A Google Business Profile is the card Google may quote when someone searches your name. It is not a pipeline channel for a SaaS company selling abroad.
A Google Business Profile is the public card Google and Maps keep for a real-world business: name, category, hours, site, photos, reviews. People also search it as Google My Business, the old product name, or as business profile management. For a SaaS company, and for a studio like ours that sells to US, UK, and EU teams from Lagos, the card is hygiene. It is not the growth engine.
Someone searching your company name should find an accurate card. Someone searching “CRM software” should find your site, your guides, and your ads. Do not confuse the two.
What changed by November 2026
Several of these shipped as policy edits and product tests, not as one announcement. Confirm them against Google’s own help before you rebuild a process. The cleanest dated list we have used is Locus Intelligence’s November 2026 guide, cross-checked with a November 2026 practitioner roundup.
- Public Q&A on Maps was removed in December 2025 and replaced by an AI Ask experience. The Q&A API ended on 3 November 2025. Ask Maps, a Gemini feature, started rolling out in the US and India on 12 March 2026. If your card, site, and reviews are thin, the answer Google composes will be thin.
- Suggested edits: once you are notified, you have about four days to accept or reject a change, or Google may publish it. Compare the live card to your records anyway. Some edits are easy to miss.
- Reviews: incentives are not allowed. Payment, discounts, or free work in exchange for a review, or for changing or removing one, violates the Maps content policy. Google has also described blocks on review-extortion patterns and pauses when fake reviews spike.
- Listing copy versus posts. An October 2026 policy tightening, reported via Search Engine Roundtable, draws a line: the listing itself should not carry time-limited deals, prices, or calls to action. Posts should not carry phone numbers, email addresses, social links, or unrelated links.
- Google Business Home is a closed beta for some categories in the US and UK. It can tie a profile to Merchant Center, Ads, and YouTube. It is invite-only. It is not a reason to wait on managing the card you already have.
- Google has tested calling businesses from Search for price and availability, with a control in the profile settings. Know whether that switch is on.
What to put on the card
Write the card so a stranger, and an AI summary, can repeat it without inventing a second business.
- Legal name and the name customers use, if they match.
- A category you can defend. A marketing studio should not list itself as a software company. A SaaS product with no public office should not pretend to be a shop on a high street.
- Hours you actually answer. Our desk is 08:00–18:00 WAT on weekdays, with overlap for a New York morning. If your card says you are open at midnight because a founder sometimes is, you will collect bad expectations.
- The website as the place that sells. The card does not replace a landing page.
- Services in plain language. For us that is content, brand, and paid acquisition for B2B SaaS, not a keyword list.
- Photos of the real studio and the real work. Stock photos are how cards get distrusted.
- The service area truth. If you do not serve walk-in customers in Lagos, do not optimize the card for “near me.” Those queries showed up in the same trend export as Business Profile. They are a different business.
What we will not sell you
Google Business Profile management, as a standalone retainer, is a weak buy for a company whose pipeline is demos in another country. Keep the card true. Spend the sprint on the page, the proof, and the posts a buyer can use. The prices for that work are on the package page. If a suggested edit or a review problem is blocking a first call, say so in the brief and we will treat it as a fix, not as a local-SEO program.