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The Circle
October 12, 2026
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Ep. 336 — Google Business Profiles: Everything You Need to Know in 2026

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A Google Business Profile does a different job than it did a year ago. Travelers now describe the exact trip they want in long, specific searches, and Google answers with AI that draws on what it knows about each business, trusting what comes from the business itself first. Lisa Landsman,…

A Google Business Profile does a different job than it did a year ago. Travelers now describe the exact trip they want in long, specific searches, and Google answers with AI that draws on what it knows about each business, trusting what comes from the business itself first. A profile set up years ago and left alone is feeding those answers with whatever it said back then. Lisa Landsman, whose job at Google is explaining it to small businesses, takes Mitch through the questions tour operators have been asking for years, and a lot of the answers have changed.

Things are moving fast enough that some of it may be outdated by the time you hear it. The upside is real for anyone running something specific: you no longer have to sound like every other tour in your city to show up. Listen to this one if you set up your profile once and haven’t opened it since. You’ll come away knowing what Google wants from your profile now, what its review rules allow, and where to spend your next hour on it.

Resources:

  • Lisa Landsman on LinkedIn
  • Gemini connected to your Google Business Profile
  • Ask Google Help, in the Google Business Profile Help Center

Key Takeaways

  • Check your listing for outdated information. Google has been showing travelers stale details for small businesses. 03:13 to 04:33 Google built its tour results mostly from large partners’ content, and small business information was often inaccurate or out of date. Google now runs a dedicated effort to get owners to correct and maintain their own listings. Go through your profile and fix anything that no longer matches what you offer.
  • List every tour you run as a service on your profile, and show each one with photos and video. 05:03 to 06:11 A tour business fits the profile like any local business. You have places you serve, even without a storefront, and a list of services, whether that’s one tour or many. Photos and video are what show a traveler how the experience will feel. The meeting point has no dedicated field yet, and Google is collecting feedback on gaps like it.
  • Write your profile to answer long, detailed searches, because that’s how travelers search now. 06:47 to 08:21 AI has changed search. Search in AI Mode and Gemini are conversational, and queries now run two to five times longer than before. Travelers type or speak a whole trip brief: the destination, kids, time of day, food allergies, the type of tour. Google matches the full request, and one answer can build an entire itinerary of tours, restaurants and things to do, with links to each business’s profile. Put those details on your profile.
  • Keep feeding Google written reviews, video reviews and your own content, because how it displays them keeps changing. 08:34 to 08:59 Google updates how it showcases business content constantly, and parts of this episode may already be outdated by the time you hear it. Richness is what holds steady. The more reviews, video and content you have, the more Google has to show.
  • Spell out what makes your tour different, because AI search now matches niche tours to niche requests. 08:59 to 10:58 The OTAs favor standard tours they can sell to everyone. A long search with particular needs, such as something off the beaten path, can now match a small, specific business instead. Google draws on your website, your business profile, and your reviews, pulling snippets and themes from what guests write. Information that comes directly from you counts as the most credible. Filling in the basics and leaving travelers to figure out the rest wastes it.
  • Your official website link keeps top placement on Google Things to do, no matter who outspends you on ads. 10:58 to 11:16 The operator’s direct link holds its spot in the listing sidebar regardless of ad spend, which keeps a direct booking path open without paying for it.
  • Use Google Posts for specials, promotions and updates, and track how many people see them. 11:50 to 13:00 Google has prioritized Posts over the last year, putting them front and center on the profile and pulling them into search results. Post view counts are new, launched three or four weeks before this recording. Write posts around what a customer wants to know: whether the tour is translated, whether there are hills, what to wear.
  • Add a text or WhatsApp contact and your social links to your profile. 13:00 to 13:41 Profiles now accept a text message number or a WhatsApp handle, so travelers can message you instead of calling. Adding your Instagram and Facebook links takes two seconds, and Google is pulling that social content into its own results.
  • Start posting again. Posts and social feeds have moved out of a hidden tab and into Search. 13:41 to 14:10 Google Posts used to show only in the “by owner” tab, where few people looked. They now appear across Search and on the profile, along with your social feeds, and Google keeps adding places to show them.
  • Without a storefront, set up as a service area business so your address stays hidden. 14:38 to 15:10 Choose storefront only if you have a permanent location such as a ticket booth. Service area business has its own setup path, keeps your home address off the listing, and still gives you a profile travelers can find and review. Make this choice first.
  • Run one profile per city, with up to twenty service areas inside it. 15:41 to 17:03 Put all your tours in one city on a single profile, add each neighborhood as a service area, and describe the tours by neighborhood. A service area is usually about a two hour radius, and you can set it by zip code. If you operate in several cities, create a separate profile for each, because a profile spanning cities is relevant to none of them.
