When someone searches "family lawyer Barrie" or "car accident lawyer near me", Google shows a map with three firms above the regular results. Those three listings come from Google Business Profiles, and many people call a firm straight from the listing without ever visiting its website. This page covers why the profile matters for a law firm, what our management includes, how we measure where you show up in Google Maps, how to handle reviews within your law society's rules, and what it costs.
Table of Contents
- Why Does a Google Business Profile Matter for a Law Firm?
- What's Included in Google Business Profile Management
- How Do You Measure Google Maps Rankings?
- How Should a Law Firm Handle Google Reviews?
- Suspensions, Virtual Offices and Multiple Locations
- Google Business Profile for Personal Injury Firms
- How Much Does Google Business Profile Management Cost?
- Ready to Show Up in Google Maps?
- Frequently Asked Questions
Why Does a Google Business Profile Matter for a Law Firm?
Your Google Business Profile is the listing that appears in Google Maps and in the map results at the top of a local search. It shows your firm's name, rating, reviews, hours, photos and a button to call. For a person who needs a lawyer in their own city, it's often the first thing they see about your firm.
Google says local results are ranked on three things:
- Relevance: how well your profile matches what the person searched for
- Distance: how far your office is from the person searching, or from the place they named
- Prominence: how well known your firm is, based on reviews, links, articles and your presence across the web
You can't move your office, but relevance and prominence are within your control. The right categories, a complete list of services, steady reviews and regular activity all help, but most firms set up their profile once and never touch it again.
What's Included in Google Business Profile Management
Management is ongoing work on your profile every week:
- Weekly posts about your practice areas, recent articles and firm news
- Responses to your Google reviews, positive and negative, written within your law society's confidentiality rules
- Review requests: a simple process and wording for asking every client for a review at the end of a matter, within Google's policies and your law society's rules
- Profile upkeep: categories, services, hours and your description kept accurate and complete, new photos added as you send them, and suggested edits from Google or the public checked before they change your listing
- A monthly report on the calls, direction requests and website clicks your listing brings in, your reviews, and where you show up in Google Maps across your market
Google Business Profile management is the profile part of local SEO. The rest of local SEO, such as citations in legal directories, location pages and local links, is part of our law firm SEO retainer.
How Do You Measure Google Maps Rankings?
A law firm doesn't have one Google Maps ranking. Because distance is part of the ranking, the same search returns different results depending on where the person searching is standing. A firm can be in the top three from the street its office is on and absent from the results across town, and a standard rank report that checks from one location hides that.
We measure it with a Google Maps rank grid. We run your main practice-area searches from several fixed points around your market, such as downtown, the suburbs and the nearby towns you want clients from, and record where your profile ranks from each one, along with the top three firms at each point. The points stay the same every month, so you can see which parts of your market you're gaining and which still need work.
You can get a free rank grid for your firm before you hire us. Ask for yours and tell us which areas you want clients from.
How Should a Law Firm Handle Google Reviews?
Reviews are part of prominence, and they're what most people read before they call. Three rules apply to law firms:
- Replies can't breach confidentiality. A reply can't confirm the reviewer was a client or discuss their matter, even when the review is unfair. A short, professional reply that invites the person to contact the office works for positive and negative reviews alike.
- Fake and abusive reviews can be reported. We flag reviews that break Google's policies, such as reviews from people who were never clients or reviews with offensive content. Google decides whether to remove them.
- New reviews have to be earned. Google's policies prohibit offering anything in exchange for a review and asking only happy clients to leave one. The firms with steady reviews ask every client at the end of a matter, in a way that's easy to act on.
Our article on what Google ratings tell you about a law firm explains why nearly every firm has a 4.5-star rating and what clients look at instead.
Suspensions, Virtual Offices and Multiple Locations
Google requires a business to have a real location where it meets clients during the hours on its profile. A virtual office, a mailbox or a coworking address you don't staff isn't eligible, and profiles at those addresses are often suspended. If your profile is suspended, it disappears from Maps until Google approves a reinstatement request, so getting the address and verification right at the start matters.
Each office your firm staffs can have its own profile. Firms with more than one location get a discount on management for each additional profile, and each one gets its own rank grid in the monthly report.
Google Business Profile for Personal Injury Firms
Personal injury searches are local and urgent. Someone who's just been in a car accident searches "car accident lawyer near me" on their phone and calls one of the first firms they see, often from the map results. Distance carries a lot of weight in those searches, which is why a PI firm can rank well near its office and poorly in the parts of the city it most wants cases from. The rank grid shows exactly where that's happening.
For PI firms, the profile work focuses on:
- A primary category that matches personal injury, with secondary categories only where they're accurate
- Services listed by case type, such as motor vehicle accidents, long-term disability, slip and fall and wrongful death
- Posts that answer the questions injured people search for, linked to the matching pages on your website
- Reviews that mention the type of case, which are more likely when the review request asks clients about their experience
How Much Does Google Business Profile Management Cost?
Google Business Profile management starts at $600 per month plus HST per location. There's no setup fee, firms with more than one location get a discount, and it's month-to-month. It's priced separately from our SEO retainer, and many firms run both.
Ready to Show Up in Google Maps?
Tell us your practice areas and the parts of your market you want clients from. We'll run a free Google Maps rank grid for your firm and show you where you appear, who ranks ahead of you, and what we'd change first.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does Google Business Profile management cost?
LawOnline manages Google Business Profiles from $600 per month plus HST per location, with a discount for each additional location. That covers weekly posts, responses to your Google reviews, a review request process, photo updates from the photos you send us, profile upkeep and a monthly report on calls, direction requests, website clicks and Google Maps rankings. There's no setup fee. It's month-to-month with 30 days' notice, and we offer discounts for longer commitments.
Why isn't my law firm showing on Google Maps?
The most common reasons are distance, an incomplete profile, the wrong primary category, too few recent reviews, or a profile that isn't verified. Distance means a firm can appear near its office and disappear a few kilometres away, so a single search from your desk doesn't tell you much. A rank grid shows where you appear across your market and which firms rank ahead of you.
Can you remove fake or unfair Google reviews?
We can report reviews that break Google's policies, such as reviews from people who were never clients, conflicts of interest, or offensive content, and follow up on the request. Google makes the final decision. A review that's negative but within the policies stays up, and the best response is a short, professional reply.
How should a lawyer respond to a negative Google review?
Reply briefly and professionally, without confirming the person was a client or discussing any matter, since your duty of confidentiality still applies. Thank them for the feedback and invite them to contact the office directly. Future clients read the reply as much as the review, so a calm response helps more than a defensive one.
What happens if our Google Business Profile is suspended?
A suspended profile disappears from Google Maps and local results until Google approves a reinstatement request. Suspensions usually come from an ineligible address, such as a virtual office, a name that includes keywords, or a large change made all at once. The fix is to correct the cause first and then submit the request with proof of the address.
Can a law firm with a virtual office or several locations have a Google Business Profile?
A virtual office or mailbox isn't eligible, because Google requires a location where you meet clients during the hours on your profile. A firm with several staffed offices can have a profile for each one, and each is managed and reported on separately.
Who owns our Google Business Profile?
Your firm does. You stay the owner of the profile and add LawOnline as a manager, so you can remove our access at any time and keep the profile, its reviews and its history.
