How to Set Up a Google Business Profile for Your Vacation Rental

A Google Business Profile puts your vacation rental on Google Maps and in the local pack, the little map-and-listings box that sits at the top of the results before anything else loads. It's free. It takes about an hour the first time. And done properly, it sends enquiries to a booking channel you actually control instead of handing them to Airbnb.

Here's the quick version if you're in a hurry. Go to business.google.com, add your business, pick "Vacation home rental" as the category, enter your address (or a service area if you'd rather not show it), add your phone number and your direct booking website, then verify. Verification is usually a video these days, sometimes a postcard. Once you're verified, your listing goes live on Search and Maps.

That's the whole thing. But there's a catch nobody wants to talk about, and if you get it wrong Google can suspend your profile weeks after you've set it up. So let's do this properly.

Wait, are vacation rentals even allowed on Google Business Profile?

This is the question the other guides skate past, and it's the one that gets hosts into trouble.

Google's own guidelines say a business qualifies for a profile if it makes in-person contact with customers during stated hours. Then, buried in the same rules, Google explicitly excludes "properties for rent, such as vacation homes or model homes." Read literally, that rules you out.

So how are there thousands of vacation rentals on Google Maps right now?

Because there's a grey area, and most hosts live in it. Google's line is really aimed at empty flats and show homes with no staff and no operation behind them. If you run an actual lodging business, take bookings, answer messages, meet or remotely check in guests, and can be contacted during set hours, you look a lot more like a serviced accommodation than an empty house. Plenty of hosts set up under categories like "Vacation home rental," "Serviced accommodation," "Cottage" or "Bed & breakfast" and never hear a word from Google.

The risk is real but manageable. Profiles do get suspended, usually when something trips Google's radar: a category that screams "empty rental," a virtual office address, or a support ticket that puts a human reviewer on your account. I've seen hosts lose a profile they'd spent months building reviews on. Recovering it is slow and annoying.

Two things keep you on the right side of the line. First, present yourself as a hospitality business, not a house listing. A named property ("The Cedar Ridge Cabin"), a real contact number, set contact hours, and a proper category. Second, don't lie about your address. A fake or shared address is the fastest way to get pulled. If you don't want your street visible, use the service-area option Google gives you rather than inventing something.

If you manage several properties, each one is a separate business at a separate address. Don't try to cram five cabins into one profile. Google treats each as its own listing, and honestly that's better for you anyway, since each ranks for its own location.

Google Business Profile vs Google Vacation Rentals: not the same thing

Quick detour, because hosts mix these up constantly and it changes what you're setting up.

A Google Business Profile is the local business listing. It shows your property on Maps and in the local pack when someone searches "vacation rental in [town]" or types your property name directly. That's what this guide covers, and it's free and available to you today.

Google Vacation Rentals is a separate product inside Google's travel results, the one that looks like a metasearch grid of properties with nightly rates and "Check availability" buttons. You generally can't add a single property to that by hand. It pulls from connected property managers, channel managers and booking platforms. If your booking system or direct site feeds into it, great, but that's a different setup, and we've covered getting a direct site into that flow separately in our guide on how to get direct bookings for your vacation rental.

For now: Business Profile first. It's the piece you can do yourself in an afternoon.

How to set up your Google Business Profile, step by step

Roughly 40 minutes of actual work, spread over a couple of weeks because verification takes time to clear.

Step 1: Go to business.google.com and sign in. Use a Google account you'll keep. If you've got a business Gmail, use that rather than a personal one you might lose access to. What goes wrong here: people set up under an account a co-host controls, then can't get back in when that person leaves.

Step 2: Add your business and name it well. Enter the property's name, not a generic label. "The Blue Cove Beach House" beats "Beach Rental Destin" because it matches how guests remember and search for a distinctive place, and a distinctive name is far easier to rank. Resist the urge to stuff keywords into the name (like "Destin Beachfront Vacation Rental Pet Friendly Pool"). Google penalises that, and it looks like spam to guests too.