  • Multi-day operators should put their effort into their website and SEO instead of a Business Profile. 17:03 to 18:36 Google doesn’t recommend Business Profiles for multi-day operators. Profiles answer searches tied to one place, and trips across several countries don’t match them. Travelers find multi-day companies through their websites.
  • List the hours you actually want to be contacted, and never set 24/7. 19:11 to 21:24 This comes from Google’s product managers. Set the hours you’d respond as a normal business, such as 6 AM to 10 PM if you run early and night tours. A 24/7 listing can trigger spam flags. Travelers in other time zones can still text, WhatsApp, call or email you outside your listed hours.
  • Mark the profile “temporarily closed” for the off season. 21:45 to 22:39 Use seasonal or holiday hours for closures of about seven days or less. For a full off season, Google recommends “temporarily closed,” and travelers in seasonal destinations read it as closed for the season. A “seasonally closed” option doesn’t exist yet. The idea has gone to Google’s product team.
  • Add up to nine or ten secondary categories, and use Gemini to find the ones you’re missing. 22:49 to 24:08 “Tour guide” alone undersells you. Start typing in the category field and it autocompletes with Google’s options, so a specialty like fly fishing gets its own category. For suggestions, sign in to Gemini with the account that manages your profile, type @Google Business Profile, and ask which categories to add. It reads your website, offerings and description and suggests categories you may not have considered.
  • Connect Gemini to your profile and use it to review, plan and update. 24:32 to 25:53 This connection is new, launched a couple of months before this recording. Try: “Look at my reviews for the past three months and tell me three things I did well and three things I should improve.” “I’m thinking of running a promotion. What do you recommend based on the queries you’re seeing?” “My profile feels stale. What are some ideas?” It offers to draft posts, shows the search terms people use to find you, and updates the profile when you ask.
  • Fill out every field once, then keep reviews, photos, video and posts fresh. 26:33 to 27:20 Contact details and the other basics are table stakes, and many businesses still have them wrong. Use photos and video to answer what travelers ask before booking: how steep the route is, what the neighborhood looks like, whether it’s safe, what to wear. Put the meeting point in your description. Post only when you have something going on.
  • Spell out who the tour suits, and show the real price. 27:20 to 28:34 State whether it works for kids, for wheelchair users, and for people who don’t speak the language. Price accuracy is a big problem in tours: travelers see one price, then hit fees or a different number. Replace old photos, because a latest photo from three years ago makes travelers wonder whether you’re still operating.
  • Update the profile weekly or monthly, reusing what you already post on social. 28:39 to 29:16 There’s no required cadence. The group photos you already post to social media work on the profile too. Google Posts never need to be daily.
  • Post real photos of the experience over polished ones. 29:16 to 30:46 Travelers use photos and video to answer practical questions (hills, clothing, water) and to judge the vibe. Polished, staged shots raise doubts that the tour will match them. Don’t use AI to make the tour look like something it isn’t. Set expectations and get people excited.
  • Expanding to a new city means a new profile starting from zero reviews. 30:51 to 32:12 Reviews don’t transfer, because it’s a new market with different guides and a different experience. Put your years in business in the new profile’s description, and ask for reviews from the start. For day tours, a service area means the same city and its vicinity.
  • Keep day trips from your home city on your city profile, and give a standalone destination business its own. 32:12 to 33:59 A day trip that leaves from Paris belongs on the Paris profile. Tours that have become their own business in another region need their own profile, so the reviews stay specific. Google now personalizes results by a traveler’s dates and where they’re staying, so a traveler based in that region is more likely to be shown a business based there.
  • Accept fewer reviews per profile in exchange for more specific ones. 33:59 to 35:14 Volume matters to travelers, and 2,000 reviews at 4.7 looks better than twelve at 5.0. But reviews about a single type of tour give Google more to extract and show in search results than reviews spread across unrelated tours. Combining everything in one profile to protect the count gives up the long game.
  • Keep reviews coming in steadily, because a long gap makes travelers think you’ve stopped operating. 36:21 to 37:21 A traveler who sees a last review from many months back questions whether the business is active. If you run few, higher priced tours, ask every guest for a review. Never fill gaps with reviews from family and friends. That’s against policy.
  • Detailed reviews help you in search, but you can’t steer what guests write. 37:46 to 39:08 Google pulls snippets and themes from reviews to decide whether a tour is off the beaten path or good for kids, so a detailed review gives it more to use than “great tour, thank you.” You can’t tell guests what to write, ask them to mention you by name, or offer anything in return, including small freebies.
  • Reply to reviews personally and briefly, never with a canned response. 39:23 to 39:52 Responding isn’t a known ranking signal. It builds your reputation with the people reading. A canned reply on every review is worse than none. A few personal sentences that make the guest feel heard are enough.
  • Answer negative reviews respectfully and take the conversation offline. 39:52 to 40:44 A single bad review won’t sink the business. Make the guest feel heard and move to a private channel. A warm or apologetic owner reply can win over the next traveler reading it.
