Google Business Profile for Real Estate Agents

A Google Business Profile is the free listing that can show your brokerage on Google Maps and in local search when someone looks up an agent or a neighbourhood. Set the name to the name you are actually registered under. Pick the category Real estate agent. Use one phone number and one city, matching your website. Ask recent clients for reviews without paying them or filtering out the unhappy ones. That is the whole useful version. Keyword-stuffed names, fake suite numbers, and review gating are how profiles get suspended.

This is a setup guide for Ontario registrants. Google's guidelines are the product rules. RECO's advertising rules still apply to anything the profile says about you.

What belongs in the name, the category, and the address?

The business name is not a slogan and not a search phrase. "Jane Patel, Salesperson, Example Realty" can be a real name. "Jane Patel Best Condo Realtor Downtown Toronto" is a stuffed name, and Google's guidelines say to use the real-world name. If the stuffed version is not on your registration, your sign, and your site, do not put it in the profile. RECO wants the public to know which brokerage stands behind the ad. The profile is an ad.

Primary category: Real estate agent. Add a second category only for work you do. Property management, if you do not manage properties, is a lie in a dropdown.

Address is where it gets agents in trouble. Google wants a location you serve customers from, during stated hours, if you display an address. A desk you visit once a month is a weak storefront. Many agents should use a service-area business: hide the address, set the cities and neighbourhoods they actually cover, and stop drawing a map of the entire province. A service area you cannot reach in a normal day trains the wrong leads and annoys Google's review of the listing.

One profile per real business. A team can have a profile when the team is a real, distinct operation your broker recognizes. Five salespeople verifying the same branch as five storefronts is the pattern that gets the branch suspended. Ask the broker of record before anyone clicks verify.

The phone number should match the site, the email signature, and the sign. Inconsistent NAP, name-address-phone, is the boring reason a profile does not show. Fix the inconsistency before you buy a single ad.

What should the description and the posts say?

Write the description as a plain sentence a neighbour could read. Who you are, which brokerage, which area, what you actually help with. The first line does the work. "I help people buy and sell homes in the west end of Toronto, with Example Realty" beats a paragraph of "dream home" and "VIP."

Do not paste a promise you would not put on a billboard. "Guaranteed sale" and "top 1%" need the same proof RECO advertising rules require anywhere else. The profile does not create a loophole.

Posts and photos are optional and they expire in attention if not in the product. A photo of a listing you have the right to market, with a link to that listing, is useful. A stock skyline is not. Listing photos you do not own, including another brokerage's expired-listing images, do not go here. That limit is the same one in working expired listings.

Products, services, and "open house" event posts are fine when the event is real and the time is right. An open house that already happened, left up for a month, is how strangers lose trust.

How do reviews work without getting the profile banned?

You may ask a client for a review after a closing. Do it once, in your own words, with the direct review link. You may not:

• Pay, discount, or gift a review
• Ask only the people you think will be positive, while sending the unhappy ones somewhere else. That filtering is review gating
• Write a review for yourself, or have your assistant write them from personal accounts you control
• Offer to edit what they write

Reply to the review you do not like. Calm, short, no private facts about their deal, and an offer to continue offline. A fight in the replies is worse than the star.

Reviews are not the same as testimonials you edit on your own site. Google's are theirs. Your site's are yours, and they still cannot be invented. The testimonial standard you would use in a newsletter applies here too.

How does this connect to the rest of your marketing?

The profile sends people to a page. That page should answer a real question, not only say "call me." A buyer who searched "closing costs Toronto" and lands on a wall of listings will bounce. A clear article, such as closing costs when buying in Ontario, is a better target for that search than your homepage. Your own site can hold those answers. The profile does not need to repeat them.

Social posting is a different channel with a different clock. The monthly plan is in the real estate marketing calendar. Do not copy every Instagram caption into a Google post. Maps readers are deciding whether to call. Give them the name, the area, and a reason the number works.

Measure one thing for the first 90 days: calls and direction requests from the profile, not impressions. If the name, the category, and the phone are right, and the reviews are real, the listing has done its job. More posts will not fix a stuffed name.

What do you change when the brokerage, the city, or the phone number changes?

A profile is an advertisement that stays up after you have forgotten it. The week you change brokerages, change the name line, the brokerage, and the phone. A profile that still shows last year's brokerage is telling the public the wrong firm stands behind you. RECO's advertising rules care about that. Google's guidelines care that the name matches the real world, the sign, and the site. Both fail on the same stale listing.

Check it on a 90-day rhythm, not when a lead complains.

Claim the profile that is actually yours so a stranger is not the one confirming edits. Do not open a second profile for the same practice to "cover more of the map." One real business, one profile. Five agents verifying the same branch as five storefronts is a pattern that gets branches suspended. A team profile is appropriate when the team is a real operation your broker of record recognizes, not when you want a second pin.

If the profile has questions from the public, answer as the business, in the same plain sentence as the description. Do not invent a sale price, a guarantee, or a ranking there. Those sentences are advertising. They need the same proof they would need on a postcard.

Search your name the way a stranger would, in a private window, on a phone. Read the name, the category, the phone, and the first line of the description. If any of those four is wrong, fix that before you write another post. Posts do not repair a wrong name. A profile set up this way is citable: real registered name, category Real estate agent, one matching phone, reviews that were asked for once and never bought.

When you leave a brokerage, ask who keeps the login. A profile tied to a branch address may belong to the brokerage, not to you. Taking it with you, or leaving your personal number on their pin, both create a mess. Agree it in writing on the way out. Then search your own name in a private window and read what a stranger sees. That search is the audit. The dashboard is only what you hope they see.

The profile should read like the sign on the office door. Same name. Same phone. No extra adjectives you added for Google.

Set it up once, claim it so a stranger cannot, and review it when you change brokerages. A profile that still shows last year's brokerage is an advertising error, not a technicality.