Scroll through the map pack for "Italian restaurant" in any town and watch where your eye goes: the photos, then the rating, then whether it's open. A complete profile gets you into that list. Photos, posts and answered questions are what make a stranger choose you once you're in it, and they're the signs, to people and to Google, that the profile belongs to a business that's still trading.
What activity does, and what it doesn't
Google's local ranking guidance names a few actions explicitly: keep your information complete, keep hours current, manage and respond to reviews, add photos, add products. It doesn't say posts or answered questions move rankings, and whether Google uses engagement on the profile as a ranking input is undocumented and argued over among local SEOs. Treat that as unknown.
What's not in doubt is the mechanism you can see. People choose between the businesses in the map pack on what the profile shows them, and more calls, direction requests and website clicks are the result. Those are the numbers a local business is actually after. The second, quieter effect is freshness: a profile with recent photos and posts reads as open and maintained, while one untouched for a year looks like the businesses Google marks as closed on a user's say-so.
Photos: the ones that get used
You control two photos directly, the logo and the cover photo. Google treats the cover as a preference rather than a promise, and picks which image leads the profile algorithmically, so the rest of the library matters too.
Upload the photos a customer wants before visiting: the outside, so they recognise the door; the inside, so they know what to expect; the team, so they know who they'll meet; and the work itself, a finished kitchen, a plated dish, a before and after. Google's photo guidelines for Business Profile ask for photos that are in focus, well lit and free of heavy filters, and recommend at least 720 by 720 pixels. The policy wants pictures taken at the business that show it as it really is, so stock imagery and heavily edited shots are at risk of removal. Google's video guidelines for the profile allow clips of up to 30 seconds, which suits a walk-through of the premises.
Customers add their own photos and you can't delete those, only report ones that break Google's content policy. The best defence is volume of your own: a few new photos each month, taken on a phone, beats a professional shoot uploaded once and never added to. Geotagging image files for ranking is a popular trick with no documented effect; skip it.
Posts: short, dated, one action
Posts are the short updates that appear on your profile. Google offers updates, offers and events: each takes a photo, a few sentences and a button such as Book, Learn more or Call now. Offers carry a start and end date and can hold a code or terms; events carry the dates and times.
The posts that earn clicks are specific and timely. "Saturday appointments now open for September" beats "We offer a full range of services". A seasonal service, a before-and-after, a new team member, an opening-hours change for a bank holiday: each is a reason to post, and each should link to the page on your site that matches it. Every post goes through Google's posts content policy before it appears; anything misleading, and anything promoting regulated goods such as alcohol, tobacco, gambling or firearms, is rejected.
A post every week or two is plenty. Older posts drop down the list, so a profile with a steady trickle always shows something recent near the top.
Questions and answers: write the FAQ before a stranger does
Your profile has a public question-and-answer section. Anyone can ask, anyone can answer, including people who have never been near the business, and the answer with the most upvotes shows first. A question left unanswered is an invitation for a guess, and that guess becomes your public answer.
Google's help documentation says owners can post and answer questions on their own profile, which makes this the place for your FAQ. Write down the questions customers ask before they book: parking, price ranges, walk-ins, which insurers you accept, whether you do emergencies, whether the entrance is step-free. Post each one from the business account and answer it from the same account, so the answer is labelled as from the owner.
Then check for new questions every week or two. Notifications for new questions are patchy, and a profile nobody reads is where wrong answers live longest. The answers also become plain text that AI assistants can read when someone asks for the best nearby; the reviews and AI lesson picks that thread up.
What to take away
- Google documents photos, hours and reviews as things that help; posts and answered questions are conversion and freshness signals, and their ranking effect is undocumented.
- Real photos of the outside, inside, team and work, added a few at a time, beat one professional shoot uploaded once.
- Posts should be specific, dated and carry one action, and each one links to the matching page on your site.
- Anyone can answer a question on your profile, so ask and answer the common ones yourself from the owner account and check for new ones regularly.
Next
Activity keeps a profile alive; a handful of mistakes can delete it. See Profile mistakes that get you suspended.