Most Google Business Profiles I look at in the Valley have the same shape. Name, address, phone, hours, a category, a handful of photos. Then nothing. The profile was set up once, it works, and nobody has scrolled further down the edit screen since.
I already made the case for why the profile matters and covered the basics in why your Google Business Profile matters more than your website: accurate name, address and phone, a specific category, real photos, a description, services, posts and reviews. If those are not done, start there. This post is about what comes after, the settings further down that most owners never open.
Which Google Business Profile features are most businesses missing?
The ones most profiles leave empty are special and extra hours, attributes like accessibility and payment options, the opening date, extra phone numbers, text or WhatsApp contact, booking and social links, a review QR code, a properly set service area, and the performance report. Each takes a few minutes, and every one of them still exists as of 2026.
That last part matters, because Google has shut down several features in the past two years and plenty of advice online has not caught up.
First, three things Google has turned off
If a guide or a sales rep tells you to set these up, the advice is out of date.
- Business Profile chat and call history ended on July 31, 2024, according to Google. Customers can no longer request quotes through the profile either.
- The questions and answers section is being wound down. Google discontinued the Q&A tools for developers on November 3, 2025, saying it was updating how Q&A works.
- The free one-page websites Google used to build from your profile were turned off in 2024. If your profile's website button still points at one of those, it goes nowhere useful. Point it at your real site.
Special hours and "more hours"
Your regular hours are probably right. Your holiday hours probably are not. Google lets you set special hours for holidays, events, and short closures of up to six days in a row without touching your regular schedule. Google's own advice is to confirm your hours for statutory holidays even when they are the same as usual, so customers know the listing was checked.
Separate from that is "more hours", which lets you list hours for specific things inside your day: takeout, delivery, pickup, drive-through, happy hour. A restaurant open all afternoon whose kitchen closes at eight, or a hardware store whose lumber yard closes early on Saturdays, should be using it. These only show once your regular hours are set.
Attributes
Attributes are the yes-or-no details under "More" in the edit screen: wheelchair-accessible entrance, accessible washroom and parking, Wi-Fi, outdoor seating, payment types, and so on. Google says your business may show up in searches for places with those attributes. Someone searching for a restaurant with a wheelchair-accessible entrance is not going to pick the place that left the question blank.
Which ones you can set depends on your category and location, and Google notes that edits can take anywhere from ten minutes to thirty days to show. Some attributes, like whether a place is popular with locals, come from customers and are not yours to set. Fill in every factual one you can.
Opening date
You can add the month and year your business opened. Google says it may use the opening date to tell searchers how many years you have been operating. In a region where "they've been around forever" carries real weight, a family business that has been open since 1987 should say so. It takes thirty seconds.
It also works in the other direction. A new business can set a future opening date up to a year out, and the profile starts showing 90 days before you open.
More ways to reach you
Several small contact settings sit on the same screen and are routinely empty:
- Up to two phone numbers beyond your main line, per Google's profile editing guide. Useful if the shop and the service truck have different numbers.
- A text message or WhatsApp option, which is Google's replacement for the old chat. Google lists it as available in select regions, so check whether a "Chat" field appears under Contact on yours. If you can only watch one channel, pick the one you will answer.
- Booking, ordering or appointment links, for categories that support them. If you take bookings online anywhere, this saves a customer a step.
- Social media links, one per platform, also listed as select regions for now. Only add accounts you keep up. A Facebook page last touched in 2021 hurts more than it helps.
A review link and a QR code
Asking for reviews is covered in the first post. The tool worth knowing about is that Google will now generate both a review link and a printable QR code for you from the Reviews section. Google suggests putting it on receipts and thank-you emails and displaying it in the shop. For a trade, that could mean the bottom of the invoice. The QR code can only be generated from a computer, not the phone app.
One rule to know before you get creative: Google prohibits offering anything in exchange for reviews. No discount, no draw entry, no free coffee. It counts as fake engagement and can get reviews removed or the profile restricted. Ask, make it easy, and leave it there.
Service area, set properly
If you are a plumber, a landscaper, a cleaner or anyone else who goes to the customer, your profile should list the areas you serve. Google is explicit that if you do not serve customers at your business address, you should remove the address from your profile, which also keeps your home address off Google Maps. Many trades have this backwards: a home address showing publicly and no service area at all.
Be specific about the area. Google asks for it to be as accurate as possible. Listing Ottawa, Kingston and Montreal when you mostly work between Arnprior and Pembroke does not help you. I went through how to match your website's structured data to this in what most local sites get wrong about service-area schema.
The performance report nobody opens
This one is not a setting, but it is the most useful screen in the whole profile. The performance report shows how many people viewed your profile, how many called, asked for directions or clicked through to your site, and the actual search terms people used to find you. That last list updates at the start of each month.
Read the search terms. If people find you by searching "furnace repair Renfrew" and your profile and website barely mention furnaces, that is the next thing to fix. It is free research on what your customers call your services, as opposed to what you call them.
If you serve food or drink
One more feature, narrowly available. Google's posts documentation says featured posts, pulled from your Business Profile posts or from Facebook and Instagram, can show on your profile on mobile, in the spot where reviews usually appear. It is currently limited to single-location food and drink businesses, in English, in a few countries including Canada. For a café, restaurant or brewery, that is a strong reason to keep posting. I wrote more about what visitors in this region look for in websites for Ottawa Valley and Pontiac tourism businesses.
| Feature | Where to find it | Most useful for |
|---|---|---|
| Special hours | Edit profile, Hours | Everyone, before every holiday |
| More hours | Edit profile, Hours | Restaurants, retail with pickup or delivery |
| Attributes | Edit profile, More | Anywhere customers visit in person |
| Opening date | Edit profile | Long-established businesses, new openings |
| Text or WhatsApp | Edit profile, Contact (select regions) | Businesses that answer texts faster than calls |
| Review link and QR code | Reviews, Get more reviews (computer only) | Everyone |
| Service area | Edit profile, Service area | Trades and anyone who travels to the customer |
| Performance report | Performance | Everyone, once a month |
Where to start
Open the edit screen and go top to bottom. Set special hours for the next holiday, fill every attribute that applies, add your opening date, and generate the review QR code. That is half an hour. Then put a reminder in your calendar for the first week of each month to read the search terms.
If you want someone to go over the profile and the website together, the free audit I offer includes local search signals. I will tell you what is missing and what is set up wrong, in that order.