Filling in the Services list so it matches how people search

Your category is a single label, and no single label describes a business that does eleven different things. The services list is where the other ten go, and on most profiles it is empty.

What it is for

Two jobs. It tells Google specifically what you do, in more detail than a category can carry. And it is displayed on your profile, so a person deciding between you and a competitor can see whether you do the particular thing they need.

The second job is worth taking seriously on its own. A customer looking for a very specific service, pet odour treatment from a carpet cleaner for instance, does not want to ring and ask. Seeing it listed removes a step, and a step removed is a call gained.

Predefined and custom

Google offers a list of predefined services derived from your category. Tick the ones you genuinely do. These are the safest and clearest, because they use vocabulary Google already associates with your category.

You can also add custom services, with a name, an optional description and an optional price. This is where the useful specificity lives, because the predefined list is generic by design.

Do both. Tick every relevant predefined one first, then add the things your business does that the list has no entry for.

The naming mistake

Custom services are a free text field, which is why they attract the same instinct as the business name: cram a search phrase into it.

Emergency Plumber Brisbane 24/7 Blocked Drains Best

Blocked drain clearing

The first is displayed to customers exactly as written, and it looks like what it is. The second is what a person would call the thing. Use the name of the service, not the search you hope to win, and use the customer's word for it rather than the trade's.

• Blocked drain clearing, not drainage remediation.
• Teeth whitening, not tooth bleaching procedures.
• Key cutting, not key duplication services.
• Gutter cleaning, not roof water management.

How many to add

As many as you genuinely do and would happily be called about. That is the only limit worth applying.

Adding services you do not offer produces enquiries you have to turn down, which costs you time and occasionally a review from someone annoyed at being told no after seeing it listed. Adding services you technically could do but would rather not is the same problem in a slower form.

The test for a service is not whether you can do it. It is whether you want the phone to ring about it.

The description field

Each custom service takes a short description, and almost nobody fills it in. It is a good place for the qualifier that makes the enquiry better rather than just more frequent.

Emergency drain clearing

Same day, including weekends. Camera inspection
included where a blockage recurs. Northside suburbs
only, we do not travel south of the river.

That last sentence does more work than the rest of the profile. It filters out enquiries you were going to decline anyway, and it makes everything else more credible by demonstrating you are describing a real business with real limits.

Prices

Optional, and worth adding where you have a number that will not embarrass you later: a fixed callout fee, a from price, a per unit rate.

Leave it blank where a number would be misleading. A from price that nobody has ever actually paid is worse than no price, because the first conversation then begins with a correction.

A twenty minute routine

1. 01Write down every service you sell, in the customer's words, before opening the dashboard.
2. 02Cross off anything you would rather not be called about.
3. 03Tick every predefined service that matches.
4. 04Add the rest as custom services, named plainly.
5. 05Write a one or two line description for the five that make you the most money.
6. 06Check the services on your website match this list. A profile offering something your site does not mention is a small avoidable contradiction.

Services and categories do related but different jobs. Your category decides which searches you are eligible for at all, which makes it the more important of the two to get right first. The description field is the third piece.