How to Improve Google My Business Ranking for a Local Business in Chicago
Google My Business is now Google Business Profile. How Chicago businesses can improve their map ranking: categories, reviews, citations, photos and pages.
Google My Business was renamed Google Business Profile in 2021, but most owners still call it by the old name, and the ranking rules have not changed much. The profile decides whether you appear in the map pack, the three local results at the top of most “near me” and service searches. In Chicago, where every category has competitors on nearly every block, small differences in the profile decide who gets those three spots.
How does Google decide who ranks in the Chicago map pack?
Google’s own help page names three factors: relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well your profile matches the search. Distance is how far you are from the searcher, or from the place named in the search. Prominence is how well known your business is, based on reviews, links, articles and directory listings across the web. Google also says your position in regular web results counts toward prominence, so your website matters too.
You can’t change distance. Everything below works on relevance and prominence.
Which profile settings matter most?
Start with the primary category. It is the strongest relevance signal on the profile, and many businesses choose one that is too broad. A “Contractor” category competes for less than “Roofing contractor” or “Kitchen remodeler”. Pick the category that describes your main source of revenue, then add secondary categories for the other services you genuinely offer.
Then work through the rest of the profile:
- Services, listed in the words customers use, with a short description for each
- A business description that says what you do and where, without stuffing keywords
- Accurate opening hours, including special hours for holidays
- Attributes that apply to you, such as wheelchair access or online appointments
- A link to the most relevant page on your website, which for most businesses is the homepage or a location page
Leave the business name exactly as it appears on your signage and license. Adding “Chicago” or a service to the name breaks Google’s guidelines and can get the profile suspended. Our Google Business Profile optimization guide covers every field, including the ones that make no measurable difference.
How many reviews do you need to compete?
There’s no fixed number. Look at the businesses currently in the map pack for your main search from your own location and note their review counts and how recent their latest reviews are. That is your benchmark.
Recency matters as much as total count. A profile that collected a hundred reviews three years ago and nothing since tends to slip behind a competitor that gets a few every month. The simplest system is to ask every satisfied customer at the point the job is finished, with a direct link to your review form. Reply to every review, including the bad ones, briefly and without arguing.
Do not buy reviews, offer discounts for them, or have staff write them. Google removes them in bulk when it detects them, and the FTC rule on fake reviews, which took effect in 2024, allows penalties for businesses that buy or sell them.
Do citations and your address still matter?
Yes. Google checks that your name, address and phone match across the web. A Chicago business that has moved, changed phone systems or merged with another company often has conflicting listings scattered across directories, and that inconsistency weakens prominence. Our guide to building NAP citations for a Chicago business explains how to fix them in order.
Your address also needs to be eligible. Google does not allow profiles at virtual offices or mailbox addresses that are not staffed during business hours. If you serve customers at their location and do not want visitors, set the profile up as a service-area business and hide the address.
Do photos and posts help?
They help conversion more than ranking. People choose between three map results partly on photos, so add real photos of your work, your team and your premises, and keep adding them. Posts keep the profile looking active and let you promote offers or seasonal services.
None of this replaces the category, reviews and website work, but a profile with recent photos and replies does convert more of the views it gets.
How does your website affect your map ranking?
The website linked from your profile is part of how Google judges relevance and prominence. A page that clearly describes your services, names the neighborhoods you serve, and loads quickly on a phone strengthens the profile. Pages built for specific Chicago neighborhoods help you appear in searches further from your address, where distance works against you. We explain this in how to elevate your Chicago business with targeted local SEO.
What do we do differently when we manage a profile?
When a Chicago business hires our local SEO team, we don’t start with the profile settings. We start by checking where the business ranks across its whole service area, using a grid of locations rather than a single search from the office. That map usually shows the profile performing well within a mile or two and fading beyond it, and it tells us whether the problem is the category, the reviews, the citations or the website.
If you want that map for your own business, our free business analysis includes it, along with the two or three profile changes most likely to move your ranking.