Google Business Profile for Pubs: The Complete Setup Guide
Your Google Business Profile is the most important digital asset your pub has, and it is free. It is what appears when someone searches your pub by name, and it is what appears in the map results when someone searches "pub near me" at half past six on a Friday.
It matters more than your Facebook page and considerably more than your Instagram. It is also the thing most landlords set up once, years ago, and have not looked at since.
This guide covers claiming it, filling it in properly, and the handful of things that actually move you up the map results.
Why It Outranks Everything Else You Could Do
When someone decides where to drink or eat, the sequence is usually: search on a phone, look at the map, look at the star rating, look at a photo or two, check you are open, go.
Facebook does not appear anywhere in that sequence. Your website barely does. The whole decision happens inside Google, and your Business Profile is your entry.
Across 884 pubs we audited in 23 UK brewery estates, the Website and Discoverability pillar averaged 9.01 out of 15. Social Presence averaged 9.40 out of 15. These are the two pillars a Business Profile most directly affects, and both sit around 60% of what is achievable with no money spent at all.
The encouraging part of the same dataset: Review Reputation was by far the strongest pillar, averaging 11.93 out of 15, roughly 80% of maximum. Pubs are well liked. Customers rate them highly. The problem is not that people dislike British pubs. It is that a well-liked pub with a half-finished Google listing loses the search to a worse pub with a complete one.
Step One: Claim It
Your pub almost certainly already has a profile, whether you made one or not. Google generates listings from other data sources, so there may be one sitting there with wrong hours and a photograph somebody took in 2017.
Search your pub's name in Google Maps. If the listing says "Claim this business" or "Own this business?", it is unclaimed and anyone could claim it. Do that first.
Verification is usually by postcard to the pub, sometimes by phone or video. The postcard takes a few days. Nothing else on this list works until the profile is yours.
If it says someone else has claimed it and you do not know who, that is worth chasing. It is occasionally a previous tenant, occasionally the brewery, and occasionally a marketing company somebody signed up with years ago.
Step Two: Fill In the Things That Change Behaviour
Not all fields matter equally. These are the ones that change whether somebody walks through the door.
Opening hours, including the exceptions. This is the single most damaging field to get wrong. Someone drives over on a bank holiday, finds you shut, and leaves a one star review about it. Set your regular hours, then set holiday hours in advance every time. Christmas, New Year, Easter, bank holidays. Google prompts you and most people ignore the prompt.
Category. Primary category should be "Pub" or "Bar". If you serve substantial food, add "Gastropub" or "Restaurant" as a secondary rather than replacing the primary. The primary category does most of the work in deciding which searches you appear in.
Attributes. Dog friendly. Beer garden. Live music. Sunday roast. Wheelchair accessible. Real ale. These are filters people actually use, and an unticked box means you are excluded from that search entirely. This takes ten minutes and is probably the highest return ten minutes in this whole guide.
Photos. More on these below, because they deserve their own section.
The description. 750 characters. Write it for somebody who has never been. What kind of pub is this, what do you do well, what is the one thing worth coming for. Not "we pride ourselves on excellent customer service", which describes nothing.
Phone number and website. Obvious, frequently wrong, worth checking. If you have no website, link your Facebook page rather than leaving it blank.
Step Three: Photos, Properly
Photos are the difference between a listing people scroll past and one they tap.
Upload at least fifteen to twenty yourself. The ones that matter, roughly in order: the exterior in daylight so people recognise it when they arrive, the bar, the main room with people in it, food if you serve it, the garden if you have one, and a well pulled pint.
Take them on a phone, in landscape, in daylight where possible. They do not need to be professional. They need to be honest and current. A slightly ordinary photo of your actual pub beats a beautiful photo of a pub that no longer looks like that.
Add a few every couple of months. Fresh photos are a signal that the business is active, and customer photos will accumulate whether you like them or not. If the only pictures on your listing are ones customers took, the impression is of a pub that is not paying attention.
Step Four: Reviews, and Replying to Them
Reviews on your Business Profile carry more weight than reviews anywhere else, because they sit directly in the decision.
Ask for them. The best moment is when somebody says something nice at the bar. "That's kind of you, would you mind putting that on Google?" works. A card on the table with a QR code works. Asking every single customer does not, and Google discourages incentivising reviews.
Reply to them. All of them, ideally, but especially the bad ones. Across the 884 pubs, the Responsiveness pillar averaged 6.14 out of 15, which is the second weakest of the seven. Replying costs nothing and almost nobody does it consistently.
A reply to a negative review is not written for the person who complained. It is written for the next person reading, who will decide whether the complaint was a fair reflection or a bad night. Brief, not defensive, and offer to sort it privately. We have written the longer version of this in how to respond to negative reviews.
If you want to build volume from a standing start, getting your first 500 reviews covers the practical routine.
What Actually Moves You Up the Map Results
Three things, in rough order of influence.
Proximity. How close you are to the person searching. You cannot change this, and it is the single biggest factor. Nobody in the next town is going to see you in their map results however good your listing is. Anyone worrying about ranking across a whole county is worrying about the wrong thing.
Relevance. How well your profile matches what was searched. This is the categories and attributes doing their work. "Dog friendly pub" only finds you if the box is ticked.
Prominence. Review count, review scores, and how complete and active the profile is. This is the part you build slowly.
The practical version: you cannot move your pub, so fill in everything and keep collecting reviews.
Posts, Q&A, and the Features Nobody Uses
Google Posts appear on your listing and expire after a week. Use them for what is on: the quiz, the guest ale, the Sunday roast, the band on Saturday. Two a week is plenty. Very few pubs bother, which is exactly why it is worth doing.
Questions and answers is a public section on your listing that anyone can post to, including people who have never been. Check it. You can ask and answer your own questions, and doing so is legitimate: "Do you take bookings?", "Is there parking?", "Are dogs allowed inside or just the garden?"
Messaging lets people message you directly. Only turn it on if somebody will actually check it, because a slow reply is visible and worse than no messaging at all.
A Twenty Minute Checklist
If you do nothing else from this page, do this:
Claim the profile if it is unclaimed. Check your opening hours are right and add the next bank holiday. Set the primary category to Pub or Bar. Tick every attribute that applies to you. Upload ten photos from your phone. Reply to your three most recent reviews, starting with the worst one.
That is most of the value, and it is genuinely about twenty minutes.
To see how the rest of your digital presence is doing, the audit checklist scores your pub on the same seven pillars we used across the 884, and the Pub Health Index methodology explains how the scoring works.
Further reading:
- The Complete Pub Social Media Guide for Landlords: everything else, free
- How to Respond to Negative Reviews: the reply that is written for the next reader
- Getting Your First 500 Google Reviews: building volume from nothing
- The Pub Health Index: how we score digital presence
Tom Fairhall is the founder of Pub Post Pro. Pillar averages cited here come from a digital health audit of 884 pubs across 23 independent UK brewery estates, conducted in early 2026.