  • Worry less about 4.7 versus 4.8 and more about what your negative reviews say. 41:54 to 43:17 There’s no official Google position on what a tenth of a point does. Travelers read reviews and review summaries, and some go straight to the negative ones. A negative review that conflicts with every other review loses credibility. For a review about a different business, file an appeal.
  • Leave emotion out of review replies, because they stay public under your name. 43:48 to 44:34 Clarifying the facts is fine. Criticizing or demeaning a guest stays on the record. Test every reply: would you be comfortable with it surfacing if you ran for local office?
  • Ask for reviews at the end of the tour, with no pressure. 44:59 to 46:06 Use the QR code Google provides in your Business Profile. “If you had a great time, please leave us a review” is fine. Pressuring guests, such as requiring a review before you finish the tour, backfires and breaks the rules.
  • Expect a burst of reviews from one group to get held by spam filters. 46:12 to 47:14 There’s no known difference between a review left the same day and one left months later. Many reviews arriving at once, such as a whole group after a large tour or multi-day trip, can be held or rejected until they look legitimate.
  • Automated review request emails are fine if they offer nothing in return. 47:23 to 47:42 No incentives, no pressure, no telling people what to write. A discount on the next booking counts as an incentive.
  • Don’t use review gating. 47:48 to 48:11 Gating sends four and five star reviews to Google and handles three stars and below internally. It violates Google policy. Every review belongs on the profile.
  • Don’t run free tours for friends and family to collect reviews. 48:11 to 48:24 Those reviews violate policy, even when the people took the tour.
  • If someone posts fake bad reviews and demands money, don’t respond. Save the evidence and report it. 48:51 to 49:41 Review extortion is an emerging scam and a big focus for Google this year. One or two fake negative reviews appear, then a payment demand follows. Google’s systems often remove the reviews before you report them, and a new pending mode holds suspicious reviews before they go live. Use the new reporting channel built for extortion and include every email and message you received.
  • Report suspected fake reviews under the right category. 50:11 to 50:59 Use the specific categories in the reporting flow, such as policy violation or harassment. When it’s your word against a reviewer’s, Google stays neutral because it can’t verify who took the tour, so some reviews will stay up.
  • Stop appealing once you’ve received the same answer more than once. 52:19 to 52:43 The process is report, then appeal, and appeals pass through several layers. Repeated identical answers mean the decision won’t change.
  • Use the official reporting channels, and skip messaging Google employees on LinkedIn. 52:47 to 53:39 Google’s partnership staff can’t access the review systems behind your case. What they can do is pass operator feedback to product teams, which is how process problems get noticed.
  • Keep investing in SEO, and make sure your booking partners are connected to Google for agentic booking. 54:21 to 55:13 Google pulls content from everywhere, so SEO still makes a fundamental difference. Agentic booking is being built with partners and already checks availability in some cases, and operators connected through those partners benefit as it develops. Keep your descriptions, photos and posts fresh and accurate.
  • Make short form video a priority this year. 55:35 to 56:30 Video is a Google priority for the coming year. Post updates, offers and special tours when you have something to say, and turn behind the scenes material into video. Video from your company or from guests lets travelers feel the tour.
  • Add creator Reels to your Business Profile. 56:33 to 57:37 Google extracts far more from a video review than from a written one. When you pay a creator for a Reel, upload it to your profile too. With your social handles added, Google also pulls content from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube.
  • List tours by hand or through your booking software. Google treats both routes the same. 57:37 to 58:29 You can enter each tour and price in the ticket and activity editor on your profile, or connect through your booking software. Google is neutral on the route. Connecting gives richer content and bookability, which counts for more as live availability matters more.
  • Check what Ask Maps says about your tour, and fix the sources behind any wrong answer. 59:12 to 1:00:27 Ask Maps is a new Maps experience powered by Gemini. It shows a “know before you go” summary, details and review snippets, and answers follow up questions about hills, clothing, kids and walking. Each answer links to its sources, so update whichever source is wrong. Your Business Profile sits front and center.
  • Keep your website and your profile consistent. 1:00:27 to 1:01:14 They don’t need identical content, and you don’t need every FAQ on the profile. Conflicting information means Google may show the wrong version. It pulls from every platform, Reddit included.
  • Decide what you want to be found for, then use Gemini to rework your profile around it. 1:02:03 to 1:02:44 No new business model needed. Choose the searches you want to show up for and ask Gemini, connected to your profile, how to optimize the profile to communicate them.
  • Describe your tour specifically. AI search no longer rewards generic. 1:02:44 to 1:03:20 Search can now parse and match detail well enough that you don’t need to squeeze into “best food tours of Paris” to be visible. What’s unique about your tour can set it apart.
  • Spend half an hour to an hour on your profile now. 1:03:37 to 1:04:16 Fill out every field, update your attributes, and then add photos and video regularly so travelers see an active business.
  • Use Gemini and Ask Google Help for profile questions. 1:05:29 to 1:06:05 Gemini handles strategy, optimization and category questions. The new Ask Google Help chatbot in the Google Business Profile Help Center answers basic questions without digging through help documents.