How do I get my contracting business on Google Maps?

Use your real business name, exactly as it is on your license and your bank account. Do not add your trade or your city to the name. "Smith Electric" is right. "Smith Electric Los Angeles Electrician" gets reported by competitors and suspended.

Pick the primary category for your trade: Electrician, Plumber, HVAC contractor, Painter. The primary category carries most of the weight in the map results, so do not pick something broad like "Contractor" if a specific one fits.

Choose the service-area business option if customers do not visit you. Google will still ask for an address to verify against. That address stays hidden. Then list the cities or areas you serve, up to twenty. Keep it to places you will actually drive to; a bigger list does not rank you farther away.

Use a phone number you answer. Enter the same number on your website. Google compares them, and a mismatch is a trust problem.

Google decides the method, and for service-area businesses the default is video. You record a short, unbroken clip in the Google Maps app: the outside of your location, then inside, then proof you run the business, which means your license, a piece of business mail, or your work vehicle with the company name on it. Have everything laid out before you tap record, because you cannot pause.

Phone and postcard verification are offered "when available," which in practice means rarely. If you see a code option, take it. If you see video, do the video. Trying to route around it by re-creating the profile wastes a week.

Add a logo and a cover photo. Add real photos of your work, not stock images, and be aware that photos carry location data Google reads, so leave out photos taken at your home address. Write a description that says what you do and where. Add your services. Turn on messaging only if someone will answer it.

Then ask every happy customer for a review, with a direct link. Reviews are the biggest single factor in whether your profile appears in the three map results a homeowner sees first. A profile with photos, hours, a description, and ten reviews beats one with fifty reviews and nothing else filled in more often than you would expect.