Google Business Profile for Estate Agents: UK Guide

The short answer: Plan one Google Business Profile for each staffed branch, named exactly as the branch trades. Give individual negotiators their own profile only if Google's rules for individual practitioners fit them. Ask every completed customer for a Google review in the same way, never reward one, and never hide the bad ones, then measure calls, website clicks and directions for each branch. We checked each rule against Google's help pages and UK sources on 10 November 2026. This isn't legal advice.

How many Google Business Profiles can an estate agency have?

In the UK, an agency can have one profile for each location where it has separate staff. The Google guidelines say not to create more than one profile for each location of your business, and they also say a service business with separate service areas and separate staff at each location is allowed one profile for each. Below, a table applies that rule to the UK cases agencies ask us about.

Case	What Google's guidelines say	What we'd do
A branch with a staffed office	One profile for each location	One profile for the branch, with the shopfront address shown
Sales and lettings in the same office	Departments that operate as distinct entities, usually with a separate customer entrance and different categories, may have their own profile	One profile for the office, with sales and lettings in the description and services, unless they really trade as separate entities
An online or home-based agent	A business with no shopfront should hide its address and set a service area	One service-area profile with the address hidden
A town you cover but have no office in	A rented postal address where you don't operate isn't eligible	No profile for that town. Build a page on your website
A virtual office	A rented postal address where you don't operate isn't eligible	Don't list it

The sales-and-lettings row is our reading of Google's department test, and we default to one profile for each location.

Can negotiators and valuers have their own profile?

Only where Google's individual practitioner rules fit, and they won't fit everyone. Because the Google guidelines name "insurance or real estate agents" as individual practitioners, the rule applies to people in your branch, not only to the agency.

A practitioner should have a Google profile if they operate in a public-facing role and can be contacted directly at the verified location during stated hours, but four limits apply:

Support staff shouldn't create their own profiles.
One practitioner, one profile. A practitioner shouldn't have several profiles to cover different specialisations, such as selling and letting.
Names. When several practitioners work at one location, each practitioner's profile should include only the practitioner's name.
Lead generation staff. Google says sales associates or lead generation agents for corporations aren't individual practitioners.

With 5 negotiators, we'd start with the branch profile and add a personal profile only for a valuer whose name vendors search for on Google. Each extra profile is another thing to keep accurate on Google.

What should the name and category be?

Use the name on the shopfront and your paperwork, and nothing else. For the name, Google says it should reflect your business's real-world name, and that unnecessary information isn't permitted. Its list of things that don't belong in a name includes taglines, opening hours, phone numbers and URLs.

That rules out "Smith & Co Estate Agents Sale Altrincham". Google also lists location information as not allowed in a name, so a town like Altrincham added to rank for it doesn't belong. For the category, Google says to choose the fewest that describe your core business, so pick the closest match from the list inside your profile and add extras only for services you really offer. The name field isn't a keyword field, and an extended name breaks Google's guidelines.

How do you ask for reviews within the rules?

Ask every completed vendor, buyer, landlord and tenant, in the same words, with no reward, because it's the only safe routine. Google's policy bans offering payment, discounts or free services for a review, and it bans discouraging negative reviews or selectively soliciting positive ones. Google also treats content based on a conflict of interest as not allowed, with current or former employment as an example, so your staff and their families shouldn't review the agency on Google.

For an agency, the routine looks like this:

Choose the trigger. Send the request on completion for a sale and at move-in for a let.
Ask every time. Send the same message to every vendor, buyer, landlord and tenant. Don't filter by how the transaction went.
Reply to each review. Keep replies polite and don't share personal details.
Never reward. Don't offer a prize draw or a discount on fees.

UK law adds a second layer, and CMS and Linklaters both explain that the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act bans fake reviews, undisclosed incentivised reviews and misleading publication of reviews. Linklaters adds that the CMA's guidance warns against interfering with reviewers' willingness to leave negative reviews. We cover the wider picture in our guide to ranking higher on Google Maps.

What should you measure for each branch?

Measure calls, website clicks and directions requests. Google's performance report shows them for verified profiles only, and its Searches metric lists the terms people used, updated at the start of each month. Calls need a phone number on the profile.

One profile for each branch is what makes these numbers useful, because two branches sharing a profile can't tell you which office got the calls from Google. Pair the profile numbers with Search Console for your website, so you can see whether a branch page and its profile are rising together.

How should the website match the profile?

Give each branch its own page. Use the same name, address and phone number as its Google profile, and link the profile to that page, not the homepage. In Google's terms, relevance is how well a profile matches what someone is searching for. Its prominence factor includes links from other websites and your review count on Google.

Add structured data to the branch page. Schema.org has a RealEstateAgent type, a subtype of LocalBusiness. Google's LocalBusiness documentation requires the name and address, and recommends a telephone number and a working URL. Keep the markup identical to what the page shows on Google.

Google also says there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking, so any UK agent who promises a guaranteed spot is guessing, and we won't do it.

Where does this sit in your wider SEO?

The branch profile is one of three things we'd fix first for a UK agency, with the branch page and the landlord and valuation pages, and our estate and letting agents page shows how they fit together. Our guide to landlord leads from Google covers the pages that bring in lettings work. If you'd like us to run the profiles, that's our Google Business Profile management. It sits inside our local SEO service, from £295 a month with a three-month minimum. Our SEO for estate agents work includes a verified profile for every real branch.

A branch profile checklist

Check	Pass if
Name	It matches the shopfront and has no town, tagline or hours
Address	A staffed branch shows it, and a home-based agent hides it
Category	It describes the main business accurately
Hours	They match what the branch does
Reviews	Every completed customer gets the same request, and every review has a reply
Website link	It goes to the branch page, not the homepage
Tracking	Calls, website clicks and directions are recorded monthly

Questions people ask

How many Google Business Profiles can an estate agency have?

Google says not to create more than one profile for each location of a business. A business with no shopfront that travels to customers is allowed one service-area profile, and one with separate service areas and staff at each location is allowed one profile for each. So we'd plan one profile per staffed branch.

Can an estate agent have their own Google Business Profile?

Sometimes. Google lists real estate agents as individual practitioners. A practitioner can have a profile if they have a public-facing role and can be contacted directly at the verified location during stated hours. Support staff shouldn't create profiles, and a practitioner shouldn't have several.

Can I put 'Estate Agent in Sale' in my business name?

No. Google says your name should reflect your real-world name, and that including unnecessary information isn't permitted. Taglines and other extras are among the things it lists as not allowed in a name.

Can I ask only happy vendors for a Google review?

No. Google's policy says businesses must not selectively solicit positive reviews or discourage negative ones. Ask every completed customer in the same way, and never offer a reward.