google-profile

---
name: google-profile
description: Rebuilds a hospitality business's Google Business Profile field by field against Google's own published guidelines, and returns a record of what each field now says, the evidence behind it and a dated recheck list, so the panel that appears when somebody searches the venue's name carries a working phone number and the hours it is actually open. Use when the profile has never been claimed, when nobody has touched it in a year, or when searching the venue's name returns something wrong.
---

# The search for your name ends in a phone call, not a shrug

You give this the venue's name as it appears on the sign, the address, the number that rings inside the building, the opening hours somebody actually works, and the login for the profile if one exists. You get back the profile rebuilt field by field, a record of what each field now says and why, the fields Google will not let you fill and the reason, and a dated list of what has to be rechecked and when. It will not buy reviews, invent an award, write a second profile for a business that already has one, or promise you a ranking.

## What it does

1. **Verify the profile before you edit a single word, because until it is verified almost nothing you type becomes visible.** Google states plainly: "To edit your business info on Google, such as business name or business hours, and interact with customers, you need to verify your business." Photographs are gated the same way: "For your photos and videos to show on your Business Profile, your business must be verified." The methods are phone or text, email, a recorded video, a live video call, a posted card and instant verification through Search Console, and Google's own timing is "verification reviews take up to 5 business days." So the first output is one line: verified on this date by this method, or submitted on this date and awaiting a decision. Every other step is drafted against the live profile and applied when verification lands.

2. **Put the name that is on the sign in the name box, and nothing else.** Google's rule is "Your name should reflect your business's real-world name, as used consistently on your storefront, website, stationery, and as known to customers", and the penalty is not theoretical: "Including unnecessary information in your business name isn't permitted, and could result in the suspension of your Business Profile." What must come out: marketing taglines, store codes, trademark signs, fully capitalised words, hours, phone numbers or website addresses, service or product words, location words such as "near SOHO", containment words such as "(in Duane Reade)" and the same name repeated in a second script. So "The Crown Inn Best Sunday Roast Leeds Open Late" becomes "The Crown Inn". Photograph the signage and keep it, because a special character or a legal term is allowed only with "real-world proof (e.g. signage, business cards, invoices)".

3. **Choose the fewest categories, and choose them by what the business IS.** Google's test is a sentence: "Select categories that complete the statement: 'This business IS a' rather than 'this business HAS a.'" A pub with four letting rooms is a pub. A restaurant with a cocktail bar is a restaurant. A hotel with a restaurant open to the public may run the restaurant as a separate department profile, but the hotel profile stays a hotel. Two constraints matter as much: "Do not use categories solely as keywords or to describe attributes of your business", and "Do not use categories that pertain to other businesses that are nearby or related." Write down the primary category, every secondary one, and a line saying which dish, room or service justifies it.

4. **Set the hours a customer experiences, using Google's own industry rule rather than the rota on the office wall.** For a restaurant the rule is explicit: "Restaurants: Use the hours when diners can sit down and dine in your restaurant. Otherwise, use takeout hours. If neither of those is possible, use drive-through hours, or, as a last resort, delivery hours." Hotels are the opposite case and are named in the list of businesses that "shouldn't provide hours", alongside event venues. Kitchen times, delivery times and a bar running later than the kitchen belong in More hours, and "In general, you should set More hours as a subset of your primary hours." Then list every date in the next twelve months when those hours change, because a locked door on a bank holiday the profile says is open is the most expensive error on the page.

5. **Put a number in the phone box that rings in the building.** The rules are four: "Provide a phone number that connects to your individual business location", "Use a local phone number instead of a central call center helpline number whenever possible", "The phone number must be under the direct control of the business", and "Premium phone numbers are not acceptable regardless of the rate charged to the caller." The same section bars numbers or web addresses "that redirect or 'refer' users to landing pages or phone numbers other than those of the actual business, including pages created on social media sites". Call-tracking numbers supplied by an agency fail the direct-control test and are the usual reason a venue loses its number when the contract ends. Record who owns the line and where the handset sits.

6. **Fix the address and prove there is only one profile.** Google requires "a precise, accurate address and/or service area", rejects "P.O. boxes or mailboxes located at remote locations", and adds a physical condition owners forget: "Businesses showing their address on Google should maintain permanent fixed signage of their business name at the address." Then the duplicate check, because this is the commonest cause of a venue's reviews being split across two panels: "Do not create more than one page for each location of your business, either in a single account or multiple accounts", and "There should only be one profile per business." Search the venue name, the old trading name and the address separately, list every profile found, and record which one is the keeper and which are to be reported as duplicates.

7. **Write the description as a description, and keep the selling out of it.** Google's content rules for this field ban three things outright. No links: "Display links. No links of any type are allowed." No offers: "Focus on special promotions, prices, and offer sales" is listed as not allowed, with "Best bagels in town for $5!" given as the example. And no "low-quality, irrelevant, or distracting content. For example, misspellings, gimmicky character use, gibberish." What is wanted is "services and products offered, as well as the mission and history of your business". Anything superlative that survives into the description is an advertising claim as well as a Google one, so it needs a document behind it before it is typed.

