Google Business Profile Services and Products: Setup Guide

Your Google Business Profile services and Google Business Profile products are among the few edits you make directly inside Google’s own interface rather than through a citation platform, and they’re the fields most businesses fill in halfway. The services list is where your profile states, in Google’s own structured field, exactly what you do, so it should be written in the same words customers type into the search box, and the same words your website and your citation listings already use. Get those three in sync and every channel reinforces the same story about your business. Leave them out of sync and you’re quietly telling Google three different things about what you sell.

This guide covers what’s currently in the product, what Google retired, and how to keep the wording consistent everywhere it appears.

Google Business Profile services: how to add them

Services live under Edit profile, then Services (some accounts see it as “Edit services” directly on the profile). Google shows two kinds of entries:

• Predefined (structured) services: options Google generates from your primary and secondary Google Business Profile categories. A plumbing business sees suggestions like “Install faucet” or “Repair toilet”; a dental practice sees “Teeth whitening” or “Root canal.” These map to Google’s own taxonomy, so they’re worth adding first because Google already understands what they mean.
• Custom services: free-text entries you add for anything predefined options miss. Custom services go through automated review; Google rejects entries containing profanity, gibberish, personal information, prices or phone numbers inside the service name itself. Put the price in the service’s description field instead, not the name.

For either type, you can add a short description and a price or price range once the service is saved, and group related services into categories when you offer several distinct lines of work. A roofing company might group “Roof Replacement,” “Roof Repair” and “Gutter Installation” under one category rather than listing them flat.

A simple checklist for writing service entries

1. Start from Google’s predefined suggestions for your category before adding anything custom.
2. Name each service the way a customer would search for it, not the way your invoice describes it (“AC repair,” not “HVAC diagnostic service call”).
3. Add a one- or two-sentence description that states what’s included, using the same language as the matching page on your website.
4. Add a price or range where you’re comfortable publishing one; leave it out if pricing genuinely varies too much to state.
5. Group services into categories once you have more than five or six, so the profile doesn’t read as a flat list.
6. Re-check the list whenever you add a new service line at the business, not just when you first set up the profile.

Google Business Profile products: for businesses that sell physical goods

Products are a separate field from services, meant for physical items rather than work performed. You add them through Edit profile, then Products, then Add product, filling in details such as a name, category, price and description, along with at least one product photo. Anything you upload through the product editor has to follow Google’s shopping ads policy; submitting products that violate it can get your whole uploaded catalog removed, not just the offending item.

If the business already has a Google Merchant Center account, “Edit products” on the profile redirects there instead, so the two stay in sync automatically rather than needing separate updates. Retailers selling barcoded products with a point-of-sale system can also connect it through Google’s Local Inventory app to show live in-store stock, which is a separate path from manually adding products one at a time through the product editor.

Menus work similarly for restaurants: added as a distinct menu section under Edit profile rather than under Products, with the option to organize by section (appetizers, entrees, drinks) and price each item.

What Google retired: chat, and what to use instead

Google shut down the chat feature that let customers message a business directly from its Search and Maps listing. Google notified customers who had an active conversation on July 15, 2024, and the whole feature, along with call history inside the profile, stopped working on July 31, 2024. Google’s own guidance for the gap: keep a working phone number on the profile (tracked automatically as the “calls” metric in the performance report), and where the business already uses text messaging or WhatsApp for customer contact, note that separately since Google Business Profile no longer carries a native chat channel. Don’t advertise “message us on Google” anywhere in your marketing, since that entry point no longer exists.

This is a good moment to also check Google’s current help pages before you publish a guide or a client deliverable that mentions any specific Business Profile feature. Google has retired or renamed pieces of the product before, including the chat feature above, so verify current behavior directly rather than relying on an older article.

Booking and reservation links

Two ways to add a booking or ordering link, both from the Bookings section of your Business Profile:

Method	How it appears	Setup time	What you get
Reserve with Google provider	Automatic booking button, styled by Google	Google says providers usually show up within about a week	Booking performance reported back inside your profile
Your own booking or ordering URL	A link Google displays as your booking button	Google publishes no fixed timeline for this	No performance data reported for the link itself

Either method is free to set up; if the booking actually completes through a connected provider, that provider may separately charge for its own service, which is between you and the provider, not Google. Restaurants have an additional waitlist feature that also requires signing up with a third-party Reserve with Google provider, with its own performance reported under the profile’s Waitlists section.

Neither booking links nor products, services or menus are something Citation Builder posts to Google on your behalf: Google Business Profile is a recommended citation the owner manages directly, and everything in this guide happens inside Google’s own dashboard.

Keep services, your website and your citations saying the same thing

The services list only pays off when it agrees with two other things: the service pages on your website, and the category and description text carried on your live citation listings. When all three use the same core phrases, every source pointing back to the business reinforces the same signal instead of describing three slightly different businesses. When Citation Builder builds a listing, it uses the categories and NAP details already saved for that location, which is one more reason to lock the service wording down first and let the site, the profile and the listings all draw from it.

A practical way to check for drift: open the business’s location page for a given service line side by side with the matching Google Business Profile service entry. If the page says “Emergency Water Heater Repair” and the profile says “Plumbing,” that’s a gap worth closing, and it’s the same kind of gap a full Google Business Profile optimization pass is built to catch across every field, not just services.

Service and product examples by industry

Use these as starting points, not a template to copy verbatim, since specific service names should still match what the business actually offers.

Industry	Example predefined services	Example custom services	Guide
Roofing	Roof installation, roof repair, roof inspection	Storm damage assessment, gutter guard installation	Local SEO for roofers
Garage doors	Garage door installation, garage door repair, opener repair	Spring replacement, smart opener setup	Local SEO for garage door companies
Tree service	Tree removal, tree trimming, stump grinding	Storm cleanup, emergency tree removal	Local SEO for tree service
Solar installers	Solar panel installation, solar system inspection	Battery storage add-on, panel cleaning	Local SEO for solar installers
Med spas	Botox, laser hair removal, chemical peel	Membership packages, consultation booking	Local SEO for med spas
Home care	In-home care, respite care, companion care	24-hour live-in care, dementia care	Local SEO for home care
HVAC	AC repair, furnace installation, duct cleaning	Seasonal maintenance plan, emergency service call	Local SEO for HVAC
Dentists	Teeth whitening, root canal, dental exam	Same-day crowns, sedation dentistry	Local SEO for dentists
Electricians	Panel upgrade, wiring repair, EV charger installation	Generator installation, smart home wiring	Local SEO for electricians
Landscapers	Lawn care, landscape design, irrigation installation	Seasonal cleanup, hardscape installation	Local SEO for landscapers

A short monthly checklist

• Confirm every service the business currently offers is listed, and remove anything discontinued.
• Compare service names against your website’s service page titles; fix any mismatch.
• Check the booking link still resolves and points to the right scheduling page.
• Update product photos and prices if either has changed since the last review.
• Re-read Google’s current help pages for services, products and bookings if it’s been more than a few months, since Google updates these features without much notice.

Getting the services list right is worth doing before you widen the review, but it’s one field among many. For the full pass across categories, description, photos and everything else Google weighs, revisit the optimization guide linked above, and for how this fits into the wider local search picture alongside citations and website structure, revisit the local SEO hub linked earlier in this guide.