When a homeowner in Calgary searches for “roofer near me” or “furnace repair”, a map with a short list of businesses often appears before the regular website results. Those listings come from Google Business Profiles. Google says its local results are based mainly on three things: relevance, distance and prominence (Google Business Profile Help). You can’t change how far a customer lives from you, but you can control most of the rest.
This checklist is written for roofing, HVAC, plumbing, renovation and other contractors who travel to their customers. Every step follows Google’s own guidelines, so nothing here should put your profile at risk of suspension.
Before you start: Sign in with the Google account that owns your profile, then search for your business name on Google and select Edit profile. Google reviews most edits before they go live, so a change may show as “pending” for a while.
1. Set up the profile the way Google expects
These are the basics in Google’s guidelines, and Google says breaking them can lead to a suspended profile, so start here.
- Use your real business name. Enter it exactly as it appears on your trucks, invoices and signage. Google doesn’t allow marketing taglines, service descriptions or locations in the name, so “Bow River Roofing” is fine and “Bow River Roofing | Calgary Hail Repair Experts” is not (Google’s guidelines for representing your business). Extra words in the name can get a profile suspended.
- Keep one profile per business. Google says there should only be one profile per business. Don’t create a second one for Airdrie or Okotoks. Use service areas instead.
- Hide your address if customers don’t come to you. If you work from home or from a yard that customers don’t visit, you’re a service-area business. Google’s guidance is to clear the address from the profile in that case. You still need a real address behind the scenes: Google says a mailbox or virtual office isn’t eligible unless it’s staffed during business hours.
- Add the areas you actually serve. You can list up to 20 service areas by city or postal code, and Google says the overall area shouldn’t extend more than about 2 hours of driving from where your business is based (Google Business Profile Help). For many Calgary contractors that means Calgary plus nearby communities such as Airdrie, Cochrane, Chestermere and Okotoks, but only the ones you really work in.
2. Pick categories that say what you are
Categories tell Google what kind of business you are, which shapes the searches your profile can appear for.
- Choose the most specific primary category. Google suggests picking categories that complete the sentence “This business IS a…”, rather than listing everything you offer. For example, “Roofing contractor” or “HVAC contractor” rather than a general category.
- Add extra categories only for real lines of business. Google lets you add up to 9 more categories (Google Business Profile Help), but it asks businesses to use as few as possible. A roofer who also installs siding as a regular part of the business can add a siding category. A roofer who once fixed a fence shouldn’t add fencing.
- Don’t use categories as keywords. Google’s guidelines say categories shouldn’t be used just to describe features or to target searches.
3. Fill in the details homeowners check
These are the fields people look at before they call.
- Hours. Show your real customer-facing hours. If you advertise emergency service, only set evening or 24-hour hours if someone really answers the phone at those times. Use special hours for statutory holidays, and “More hours” if one service has different times.
- Phone number. Use a number that reaches your business directly. Google prefers a local number over a central call centre and says the number must be under the business’s direct control.
- Website. Link to your own website, either the home page or the most relevant service page. If you use Google Analytics, you can add campaign tags to that link (for example
?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=gbp) so visits from your profile show up separately in your reports (Google Analytics Help). - Chat. Where it’s available, you can let customers message you by text or WhatsApp from the profile. Only turn it on if someone will reply quickly.
- Description. You get up to 750 characters, with no links. Google asks you to describe what you offer and what makes you different, not prices or promotions. Mention your main services, the areas you cover and how long you’ve been in business, using only facts you can back up.
- Opening date. Add the month and year you started. Google may use it to show how long you’ve been in business.
4. List your services in plain words
Use the services section to list each job you want to be found for, in the words homeowners use: “roof replacement”, “hail damage repair”, “furnace installation”, “AC repair”, “basement development”. Add a short, factual description to each one. Leave out promises you can’t guarantee, such as “lowest price in Calgary” or “approved by every insurer”.
If you’re not sure which services to list, look at your invoices from the last year and list the jobs you’d most like more of.
5. Show real photos of real jobs
Photos help homeowners see that you’re a real crew doing real work. Google’s guidelines for profile photos are JPG or PNG files between 10 KB and 5 MB, a recommended size of 720 × 720 pixels, and images that are in focus, well lit and not heavily filtered. Videos can be up to 30 seconds long (Google Business Profile Help).
Good photos for contractors include:
- your logo and a cover photo
- your team and your branded vehicles
- before and after shots of finished jobs
- work in progress, taken safely
Ask the homeowner before you post photos of their home, and keep house numbers and licence plates out of the shot. During busy season, add a few new photos every month.
