be reported, but the process is slow and the outcome uncertain. More effective in practice is a factual public response: short, without justification, without details of the case and without visible irritation. Readers judge the handling of criticism more than the criticism itself. Avoid making internal processes public or identifying the reviewer – that can become a data protection issue and looks poor to third parties in any case.
Connecting profile and website
Profile and website should be aligned. The stored link ideally leads not to the home page but to a page matching the search occasion – for agents usually the valuation or contact page. On the website itself the same address data should be marked up machine-readably so the association stays unambiguous. These two measures cost little and act on local visibility more strongly than most elaborate optimisations.