How Do You Optimize a Google Business Profile for Real Estate Agents?
Listen, I’m not exactly Gen AI’s #1 fan when it comes to creative work. Don’t get me started on AI-generated headshots and those listing descriptions that hallucinate an extra bathroom…you know the ones.
But I also work in digital marketing, which means I don’t get to cover my ears and pretend people aren’t changing the way they search.
Buyers are asking ChatGPT questions they used to type directly into Google: “Who’s a good real estate agent in Brooklyn?” or “Which NYC agent works with first-time buyers?” and so on. ChatGPT search can pull information from third-party search providers and other sources across the web, then package what it finds into a very convenient little answer.
This means your online presence needs to tell search engines (and the platforms using search data) exactly who you are, what you do, where you work, and why a buyer should trust you.
And no, your gorgeous Instagram grid cannot carry this entire operation on its back.
Your Google Business Profile is doing more work than you think
A Google Business Profile is the panel that appears in Google Search and Maps when someone searches for your name, your business, or a service in their area. You may remember it by its former name, Google My Business. The rebrand happened, we all survived, and the profile is still free.
Google says local search rankings are mainly based on relevance, distance, and prominence. So, essentially:
Does this business match what the person searched for?
Is this business located in or connected to the relevant area?
Does this business appear established and trustworthy?
A complete Google Business Profile for real estate agents helps answer all three questions. Reviews, links, accurate business information, categories, photos, and an established presence can all contribute to the bigger picture.
Why your five-year-old reviews aren’t helping much
Reviews contribute to your reputation with potential clients and can help your visibility in local Google results. Google specifically says that more reviews and positive ratings can help a business’s local ranking.
Recency matters to the human reading them, too. A buyer who lands on your profile wants to know that you are actively working with clients now. Three glowing reviews from 2019 followed by five years of silence create questions that a busy buyer probably isn’t going to investigate.
You should never script someone’s review or pressure them to cram keywords into it like they’re completing an SEO Mad Lib. You can, however, ask every happy client for an honest review and make the process extremely easy.
My client’s Google Success Story
I created a simple review drip campaign for one of my clients, a mortgage loan officer in Pittsburgh. He went from five Google reviews to 30 in one week. After strengthening his online presence, we also began seeing his name appear in ChatGPT responses for relevant searches about mortgage professionals in his market. Today, he’s consistently receiving leads from people who found him through AI responses to their searches, and these often turn into actual buyers.
How to optimize your Google Business Profile
If your profile currently looks like an abandoned mall, we have work to do.
1. Find and claim your profile
Search your name and business on Google before creating anything new. Your brokerage or a previous marketing person may have already created a profile for you. If one exists, follow Google’s process to claim and verify it. If you cannot find one, create a profile through Google Business Profile.
Please do not accidentally create three versions of yourself across Google. Duplicate profiles make everything messier.
2. Choose the most accurate category
Select “Real Estate Agent” as your primary category if that best describes your business. Add other categories only when they accurately represent services you genuinely provide.
Categories are there to help Google understand your business. This is not the place to cast yourself as an agent, brokerage, real estate school, property management company, appraiser, developer, and spiritual guide to the Manhattan rental market unless all of those things are legally and factually true.
3. Complete every relevant field
Add your correct phone number, website, business hours, services, description, and other applicable information. Google says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to appear in relevant local results.
Keep these details consistent across your profile, website, brokerage page, and other major directories. If four websites list four different phone numbers for you, we have entered digital scavenger-hunt territory.
4. Be specific about the areas you serve
Google allows qualifying service-area businesses to define their service areas using cities, postal codes, and similar geographic areas. Use the available fields accurately and follow Google’s eligibility rules, especially if you do not meet clients at a public office.
Then reinforce your real neighborhood expertise through the rest of your online presence. Your website, Google updates, market reports, videos, and profile description can discuss the places you genuinely know: Park Slope, Long Island City, Williamsburg, the Upper West Side, or wherever you actually work.
“New York real estate” is technically descriptive, but it tells a buyer almost nothing. Specificity gives people a reason to believe you understand the block-by-block reality of their search.
5. Build a real review system
Do not wait until you randomly remember reviews during the quietest week of December. Make the request part of your closing and follow-up process.
Send clients a direct review link and briefly explain why their feedback matters. Follow up once if they forget. Thank them when they take the time to write one, and respond professionally to the reviews you receive.
Google prohibits offering incentives in exchange for reviews, so skip the gift cards, discounts, giveaways, and any other arrangement that could turn an honest review into a paid endorsement.
6. Keep the profile active
Add recent photos, market updates, new listings, open houses, and useful business updates. Treat the profile like a living part of your marketing presence, not a municipal form you completed once under duress.
Your updates do not need the production value of your Instagram content. Clear, current, useful information is the assignment. A quick post about a neighborhood market shift may do more for your local relevance than another perfectly edited Reel of you walking into a kitchen.
Your Instagram still matters, by the way
I’m a social media marketer. I am obviously not about to tell you to delete Instagram, throw your phone into the nearest fountain, and dedicate your life to Google reviews.
Your social platforms help people understand your personality, perspective, taste, and approach. They build familiarity. They give future clients a reason to enjoy following you before they are ready to move.
But discovery is happening across more places now. Someone might first encounter you in a ChatGPT answer, check your Google reviews, browse your website, and then finally arrive on Instagram to see if they actually like you.
All of those pieces should agree on who you are.
AI search has made neglected profiles everyone’s problem
You do not need to become a Gen AI superfan. I certainly haven’t. But you do need to understand how your clients are using it and make sure your business can be accurately discovered through the sources search tools consult.
Because while you are spending 45 minutes choosing the font for an Instagram carousel, another agent with a complete profile and 30 recent reviews may be answering the exact question your future client just asked.
And she hasn’t even opened Instagram yet.
