Choose the profile type by where customers meet you. If buyers come to your gate, show the address. If you only go to them, verify at your real location, hide the address and list service areas. If both happen, it's a hybrid: show the address and add service areas.
Why is this harder for industrial businesses?
Most Google Business Profile advice is written for shops and restaurants: a front door, opening hours, foot traffic. A pallet yard, a fabrication plant or a roll-off company doesn’t fit that picture. Customers may visit the gate to load, or never visit at all. The office may be at a different address from the yard. Drivers cover a region, not a neighbourhood.
Getting the basic type right is the first decision, and it shapes everything else.
Storefront, service-area or hybrid?
Google’s guidelines describe three situations:
- Storefront. Customers come to your address during stated hours. A scrap yard with a public scale, an equipment-rental counter, a pallet yard where buyers load at the gate.
- Service-area business. You go to customers and they don’t come to you. A roll-off company, a mobile welder, a commercial HVAC contractor. You still verify at your real address, but you hide it and list the areas you serve instead. Google allows up to 20 service areas.
- Hybrid. Both happen. A pallet company that delivers and also lets small buyers pick up. Show the address and add service areas.
The test is simple: would a customer who drives to your address during your listed hours be served? If yes, show it.
What you can’t do
These come up often in industrial niches, and all of them break Google’s guidelines:
- Adding keywords to the business name. “Ridgeline Pallet Co.” is a name. “Ridgeline Pallet Co. – Pallets Columbus Ohio” is not, unless that’s really what’s on your sign and paperwork.
- Listing a virtual office or mailbox as a location. If nobody works there, it isn’t eligible.
- Making a profile for every town you serve. One profile per real, staffed location.
- Choosing categories for things you don’t do. Categories should describe your core business, and Google asks for as few as you need.
Profiles that break these rules get suspended, and recovery takes time. It’s not worth it.
Choosing categories
The primary category is one of the strongest signals for which searches you appear in. Pick the most specific category that describes what most customers come to you for. If you mostly recycle pallets and sell a few, a recycling-type category may be a better primary than a supplier category. Add secondary categories only for real, significant services.
When you’re unsure between two categories, search for your main service in your area and see which categories the businesses in the map pack use. That tells you how Google classifies the search.
Hours that match reality
Industrial hours are unusual: early gates, a scale that closes before the office, Saturday mornings only. Set the regular hours to when customers can be served, and use special hours for holidays. Where the profile offers extra hour types (such as delivery or pickup) for your category, use them for the detail.
Then make your website say exactly the same thing. Mismatched hours are one of the most common problems the grader’s NAP check turns up, and they cost reviews.
Photos that prove you’re real
Upload photos of your yard, gate signage, trucks, equipment and people at work. They show buyers that you’re a real operation, and they’re hard for a lead broker to fake. Avoid stock photos entirely.
Linking the profile to your site
The website link on the profile should go to the page that matches it: usually your homepage, or the location page if you have several sites. That page should show the same name, address (if shown on the profile) and phone, in text. The free grader checks that page for exactly this.
Reviews, honestly
Ask every customer the same way, whether you expect them to be happy or not. Don’t offer anything in exchange for a review, don’t write reviews for yourself, and don’t filter out unhappy customers before asking. Besides breaking Google’s rules, buying or incentivising reviews is covered by the FTC’s 2024 rule on consumer reviews.
A short checklist
- The name matches your sign and paperwork exactly.
- The profile type matches where customers meet you.
- The primary category is the most specific accurate one.
- Hours, including holidays, match your website.
- Photos are your own.
- The website link goes to a page with the same NAP in text.
- Only people who currently work for you have access.