When you set up your profile, Google handed you a list of services to tick and you ticked them, which felt like telling Google what you do. The specialist on this podcast says every agent gets offered the same list, so the section says nothing about anyone — and underneath it sits a button that gives you 300 characters per service to say where you work and who you work with.
He optimizes Google Business Profiles for a living, almost entirely for agents and brokerages. His firm has "we've looked at and been part of and optimized a thousand Google business profiles", and what he finds is consistent: "I can count on one hand out of all of those that I got into a business profile the first time and the services were not bare bones and generic."
He does not blame agents for it. When you create the profile and tell Google your category, Google offers you a ready-made list — "first-time home buyer services, investor relations services, listing agent services, buyer agent services" — and you click add down the whole list and walk away thinking Google now knows what you do. So does every other agent with the same category, which is why the section tells Google nothing.
Then the part almost nobody scrolls far enough to find: "there's a little button that's hidden that says custom services." "And you can customize all of these to be hyper local to name drop your business." Click into a service in the edit section and "it then gives you 300 characters to add a custom service description to go with every service."
Why it matters more this year than last: "Those AI overviews are pulling directly from Google business profiles and they're looking in the services section" to check whether you match what the person actually asked for. Leave it on the defaults and "Google quite literally doesn't know what you do" beyond your category and your reviews. As he puts it, "if you leave that section completely blank or you don't customize it, then Google basically just doesn't really know what to do with you."
One access note that trips people up: the profile runs on Google Maps, so "you've got to log in to your Google Maps app on your phone to manage your Google Business Profile."
“there's a little button that's hidden that says custom services.”
This is the rare thing in getting found online that costs nothing, takes an hour, and nobody in your market has done. The generic services list is worse than empty, because it looks finished. You clicked the boxes, the profile said complete, and you never went back.
Write the custom services the way a person would ask for them out loud, not the way a brokerage names its departments. First-time buyers in the specific neighborhood. Sellers relocating out of the specific city. Condo buyers in the specific building or complex. Each one gets its own 300 characters with the place name in it, because the place name is the part that decides whether an AI answer about your town has any reason to mention you.