Step 3: Choose your category carefully. Set "Vacation home rental" as your primary category. This one field does more for your ranking than almost anything else, because Google matches it directly against searches. Add a secondary category or two if they genuinely fit, like "Cottage," "Holiday apartment" or "Serviced accommodation." Don't pile on nine of them. Extra categories dilute the primary one, and the primary is what you actually want to rank for.

Step 4: Add your location, or a service area. Enter the property address if you're comfortable with it showing on Maps. This earns you a map pin, which is the strongest local-search signal there is. If the idea of your exact address being public bothers you, choose "I deliver goods and services to my customers" and set a service area by town or postcode instead. You'll still show up in local searches, just without a pin on the door. Most hosts take the pin. What goes wrong: using a PO box or your accountant's address. Google cross-checks, and a mismatch is a common suspension trigger.

Step 5: Add contact details and your website. Put a phone number guests can actually reach. Then, in the website field, this is the important bit, put your direct booking site, not your Airbnb URL. This single field decides where every click from Google lands. Send it to a channel you own and you keep the guest relationship and the fee. Send it to an OTA and you've done Google's work for Airbnb's benefit. If you don't have a direct site yet, this is the moment it starts paying for itself, and we've made the case in detail in why every Airbnb host needs a direct booking website.

Step 6: Verify. Google will ask you to prove the business is real. These days that's usually a short video: you film the property, the surroundings and something showing you have access, like unlocking the door or your booking dashboard. Sometimes it's still the old postcard with a code, which can take up to two weeks to arrive. Occasionally it's phone or email. You don't get to choose, Google decides based on the category and address. Your listing stays invisible until the code or video clears, so do this bit as soon as you can.

Once you're verified, the profile is live. Now the real work starts, which is making it rank.

Optimising the profile so it actually shows up

A verified but bare profile sits on page two where nobody looks. Filling it out is what moves you into the local pack. The instinct is the same one you use tuning an OTA page, and most of it carries over from how to optimise your Airbnb listing for more bookings.

Write the description like a listing, not a brochure. You get 750 characters. Use the property name, the town and region, the type of place, how many it sleeps, and two or three features people actually search for. Work in "book direct" naturally, because fee-aware travellers search for exactly that. Something like: "The Blue Cove Beach House is a three-bedroom oceanfront rental in Destin, Florida. Sleeps eight, private pool, gulf views from every room. Book direct with no guest service fees." Notice there's no keyword stuffing and no marketing fluff. It reads like a human wrote it, because Google's getting better at spotting when one didn't.

Load the attributes. Google lets you tick attributes and list services: self check-in, pet friendly, pool, hot tub, free WiFi, fully equipped kitchen. Add every one that's true. These are the filters guests use, and each accurate tag is another query you can appear for.

Photos do the heavy lifting. Businesses with more photos get more clicks and more direction requests, full stop. Upload at least 20: exterior, every room, outdoor space, the view, and a few of the local area so the listing feels placed. Use your real photos, never stock. If your shots are letting you down, the same principles that sell an Airbnb listing apply here, and we've broken them down in airbnb photography tips for listing photos that get bookings.

Set contact hours, not opening hours. A rental doesn't have shop hours, but leaving the hours blank looks abandoned to Google. Set the hours guests can actually reach you instead. A profile that looks tended ranks better than one that looks parked.

Reviews are the ranking lever most hosts ignore

Here's the thing about Google reviews: they're a separate pile from your Airbnb reviews, and they're the reviews strangers see when they search you before booking anywhere. A five-star Airbnb history does nothing for your Google ranking. Google counts Google reviews, the rating, and whether you reply.

You click a listing with 40 reviews and a 4.9. Next to it, one with no reviews at all. Which do you trust? The traveller does the same maths in half a second.