8. **Separate what you can change from what you cannot, and stop paying attention to the rest.** Google names three factors: "Relevance is how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for", "Distance refers to how far each business is from the customer who's searching", and "Prominence means how well-known a business is. Prominent places are more likely to show up in search results. This factor's also based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have." Distance is fixed unless you move the building. Relevance is category, description and hours, which is steps 3, 4 and 7. Prominence is reviews and links, which is a year of work, not an afternoon. And the line to put in front of anyone selling a guaranteed position: "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google."

9. **Close the file with a dated recheck list, because a profile edits itself when you are not looking.** Google accepts suggested edits from the public and applies some of them, and it can change a category or an attribute on its own. So the last output is a table with one row per field: what it says today, the date it was set, who set it, the evidence behind it, and the date it is next checked. Set the first recheck at thirty days and then quarterly, with a row for every special-hours date in step 4 falling due before the next check. Record any field Google would not accept, with the exact rejection wording, rather than describing it as done.

## Then it checks

1. The verification state is recorded as a date and a named method, or as submitted on a date and awaiting a decision, and no step claims a field is live while verification is pending.
2. The name field contains only the trading name, with no tagline, town, service word, bracket, phone number, web address, all-capitals word or second-script repetition, and a photograph of the signage is named as the evidence.
3. Every category is written as "this business IS a", the total count is recorded, and no category names a business that merely sits inside, above or next door to this one.
4. The hours entered are the ones Google's industry rule names for this business type, and every date in the next twelve months when they change is listed with a set or not-set flag against it.
5. The phone number rings inside the building, is named as under the business's own control with the owner recorded, is not a premium number, and no field contains a redirecting number or web address.
6. Every objective claim appearing anywhere on the profile is matched to a named document with a date, and nothing anywhere in the file offers money, a discount, a free item or a prize in exchange for a review.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is. A reply or a description written as though the landlord wrote it goes to the landlord before it is published.
- Never write a search term into the business name, the address lines or a category to try to rank for it. Google names this as grounds for suspension, and a suspended profile takes the reviews, the photographs and the phone number off the search page with it.
- Never create a second profile for a location that already has one, and never leave two live while deciding. Duplicate panels split the reviews, and the one with the older reviews is usually not the one the owner has the login for.
- Never offer, draft or suggest any incentive for a review, including a free coffee, a prize draw entry or a discount on the next visit. Google prohibits content "posted due to an incentive offered by a business", and in the United Kingdom a review concealing an incentive is a banned practice in its own right under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.
- Never claim, imply or repeat that any action will produce a ranking position, a number of calls or a number of bookings. Google publishes no such relationship and states there is no way to request or pay for one.
- Never record a field as done because it was typed. It is done when it is visible on the live profile, and a rejected field is recorded with the rejection wording.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner to check against their own signage, licence, lease and telephone contract before it is relied on. It applies Google's published product guidelines to one business's information. It is not a guarantee that a profile will be verified, reinstated or shown, and where a claim on the profile touches advertising, licensing or food law it is for the owner's solicitor, licensing officer or environmental health officer to check.

## Built from
- Google, "Guidelines for representing your business on Google", Google Business Profile Help, https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177, no publication date shown on the page, read 16 September 2026: the name rules and suspension warning in step 2, the category test in step 3, the restaurants and indoor lodging hours rules in step 4, the phone number rules in step 5, and the address, signage and one-profile rules in step 6, and the description bans in step 7.
- Google, "Verify your business on Google", Google Business Profile Help, https://support.google.com/business/answer/7107242, no publication date shown on the page, read 16 September 2026: the requirement to verify before editing, the six methods and the five business day timing, all in step 1.
- Google, "Tips to improve your local ranking on Google", Google Business Profile Help, https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091, no publication date shown on the page, read 16 September 2026: the relevance, distance and prominence definitions and the statement that no ranking can be requested or paid for, in step 8.
- Google, "Tips for business-specific photos on your Business Profile", Google Business Profile Help, https://support.google.com/business/answer/6123536, no publication date shown on the page, read 16 September 2026: the rule that photographs and videos only show once the business is verified, which is why step 1 comes first.
- Google, "Prohibited & restricted content", Maps User Generated Content Policy Help, https://support.google.com/contributionpolicy/answer/7400114, no publication date shown on the page, read 16 September 2026: the prohibition on content posted because of an incentive, used in the Rules.
- Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Schedule 20, paragraph 13, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2024/13/schedule/20, read 16 September 2026: the banned practice covering fake and concealed incentivised reviews, used in the Rules.

