Quick answer
If you sell a service in your city, your Google Business Profile comes first, together with a website Google can read. Both are free and keep bringing people in as long as you take care of them. Google Ads, the pay-per-click ads, show up the day your campaign is approved and stop the day the money runs out. Ads come later, once your profile and your page can hold on to the people who arrive, or at the same time, when your calendar needs people this month. Paying for ads doesn't improve your position on the map.
The difference between the profile and the ad
Google Business Profile is the old Google My Business, renamed in 2021. It's the listing that shows up on the map and next to the search results, with your phone number, directions, hours, photos and reviews. Creating and keeping it up is free. The work of making that listing strong, together with your website, so you show up for people searching nearby has a name, local SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization, which in practice means showing up on Google without paying for ads. The local part looks at your city and your neighborhood.
Google Ads is Google's advertising tool. You choose the searches you want to show up for, write the ad, set how much you want to spend per day and pay every time someone clicks. The ad shows up labeled as sponsored, above the results and sometimes right inside the map.
What Google charges
- Business Profile
- Nothing
- Google Ads
- Every click
Where it shows up
- Business Profile
- On the map and in search
- Google Ads
- Above the search results and sometimes on the map, labeled as sponsored
When it starts
- Business Profile
- A few days after verification
- Google Ads
- The day the campaign is approved
When it stops
- Business Profile
- Keeps going as long as you take care of it
- Google Ads
- The day the budget runs out
What decides the position
- Business Profile
- Relevance, distance and prominence
- Google Ads
- What you pay per click and the quality of the ad and the page
| Business Profile | Google Ads | |
|---|---|---|
| What Google charges | Nothing | Every click |
| Where it shows up | On the map and in search | Above the search results and sometimes on the map, labeled as sponsored |
| When it starts | A few days after verification | The day the campaign is approved |
| When it stops | Keeps going as long as you take care of it | The day the budget runs out |
| What decides the position | Relevance, distance and prominence | What you pay per click and the quality of the ad and the page |
Paying for ads doesn't improve your position on the map
Google's Business Profile help says it plainly, there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Google orders the map by three things. Relevance, which is how well your profile matches what was searched. Distance from the person searching to you. And prominence, which is how well known your business is, through reviews, mentions and your website.
There are ads inside the map, yes. Google Ads help lists three formats, promoted pins, search ads on the map and suggested ads on the map, and notes that right now you can't run ads only on Maps. Those ads show up labeled, in a separate slot. When the campaign stops, the promoted pin disappears, and your spot in the free list stays where it was.
Why I start with the profile and the website
For anyone selling a service in their own city, I start with the profile and the website for three practical reasons.
Ads stop when the money runs out
With ads you pay for every click, every day. The day the budget runs out or the card gets declined, the campaign goes offline and the people who came through it stop coming. A complete profile and your website pages keep showing up next month, and the month after. Every new review and every page you write adds to what was already there.
People who click the ad check your profile before reaching out
Most people who see your ad don't know you yet. Before sending a message, they usually search your name, open the map, read the reviews and look at the photos. If they find three reviews and no photos of the place, they go back to the search and contact a competitor, and the click you paid for goes with them.
The click has to land on a page that continues the conversation
The ad takes people to a page. If the ad talks about one service and the page opens talking about another, or if the WhatsApp button is hidden at the bottom, you paid for the click and didn't get the message. From what I studied about ads, that's the first thing to check when clicks come in and messages don't. What that page needs is in What a professional website needs, and choosing between a single page and a website with several is in Landing page or website.
How much Google Ads costs
Google Ads has no fixed price. You set an average daily budget and pay per click, and the cost of a click changes with the search, the area and how many competitors are bidding on the same term. Google Ads help points out two things that catch beginners. On a busy day, a campaign can spend up to twice the daily budget. And over a month, spend stays below 30.4 times the average daily budget.
With a round number as an example, a budget of $20.00 a day can spend up to $40.00 on a busy day, and the month closes below $608.00. The cost of a click changes from service to service and from neighborhood to neighborhood. To get an idea before spending, Keyword Planner, inside Google Ads, shows the price range for searches in your area.
When ads make sense right from the start
Sometimes waiting for free results costs more than paying for the click. Ads show up for people who are searching for the service right then, and they work best when the decision is quick. Even so, the profile and the page go live together with the ads.