6. Ask for reviews the right way
Google says the number of reviews and your ratings are part of how “prominent” your business looks, which affects local ranking. Reviews are also what homeowners read before they call. The rules on how you ask, though, are strict.
- Ask every customer, every time. Send your review link or QR code right after the job is finished, while it’s fresh. Google’s own tips for getting more reviews recommend exactly this (Google Business Profile Help).
- Never offer anything in return. Discounts, gift cards and contest entries in exchange for reviews are prohibited (Google Maps content policy).
- Don’t ask only your happy customers. Google doesn’t allow businesses to discourage negative reviews or selectively ask for positive ones.
- Keep staff and family out of it. Canada’s Competition Bureau has warned that employees who review their employer must disclose the connection, and that the business can be held responsible for misleading reviews (Competition Bureau). The simplest rule is that staff don’t review the business at all.
- Reply to reviews, especially the bad ones. Keep it short, polite and specific, and offer to sort out the details by phone. Never share a customer’s private details in a reply.
7. Post updates before your busy seasons
Profile posts let you share updates, offers and events. Posts older than six months are archived unless you set a date range (Google Business Profile Help), so a steady rhythm works better than one burst of activity.
Calgary gives contractors obvious seasonal hooks. The August 2024 Calgary hailstorm led to insured property and vehicle losses that CatIQ, which tracks insured catastrophe losses in Canada, now estimates at $3.349 billion (CatIQ, August 2026). Homeowners remember storms like that. Some ideas:
- Roofers: in spring, explain how to book a roof inspection after a hailstorm and what photos to take for an insurance claim.
- HVAC companies: in early fall, remind customers to book a furnace check before the first cold snap.
- Renovation contractors: share a finished project with a short description of the work.
Google notes that posts containing a phone number may be rejected if the number can’t be verified as belonging to the business, so let the profile’s call button do that job.
8. Make your website back up your profile
Google also looks beyond your profile, including at your website and other sites that mention you. Make sure they tell the same story.
- Use the same business name, phone number and service areas on your website as on your profile.
- Give each main service its own page, and say which communities you serve.
- Make it easy to call or request a quote from a phone.
- If you take deposits for residential work that you negotiate in the customer’s home, Alberta requires a prepaid contracting business licence (Alberta.ca), and the province tells homeowners to check that a contractor is licensed before hiring (Alberta.ca). If you hold a licence, showing it on your website answers that question before the homeowner has to ask.
A 15-minute monthly routine
Once the profile is set up, keeping it healthy takes very little time:
- Reply to every new review.
- Send your review link to every customer whose job finished this month.
- Add three to five new photos of recent work.
- Publish one or two updates.
- Set special hours for any upcoming holidays.
- Check Edit profile for changes Google made from other sources, and correct anything that’s wrong.
- Look at the performance numbers for calls, website clicks and direction requests, and compare them with last month.
Mistakes that get contractor profiles suspended
- Adding keywords or city names to the business name.
- Using a mailbox, a virtual office or someone else’s address.
- Creating a second profile for another town you serve.
- Buying reviews, or giving customers anything in exchange for one.
Want a hand with it?
If you’d rather spend your time on jobs than on Google, we set up and tidy Google Business Profiles for Calgary-area businesses as part of our SEO and local marketing service, and we build the fast, mobile-friendly service pages that back them up. If you’re also weighing up a new website, read our guide to how much a website costs in Calgary.
Sources
- Google Business Profile Help, “Tips to improve your local ranking on Google”: support.google.com
- Google Business Profile Help, “Guidelines for representing your business on Google”: support.google.com
- Google Business Profile Help, “Manage your service areas for service-area & hybrid businesses”: support.google.com
- Google Business Profile Help, “Edit your Business Profile”: support.google.com
- Google Business Profile Help, “Manage your Business Profile photos & videos”: support.google.com
- Google Business Profile Help, “Tips to get more reviews”: support.google.com
- Google Business Profile Help, “Create & manage posts on your Business Profile”: support.google.com
- Maps User Generated Content Policy, “Prohibited & restricted content”: support.google.com
- Google Analytics Help, “Collect campaign data with custom URLs”: support.google.com
- Competition Bureau Canada, “Online reviews posted by employees: businesses could be liable” (January 2024): canada.ca
- CatIQ, final industry loss estimate for the 2024 Calgary hailstorm (5 August 2026): catiq.com
- Government of Alberta, “Prepaid contracting licence”: alberta.ca
- Government of Alberta, “Hiring a contractor”: alberta.ca
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