# google-profile

## You are given
One UK hospitality business and the current state of its Google Business Profile, exported or transcribed field by field: business name as it currently reads, every category in the order shown, the full address, the phone number, the website address, the description text, the regular hours for all seven days, every special-hours date already set, and the verification state. Alongside it: the trading name exactly as it appears on the signage, with the filename of the signage photograph; the telephone line record saying who holds the contract and where the handset sits; the list of dates in the next twelve months when the hours change, supplied by the owner; the list of every other Google profile found for this venue, its old trading name or its address; and the evidence documents behind any objective claim in the name or description. Claude has already made every judgement: which profile is the keeper, which category is primary, which hours are the sit-down hours, and the exact replacement text for each field. Nothing in this brief asks you to decide any of that.

## Produce
Write into a `./google-profile-output/` folder:

1. `fields.csv` with these columns in this order: `field`, `value_now_verbatim`, `value_proposed_verbatim`, `characters_now`, `characters_proposed`, `changed`, `rule_cited`, `evidence_file`, `evidence_date`, `applied`, `applied_date`, `rejection_text_verbatim`. `field` is exactly one of `name`, `primary_category`, `secondary_category`, `address_line_1`, `address_line_2`, `postcode`, `phone`, `website`, `description`, `hours_monday` through `hours_sunday`, `more_hours`. `changed` and `applied` are `yes` or `no`. Every row where `changed` is `yes` carries a non-empty `rule_cited`.
2. `name-field-audit.csv` with columns: `token`, `token_position`, `banned_element`, `rule_cited`, `kept_or_removed`. One row per whitespace-separated token in the current name. `banned_element` is exactly one of `marketing tagline`, `store code`, `trademark or registered sign`, `fully capitalised word`, `business hours information`, `phone number or web address`, `special character or legal term`, `service or product information`, `location information`, `containment information`, `repeated bilingual name or transliteration`, `none`. `kept_or_removed` is `kept` or `removed`.
3. `categories.csv` with columns: `category_verbatim`, `rank`, `is_or_has`, `justifying_item`, `names_another_business`, `kept`. `is_or_has` is `IS` or `HAS`. `names_another_business` is `yes` or `no`. Any row with `is_or_has` of `HAS` or `names_another_business` of `yes` is listed in `gaps.md`.
4. `hours.csv` with columns: `date_or_weekday`, `hours_type`, `opens`, `closes`, `closed_all_day`, `source_of_truth`, `set_on_profile`, `date_set`. `hours_type` is exactly one of `regular`, `special`, `more hours`. Times are 24 hour `HH:MM`. `closed_all_day` and `set_on_profile` are `yes` or `no`. Every date supplied for the next twelve months appears as a row whether or not it is set.
5. `duplicates.csv` with columns: `profile_found_at`, `name_shown_verbatim`, `address_shown_verbatim`, `review_count`, `search_term_that_found_it`, `keeper_or_duplicate`, `action_supplied`. `keeper_or_duplicate` is `keeper` or `duplicate`. Exactly one row is `keeper`.
6. `recheck-schedule.csv` with columns: `field`, `value_recorded`, `date_set`, `set_by`, `next_check_date`, `check_interval_days`. First interval 30, thereafter 90. Every special-hours date falling before the next check has its own row.
7. `gaps.md`, a numbered list of: any field with no proposed value; any name token still carrying a banned element; any category written as HAS or naming another business; any hours date supplied but not set; any duplicate profile with no supplied action; any objective claim in the name or description with no evidence file; any field marked applied with no applied date; and any field Google rejected.

## Rules
- Codex measures, records and checks. It never invents, never rewords the owner's copy, and never makes the judgement that was supplied to it. Where a proposed value is missing, the cell is left empty and the fact goes in `gaps.md`.
- Never write a new business name, category, description or set of hours. Every proposed value is copied character for character from what was supplied, including capitalisation and punctuation.
- Never mark a field `applied` without a date, and never mark it applied from the fact that it was submitted. Applied means the value was read back from the live profile.
- Never record an objective claim as evidenced without a named file and its date in the same row.
- Never write an incentive for a review, a prize draw, a discount or a free item into any file, and never write a predicted ranking position, call volume, booking volume, industry average or conversion rate. No such figure exists for a single independent venue.
- Never merge, delete or close a duplicate profile. Record it and the action supplied, and leave the doing to the owner.
- Character counts are counted, not estimated, and include spaces and punctuation.
- Use British English, GBP and DD Month YYYY dates. No em dash characters in any file you write, and any supplied text containing one is recorded verbatim and flagged in `gaps.md`.
- Every file ends with this line: this is a working document prepared for the owner to check against their own signage, licence, lease and telephone contract before it is relied on. It records supplied values against published product guidelines and is not a guarantee that a profile will be verified, reinstated or shown.

## Return
The absolute path of every file written and the row count of each CSV. The verification state and its date. The number of fields changed and the number applied, with the list of any field applied without a date. The number of name tokens removed and the banned element behind each. The number of categories kept and dropped, with any written as HAS named in full. The count of hours dates supplied against the count set on the profile, and every date in the gap. The number of profiles found for this venue, which one is the keeper and the review count of each. Every objective claim with no evidence file. The date of the first recheck. And the `gaps.md` item count.