- Urgent services, like an emergency vet. People decide in minutes and contact whoever shows up first
- A newly opened business, with an empty calendar and a profile that has no reviews yet
- A new service you want to test before writing a page and collecting reviews for it
- A highly competitive search, where your website takes months to climb and you need people this month
What to check before turning on your first campaign
- A complete Business Profile, with the right category, your services, real photos and recent reviews
- A page just for the advertised service, with the same name that appears in the ad
- The WhatsApp button on the first screen on mobile
- Someone answering messages within the hour
- A way to count how many people reached out through the ad and how many booked
Healthcare has stricter rules on Google Ads
In the ad training I studied, healthcare sits at the top of the list of the hardest niches to advertise on Google, with medicine, psychology, psychiatry and pediatrics named one by one. Part of that comes from Google's own rules.
- The [Healthcare and medicines](https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/176031?hl=en) policy requires Google certification to advertise services that prescribe or sell prescription drugs, which covers part of telemedicine, and doesn't allow ads for experimental treatments
- Health is on the list of [sensitive categories](https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/143465?hl=en) for personalized advertising. Advertisers in those categories can't pick their audience with their own data, like a customer list
On top of Google's rules come the rules of your licensing board, which limit what you can promise and show in advertising. Before any ad, it's worth reading your board's full document.
If you work in healthcare, the path I recommend is a complete profile and one page for each treatment, written with the words people type. Many people search for the symptom before they know which specialty to look for, and a page explaining the symptom shows up for that search without depending on any ad approval.
How to show up on Google without paying
Without ads, you show up on Google through the map and through the website results, and the work on both is SEO.
- Create or claim your Business Profile with your own Google account, using the name exactly as it appears on your sign
- Choose the most specific primary category available and add each service with the name people type
- Upload real photos of the place, the team and the work
- Ask every client for a review and reply to all of them
- Have a website with one page per service, with the service and the city in the title
- Add your website to Search Console, Google's free tool for website owners
The step by step for each part is in How to show up on Google. What makes a profile land among the top three on the map is in How to rank first on Google Maps.
The profile starts showing up a few days after verification. A new website page takes days to weeks to be found, and months to climb in a competitive search. It's slower than ads, and it keeps showing up when you stop paying.
The order I follow
1
- What to do
- Complete Business Profile
- Why
- It's free, it shows up on the map and it's what people check before reaching out
2
- What to do
- Reviews coming in every month
- Why
- Prominence goes up, and the profile holds on to people who arrive from anywhere
3
- What to do
- Website or landing page with the WhatsApp button
- Why
- It gives Google something to read and gives the ad a place to send people
4
- What to do
- WhatsApp answered quickly
- Why
- An unanswered message is a lost person, whether it came from the profile or the ad
5
- What to do
- Ads, if your calendar needs them
- Why
- With the first four in place, each paid click has a better chance of turning into a message
| Step | What to do | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Complete Business Profile | It's free, it shows up on the map and it's what people check before reaching out |
| 2 | Reviews coming in every month | Prominence goes up, and the profile holds on to people who arrive from anywhere |
| 3 | Website or landing page with the WhatsApp button | It gives Google something to read and gives the ad a place to send people |
| 4 | WhatsApp answered quickly | An unanswered message is a lost person, whether it came from the profile or the ad |
| 5 | Ads, if your calendar needs them | With the first four in place, each paid click has a better chance of turning into a message |
If you need people this month, you can turn on ads together with step 1, without skipping the other three.
The mistakes I see most
- Turning on ads with a half-finished profile, and paying for the click of someone who gives up after seeing three reviews
- Thinking ads lift your profile on the map. The free position can't be bought
- Abandoning the profile while ads are running, and being left with nothing the day the campaign stops
- Looking only at the number of clicks, without counting how many people reached out and how many booked
- Advertising healthcare without reading your board's rules, and having the ad rejected or the advertising questioned
To find out where you stand, search for your service and your neighborhood on your phone, the way someone who doesn't know you yet would. If you're not among the top three on the map, or you show up with few reviews and old photos, start with the profile before paying for your first click.
Questions
Written by
Chris Lopreto
I'm Chris Lopreto. I started out in design, doing brand identity and websites for health and service businesses, and I saw that a website alone didn't make clients reach out.
Today I look at the whole path, from Google to WhatsApp, and I use AI and automation across the whole operation. That's why I handle the project from the action plan to the live website, without passing it from hand to hand.
