By the Vibe22 team · Published September 11, 2026 · Updated September 11, 2026
Short answer: Google ranks map results on three things, and you control two of them. Pick the right primary category. Set a real service area with your home address hidden. List every service you do. Show your ECRA/ESA licence number. Add photos of actual jobs, and ask every customer for a review. Then back the profile with a website that has a page for each job you want more of. That's the list. The rest of this post is the detail, and the order we'd work through it.
How Google decides who shows up on the map
Google is fairly open about this. Its help page on local ranking says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well your profile matches what someone searched. Distance is how far you are from the person searching. Prominence is how well known you are, which Google says includes how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have.
Distance you can't change. The same page says there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. That leaves relevance and prominence, and every item below feeds one or the other.
1. Pick the primary category carefully
Google's category help page says it outright: the categories you select affect your local ranking. Your primary category should describe the whole business in one term.
Google's profile guidelines give you a simple test. Pick categories that complete the sentence "This business IS a," not "this business HAS a." For a contractor doing residential service and renovation work, the honest answer is Electrician. Type "electric" into the category box and read every option before you choose. The same guidelines say to use as few categories as possible and never to use them as keywords, so only add a secondary category if it describes a real part of the business.
One warning. Google notes that editing your categories can trigger a request to verify the business again. Make the change once, on purpose, and then leave it alone.
2. Set up the service area for a business that goes to the customer
Most electricians work at the customer's house. Nobody walks up to your counter. Google treats that as a service-area business, and its guidelines say a service-area business should hide its address from customers. If you run the company from home, your home address comes off the profile.
Then set the area itself. Google's service area page says you can add up to 20 areas, set by city or postal code rather than a radius, and that the overall area shouldn't reach beyond about two hours of driving time from where you're based.
Be honest with the list. A service area is a statement about where you will send a truck. If you won't drive to Oshawa for a pot light job, leave Oshawa off.
3. Fill in the services list, every line of it
The services editor suggests services for your business type and lets you add custom ones with a description. Google says a service may be highlighted on your profile when someone searches for it.
Add each job as its own line: panel upgrades, EV charger installs, knob-and-tube replacement, aluminum wiring repair, pot lights, generator hookups, whatever you actually do. Write a sentence or two for each in plain language. Google rejects custom service names that include prices or phone numbers, so keep those out of the name.
There's a second reason to do this properly. When a customer reviews a service business, Google may ask them to pick the service they received from your list, and a written review shows that selection. A complete list means your reviews start naming the jobs you want more of.
4. Put your ECRA/ESA licence number everywhere
This one is a legal requirement before it's a marketing tip. The Electrical Safety Authority says a licensed electrical contractor must display its licence number on correspondence, contracts, invoices, business cards and ads, on its website and on its business vehicles, within 90 days of receiving the licence. ESA's licence display FAQ adds that it's the Licensed Electrical Contractor number you have to show, not your Master Electrician number.
ESA also tells homeowners what to look for. Its page on hiring a contractor tells them to ask for the ECRA/ESA licence number, look for it on the truck, business card and estimate, and check it with ESA's Find a Contractor tool. The people searching for you have been told to check, so make it easy.
ESA's wording covers "all situations where you communicate with the public," and we'd treat your Google profile as one of them. Put the number in the profile description, in your website footer and on the truck you photograph for the profile. Keep it out of the business name. Google's guidelines say unnecessary information in the name isn't permitted and could get the profile suspended.
5. Photos of real jobs, taken by you
Google's photo guidelines ask for photos that are in focus, well lit and free of heavy filters. In their words, the image should represent reality. A stock photo of a model holding a multimeter tells a homeowner nothing about you.
Shoot what you do. A clean panel after an upgrade. An EV charger mounted and labelled in a garage. The van with the licence number on the side. Your crew on a job, if they're fine with it. Take a few on every job and upload them as you go. Keep house numbers, licence plates and customers' faces out of the frame unless you have permission.
6. Ask every customer for a review, and answer every one
Google's local ranking page says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking. The work here is dull and it never stops: ask every customer, every time, at the end of the job when the lights work. Google gives you a review request link and QR code for this. Text the link the same day and print the QR code on the invoice.
What you can't do is spelled out in Google's policy on fake engagement. No discounts, freebies or payment in exchange for a review. No asking only the happy customers, which Google calls selectively soliciting positive reviews. If someone sells you a review funnel that sends five-star customers to Google and everyone else to a private form, that's the practice the policy prohibits.
Reply to all of them. Google says replying shows customers you value their feedback. On a bad review, stay factual, keep the customer's private details out of it, and say what you did or will do about it. The next homeowner who reads it is judging your reply as much as the complaint.
7. Give the big jobs their own pages on your website
The profile gets you onto the map. The website is what the homeowner reads next, and Google reads it too. Its guidelines note that Google can detect category information from your website and from mentions of your business across the web, so the site and the profile should describe the same business doing the same work.
A homepage that lists fifteen services in a row answers nobody's real question. Build one page per job worth having. For an Ontario electrician, these three usually come first:
- Panel upgrades. Walk through what the homeowner will deal with: the notification you file with ESA, the inspection, and how long the power is off.
- EV charger installation. Start with the question they actually have, which is whether their current panel can take it, and explain how you check.
- Knob-and-tube replacement. Cover how you find out what's still live in the house, how much wall gets opened, and what paperwork the owner ends up with.
On that last point, every one of these pages can mention the ESA Certificate of Acceptance. ESA tells homeowners to ask for it when the work is done and keep it for their records and insurance. Use the same service names on each page as you use in the profile's services list.
8. Same name and phone number everywhere
Google's guidelines say your business name should reflect the real-world name you use consistently on your storefront, website and stationery. They also say your phone number should connect to your business, with a local number preferred over a central call centre line.
Carry that past Google. Use the exact same name, phone number and website on HomeStars, Yelp, Facebook, your truck and your invoices. Prominence includes how many websites link to your business, and a directory listing with your website on it is one of those links. It helps when they all describe the same company. If you've changed your number or your company name, search for the old versions too. They're often still out there.
9. Emergency hours only if someone answers
Google's guidelines ask for your regular customer-facing hours. List 24 hours and the homeowner with a dead circuit at 2 a.m. will test it. If nobody picks up, you've lost the call and maybe earned a one-star review. If you genuinely run an on-call line, list it and answer it. If you don't, set the hours you actually work.
What to fix first
If you're doing this yourself this week, here's the order we'd go in:
- Hide your home address and set a real service area.
- Check the primary category.
- Clean up the business name and phone number, and add your licence number to the profile description and website.
- Fill in every service you do.
- Upload photos from real jobs, then keep adding them.
- Ask every customer for a review, and reply to every review.
- Build the service pages, starting with the job you want more of.
The first four are desk work you can do yourself. Reviews and pages are the part that keeps going. If you want a quick read on where your profile stands now, run it through our Google Business Profile health check, and for the wider list across your site and listings, see the local SEO checklist.
Where Vibe22 fits
We build websites and run local SEO for trades in Toronto and the GTA. On the trades sites we build, this checklist is where the work starts. If you want to see how the profile, service pages and area pages fit together for an electrical contractor, read how we approach SEO for electricians. If it's only the profile you want handed off, that's our Google Business Profile management. If you'd rather have us audit your profile and site and overhaul the profile for you, start with the Visibility Jumpstart audit.