You searched your own firm's name and the panel on the right shows an old suite number, a category of "Lawyer," two photos from 2019 and a question from a stranger that nobody answered. Meanwhile the firm across town sits in the three-pack for "divorce attorney" every time you check.
The Google Business Profile is the listing behind that panel and behind the map results. It is free, it is managed by searching your business name in Google while signed in (the old standalone dashboard is gone), and for most local practice areas it produces more phone calls than the website does. What follows is the profile, field by field, in the order that tends to matter.
Which primary category should a law firm pick?
The primary category is the single strongest relevance signal on the profile. Google offers specific legal categories: Personal injury attorney, Divorce lawyer, Family law attorney, Criminal justice attorney, Estate planning attorney, Bankruptcy attorney, Immigration attorney, Employment attorney, Real estate attorney, and the generic Law firm and Attorney. Pick the one that matches the searches you most want, not the one that describes the firm most broadly.
A firm that does mostly injury work and some workers' compensation should set Personal injury attorney as primary and add Workers' compensation attorney and Law firm as additional categories. Additional categories help, but they carry far less weight than the primary, and stuffing in ten of them dilutes the signal.
What actually goes in the services, description and attributes
Services is the field most firms leave empty. Under each category you can list individual services with a name and a description of up to 300 characters. Add the real matters you handle: "Truck accident claims," "Uncontested divorce," "DUI defense," "Revocable living trusts." These show up in the profile and give Google explicit words to match against searches.
The business description allows 750 characters. Write it as a plain statement of who you are, where you are and what you do, with the practice areas and city named in the first sentence. No taglines, no promotional language, no phone numbers (Google removes them).
Attributes are the checkboxes. The ones that apply to law firms include Online appointments, Onsite services, Language assistance, Wheelchair accessible entrance and parking, and the identity attributes such as Women-owned or Veteran-owned. They are filters searchers can use, so set every one that is true. Also fill the appointment link with your intake URL, set accurate hours, and add the opening date.
Should each attorney have a separate profile?
Google's guidelines allow individual practitioner listings for public-facing professionals, and lawyers qualify. A profile for "Jane Smith, Attorney" alongside the firm's profile is permitted as long as the attorney actually works at that address and the listing uses the person's name, not the firm's name with a suffix.
Whether it helps depends on the firm. For a solo, the firm and the attorney can be a single listing and a duplicate should be merged. For a firm where attorneys are known by name (a criminal defense lawyer clients ask for personally, for instance), a practitioner profile with its own reviews can capture name searches and occasionally add a second map result. Departed attorneys' profiles must be marked as moved or closed, or their old listing keeps ranking with your address on it.
Photos, posts, Q&A and messaging: which are worth the time
Photos: upload the exterior with signage (it helps verification and helps clients find you), the reception area, and a professional headshot of each attorney. Add a few every quarter.
Posts (called Updates) appear on the profile for a while and then age out. They do not appear to influence rankings much, but they are a cheap way to show the profile is alive: a new attorney, a community event, a plain-language explainer linked to a page on your site. One a month is plenty.
Q&A is the field that embarrasses firms. Anyone can ask a question on your profile and anyone can answer it, including competitors and bored strangers. Seed it yourself: post the questions clients actually ask (Do you offer free consultations? Do you charge by the hour or a flat fee? Do you handle cases in the next county?) and answer them from the business account. Then check it monthly.
Messaging lets searchers text you from the listing. Turn it on only if someone will answer within a few hours, because Google shows response times and turns the feature off on profiles that ignore messages.
How you know it is working
The profile's Performance report shows how many people found you through search and Maps, which queries triggered the listing, and how many called, requested directions or clicked through to the site. Compare the query list against the services you listed; if "estate planning" never appears and you want it to, the profile is not telling Google clearly enough.
The profile does not work in isolation. Reviews drive the prominence part of the ranking, which is why we wrote a separate guide on how to get more Google reviews for your law firm. Proximity to the searcher decides much of what appears for lawyer near me searches no matter how complete the listing is. And the website behind the profile still needs to match, which is where local SEO for law firms as a whole comes in. For the full picture of the map results, see our page on Google Maps optimization for lawyers, and for how it fits with the rest, SEO for lawyers.
Questions we get
We share a suite with another business. Can we still have a profile?
Yes, provided the firm has its own signage, staff and phone at that location. Executive suites with a receptionist count; a mailbox at a virtual office does not, and Google has been suspending those listings.
Our profile got suspended after we edited it. What happened?
Large edits to the name, address or category can trigger a review, especially if the new name includes keywords ("Smith Law Firm Personal Injury Lawyers Richmond"). Keep the name exactly as it appears on your signage and bar registration, and make big changes one at a time.
How long until changes affect rankings?
Category and service edits are usually reflected in the listing within days. Ranking movement, if any, typically takes a few weeks.
If you would like us to review your profile against the map pack you are trying to enter, tell us what you are working with.