Google Business Profile optimisation: 3 tips for cafés

Optimising a café’s Google Business Profile comes down to three things: accurate primary and secondary categories, fresh real photos and an uploaded menu, and regular posts. Almost everyone is rated above 4.5 stars, so stars don’t decide. The winner is the one whose profile answers more precisely what the guest types in.

Why does the café next door show up first on Maps?

Because Google finds its profile a better match for the search, or it’s better known. Google ranks local results by relevance, distance and prominence. You can’t change distance, but you can work on relevance, and that’s what this article is about.

Relevance means how well your profile matches what the guest typed. It matters so much because most guests don’t search for your name. In the data of 13 hospitality venues we manage (October 2025 – September 2026, 747,567 impressions), 86% of searches were for a category, a neighbourhood or another place’s name. When someone types “brunch”, Google looks for a profile it knows serves brunch.

Meanwhile, stars barely set anyone apart. Of the 255 Hungarian cafés in our sample (autumn 2026), 90% are rated 4.5 stars or higher. If everyone is on 4.6, both guests and Google look for the difference elsewhere.

Tip 1: Which category should you choose?

The primary category is the one that describes your café most precisely; the secondary ones say what else you are. On managing categories, Google says the categories you choose affect which searches you can appear for.

1. Primary category: the most accurate one from Google’s list. For a café this is usually café itself; for a roaster where people can also drink on site, roaster is an option.
2. Secondary categories: what guests actually come to you for. If you serve breakfast, the breakfast category. If you do weekend brunch, the brunch category. If you bake pastries, the bakery or patisserie category, if that’s genuinely what you are. You pick the exact names from Google’s list when you edit the profile.
3. Don’t add anything that isn’t true. If you don’t have a kitchen, don’t pick the restaurant category. A guest who looks for lunch and finds coffee won’t come back.

A quick test: type the 3–4 words you want to be found for into Maps (“coffee”, “brunch”, “breakfast”, “specialty coffee”), and look at the categories of whoever shows up before you.

Tip 2: What photos and what menu do you need?

Real, fresh photos and the full menu on the profile. Guests decide from the photos what it’s like to sit inside and what they’ll get. From the menu, whether it’s worth the walk.

• The interior as it looks now. In daylight, with or without people, but not with empty, year-old shots taken before you opened.
• The product. The cappuccino, the pastry, the brunch plate: what people will come for. Google’s photo tips also say well-lit, real business photos work best.
• A menu with prices. If they can see on the profile what they’ll get and for how much, they don’t have to hunt through your website or Instagram.
• Attributes. Wi-Fi, power sockets, terrace, dog-friendly, vegan options, lactose-free milk. People who care about these filter by them, and use them to choose between two places.

Regularity beats volume here. A profile where the latest photo is from last week looks like a living place. Where it’s two years old, the guest wonders whether you’re still open.

Tip 3: Is it worth writing posts on your Business Profile?

Yes, when you have something to say: a new seasonal drink, a new roast, an event, changed opening hours. Business Profile posts appear on your profile, where guests can see the place is alive.

Google doesn’t say posts improve your ranking, so we don’t claim it either. What we see: a post gives the guest a fresh reason to choose you, and makes your profile look current.

What happened to Questions and answers? At the end of 2025 Google discontinued the Business Profile Questions and answers (Q&A) feature, and is replacing it with an AI-based “ask Maps” feature that is only available in a few countries so far. It builds its answers from your profile content and your reviews. So right now the best place to answer common questions (plant milk? OK to work on a laptop? where to park?) is your description, your attributes and your posts.

What should you check on the café next door’s profile?

Open your profile side by side with the profile of the café that shows up before you on Maps. Tick through:

Start where they get a tick and you don’t. You won’t turn the review count around in a week, but you can do the rest.

Where does free optimisation end?

Where distance begins. A well-set-up profile helps with people searching near you, but someone two streets away, or someone who types another café’s name, gets shown the café closer to them. According to Google, you can’t buy a better free ranking.

One of our specialty café clients described where they started: “We had a strong base of regulars, but we struggled to grow beyond it. We couldn’t see how to turn people searching on Google Maps into real guests.” A large part of their ad money was going to brand campaigns: searches where guests typed their name, so they would have found them anyway. We moved that spend to searches that bring new guests. Over eight months of Maps ads, 1,166 people requested directions to them (real data from the ad account), and in the owner’s words: “new faces show up in the quiet afternoons”.

So the profile is the foundation, and with this article you can sort it out yourself. Getting found beyond your current area is what ads are for. We do that with a guarantee. If you first want to understand why setting the profile up once isn’t enough, read this article.

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