So ask. After checkout, send guests the direct review link from your dashboard (it's under "Ask for reviews") with a plain line: "If you enjoyed the stay, a quick Google review really helps other travellers find us. Takes about a minute." Slot it into the post-stay message you're already sending, which we mapped out in the complete timeline for guest communication. Guests who booked direct are the warmest audience for this, because they already dealt with you rather than a platform, which is one more reason building that direct relationship pays off. We go deeper on the whole review engine in how to get more 5-star reviews on Airbnb, and most of it transfers straight to Google.

Reply to every review, good or bad. Thank people by name for the good ones. For a bad one, stay calm, acknowledge the specific issue, say what you've changed. A composed reply to a rough review does more for the next reader than the complaint does against you. And Google reads reply activity as a sign you're an engaged owner, which feeds back into ranking.

Keep it alive with Google Posts

Google Posts are short updates, up to 1,500 characters, that show on your profile when someone finds it. They're free, they surface in search, and they tell Google the listing is active.

Post twice a month, minimum. It doesn't need to be clever:

• Availability: "Two weeks open this June. Book direct, no guest fees."
• Seasonal: "The coast in September: quieter beaches, warm water, off-peak rates."
• Offer: "Last-minute weekend of the 14th at a reduced rate. Message us or book direct."

End each one with a link to your direct booking site. People who click a Post are high-intent, often already looking at your area or your property specifically. Don't waste the click by sending them to an OTA.

Is this actually worth it if you've got one property?

Straight answer: yes, but set your expectations right.

A Google Business Profile isn't a flood of instant bookings. It's a slow-building asset. The reviews stack up, the ranking creeps higher, the profile pulls in the searches you'd otherwise miss entirely, and it does all of that in the background, for free, forever. Compare that to the OTA treadmill, where you're renting visibility every single day and paying a commission for the privilege. If you've never added up what those fees actually cost you, direct booking vs OTA: how much you're really paying in fees will probably annoy you in a useful way.

The catch is that a profile only converts if it lands guests somewhere that turns a browse into a booking. A phone number and a hope won't cut it. That's why the website field matters so much: it should point at a proper direct booking page with your photos, your rates, real availability and a booking button, which is exactly what to include on your direct booking website. Get that pairing right, Google out front and a booking site behind it, and you've built a channel that quietly earns while you sleep.

One more reason it compounds: the guests you win through Google are yours. You've got their details, their booking, no platform in the middle. That's the start of a repeat guest and a referral, not a one-off the OTA owns. Turning that first direct booking into a second is its own skill, and we've laid it out in how to turn one-time guests into repeat bookers.

Frequently asked questions

Is a Google Business Profile free for vacation rental hosts?

Yes, completely. There's no charge to create, verify or maintain it. The only cost is the hour of setup and a few minutes a month keeping it active with posts and photos.

Will my profile get suspended?

It can, if something looks off: an empty-rental category, a fake or shared address, or a support ticket that puts a reviewer on your account. Present yourself as a real lodging business with a genuine address, a proper category and set contact hours, and suspensions are uncommon. Never use an address you don't operate from.

How long does verification take?

Video verification can clear in a day or two. The old postcard method can take up to two weeks. You don't pick the method, Google does, based on your category and location. Your listing stays hidden until it clears.

Can I list more than one property?

Yes. Each property is its own profile at its own address. Don't merge them. Separate listings actually help, since each ranks for its own location.

Should the website link go to Airbnb or my own site?

Your own site. The website field is where every Google click lands. Send it to a direct booking page and you keep the fee and the guest. Send it to an OTA and you've handed Google's free traffic to a platform that charges you for it.

What's the difference between Google Business Profile and Google Vacation Rentals?

The Business Profile is your local listing on Maps and in Search, which you set up yourself. Google Vacation Rentals is the travel-search grid with nightly rates, which pulls from connected booking systems rather than manual entry. Start with the Business Profile.