Google Business Profile for San Diego solar companies.

A solar company’s Google Business Profile is the listing Google shows in the map pack and in Maps when someone searches for an installer, and a homeowner comparing a short list reads it slowly. The basics of a Google Business Profile are the same in every trade. Solar changes how the listing gets used.

The profile is a comparison sheet

Nobody needs panels tonight. A plumber’s profile has to win a phone call within a minute. Yours gets opened beside two or three others, and often again a week later, after a salesperson has visited or a quote has arrived. Details that get skimmed in other trades get read here: the description, who replies to reviews, and what reviews from recent customers say happened after the system was switched on.

Categories and services beyond “solar”

Google offers more than one solar-related category, and it adds and renames them, so I check the current list and test the choice of category instead of assuming it. The primary category should describe the main thing you’re paid to do, and the services list should carry everything else.

Below the category, list each kind of work separately: new installations, battery storage, a battery added to an existing system, panels removed and reinstalled for a roof replacement, and repairs to systems another company installed, if you take that work. A homeowner who already has panels is looking for something different from one who is starting out, and a profile that only says “solar” speaks to neither.

Service areas across a spread-out county

A company based in Kearny Mesa can install in Fallbrook and Alpine and still be missing from the map there. Closeness to the person searching is one of the things Google ranks map results on, and adding more cities to your service area settings does little to change that. A rank grid shows where your profile stops appearing, which tells me the cities where a page on your website has to do the job the map won’t.

National installers on the same map

National solar companies appear in the local map pack through profiles for their regional offices, and some carry a large number of reviews gathered by a big sales operation. Nothing I do changes that, and I’d be wary of anyone who says otherwise.

A local profile can show what a national one usually can’t. Photos of your own crews on roofs in Poway or Rancho Bernardo are one example, and review replies written by someone who remembers the job are another. If the people who sell the system also install and service it, the description should say so.

Photos and facts that go stale

The solar offer keeps changing, so a post or description that mentions an incentive, or savings under the utility’s current billing rules, will be wrong after the next rule change, and a careful buyer will notice. I keep time-sensitive claims out of the profile and on website pages that someone is responsible for updating. Photos age better. Real installations labeled by city and roof type (concrete tile, composition shingle, flat roof) tell a homeowner with a tile roof in Carlsbad that you have worked on a house like theirs.