Key facts
- Google suspends or removes profiles for a keyword-stuffed business name, the wrong primary category, or a duplicate listing at the same address, and reinstatement after a suspension can take weeks with no guaranteed outcome.
- A service-area business, one that travels to the customer rather than the customer coming to a storefront, can hide its street address, but only if the listed service area is set up correctly and the business qualifies under Google's rules.
- Local map pack results lean on category, proximity, and profile completeness, so a listing with stale hours, no recent photos, and unanswered questions competes worse than a rival's listing that gets touched every week.
- Business Profile Manager lets one account run many locations, but a duplicate listing created years ago by a directory sync, a past employee, or an old franchise owner has to be found and merged or suppressed, not just left alone.
- Posting an update, answering a question, or uploading a photo costs nothing from Google itself, so any per-post fee in a vendor's price is for the vendor's labor, not a fee Google charges anyone.
What the program covers, and what it does not
Spell out the recurring work, not just the one-time setup. In scope: keeping the category, hours, holiday hours, and service area current, publishing photos and posts on a set schedule, answering the Q&A section before a competitor answers it for you, and finding and merging or suppressing duplicate listings across your locations.
Also in scope: acting fast if a profile is suspended, including preparing the reinstatement request and the documentation Google asks for. Out of scope unless you say otherwise: writing and sending review requests, which belongs in a separate review management scope, and any change to the business name field that adds a service or city to chase keywords, since that alone can trigger a suspension.
If you run more than one location, require a per-location task list rather than one line that says "manage all locations", which lets a vendor neglect the smaller ones.
What the vendor must be given
Manager-level access to Business Profile Manager for every location in scope, not owner access and not a login the vendor creates for you that only they control. A current list of hours, holiday closures, and any service area changes planned for the next quarter, so the vendor is not always working from stale information.
A folder of current, usable photos, since a vendor cannot post interior and exterior shots that do not exist, and a short answer bank for the Q&A section covering the five questions your team gets asked most. Name one person on your side who can approve a reinstatement request within 24 hours, because Google's suspension clock does not wait for a committee.
Ownership and exit clauses
The profile belongs to your business, and the contract should say so directly: the vendor is added as a manager, never made the owner, and never allowed to be the only person with access. If a vendor already owns your profile from a past engagement, transferring primary ownership back to you is a condition of signing, not an afterthought for later.
On exit, require removal of the vendor's manager access within a stated number of days, a handover of any photo library and post history stored outside Google's own system, and written confirmation that no secondary listing was created under the vendor's own account that would outlive the contract.
Milestones and acceptance tests
A full audit of every location's category, hours, service area, and duplicate-listing status within the first two weeks. Photo and post cadence live within 30 days, at an agreed frequency such as weekly posts and monthly photo refreshes. Q&A monitored and answered within an agreed response window, for example two business days.
Acceptance test: at 60 days, every location should show a completed profile with no open duplicate, an answered Q&A section, and a documented process for what happens the moment Google flags a listing, including who gets notified and how fast. Ask for a sample of that notification, not just a description of it.
How to score competing proposals
Weight bidders on the parts of this job that actually protect the listing, not just on price.
Audit quality and duplicate-listing plan, 25 percent.
Posting and photo cadence, and whether the plan is location-specific, 20 percent.
Response time for Q&A and for a suspension notice, 25 percent.
Price and contract length, 20 percent.
Reporting format and how often you receive it, 10 percent.
Publish these weights inside the RFP itself so every bidder knows what wins before they price the work.
Questions to make every bidder answer
Require written answers, not a verbal pitch.
How do you handle service area setup for a business with no public storefront?
What is your reinstatement process if a profile is suspended, and how many suspensions have you handled in the last year?
Who holds owner-level access to my profile once we sign, and what does the transfer look like on exit?
How do you find and resolve duplicate listings across multiple locations?
What, specifically, do you charge per post, per photo, or per location, and does the price change once we add a location?
Can you show a sample Q&A answer and a sample post from an existing client, with names removed?
Related questions
Adding a keyword or city to the business name field violates Google's guidelines unless that text is genuinely part of the registered name, and it is a common reason profiles get suspended. A vendor who suggests this as a ranking shortcut is proposing something Google actively looks for and penalizes.
It varies and Google does not publish a timeline, but weeks is common, and there is no guaranteed outcome even with a complete reinstatement request. This is why the milestones section of this pack asks for a documented, tested process rather than a promise, and why fast access to an approval contact on your side matters.
Only if customers visit you at that address. A genuine service-area business, one that goes to the customer, can hide the address and list its service area instead, but it has to qualify under Google's own rules and be set up correctly, which is worth confirming during the audit milestone in this pack.
Duplicate listings usually come from an old directory sync, a previous owner or manager creating a second profile, or a franchise system generating one automatically. They compete against your real listing for the same searches and need to be found and merged or suppressed, which is why this pack scopes that as ongoing work, not a one-time fix.
No, posting updates, answering questions, and uploading photos are free features inside the platform. Any per-post or per-photo charge in a proposal is the vendor billing for their time, which is reasonable, but it should be itemized so you can see what the labor costs versus what is simply free to do yourself.
SearchPod is a vendor for this kind of work and would answer this RFP; the acceptance tests here are the ones we agree to.
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