Your Google Business Profile Is a Brand Touchpoint. Treat It Like One.

In brief: Your Google Business Profile is often the first brand impression a local customer gets, and it is usually seen small and cropped. Upload a logo that survives a circular crop: simple, centred, with padding around it. Google recommends photos of at least 250 by 250 pixels, 720 by 720 ideally, in JPG or PNG between 10 KB and 5 MB. Use real photos of your place, work and team, not stock. Keep your business name exactly as it is in real life, because adding keywords to the name breaks Google's guidelines and can get the profile suspended. And keep the profile consistent with your website and social profiles, so a customer recognises you in each place.

Small, round and everywhere

On a phone, your profile appears as a small card: a tiny logo, a name, a rating, a handful of photos. The logo is frequently cropped to a circle. A wide wordmark that looks fine on your website turns into an illegible sliver in that circle. That is a design problem, and it is one you can solve once and reuse.

Make a logo version that survives the crop

Create a square version of your logo for profile use: your symbol or monogram, centred, with generous empty space around it so no edge is cut off when the circle is applied. If your logo is a long horizontal wordmark, that usually means a compact mark derived from it, not a shrunken copy. Test it by viewing it at about 40 pixels. If you cannot read or recognise it, simplify.

Which file to supply matters too. Which logo file to use where explains why a clean PNG at the right size beats a blurry screenshot every time.

Specs worth knowing

Google's photo guidelines ask for JPG or PNG files between 10 KB and 5 MB, with a minimum resolution of 250 by 250 pixels and 720 by 720 recommended. Treat those as the floor and use the recommended size. For wider images such as the cover photo and posts, Google crops to its own frames and the framing varies by device, so keep important content in the centre and check how it looks after upload. Image sizes that Google or third-party guides quote for posts, such as a 4:3 ratio around 1200 by 900 pixels, are widely used but can change, so check the current help page before producing assets in bulk.

Photos that do the brand's work

Customers use photos to decide whether to trust you. Show your real premises, your real work, and your real people, shot in good light and in a consistent style. Stock images are easy to spot and say little. A short set of well-chosen photos, refreshed a few times a year, beats a long gallery of mismatched ones. The same colours and lighting you use on your website should appear in your profile photos, so the profile feels like part of the same brand.

Name, description and the rules you must not bend

Your business name on the profile must match the name you use in the real world, on your signage and website. Adding keywords or a location to the name to rank higher goes against Google's guidelines and is a common reason profiles are suspended. Put your services and place in the description and categories instead, where they are allowed.

Use the posts feature for short updates with a clear image, an offer or news, and a button. Treat each as a small piece of brand communication, not an advert.

Keep it consistent with the rest of your brand

A customer who sees your logo on Google, then on Facebook, then on your website should recognise you instantly. Check that the name, logo version, colours and tone match across all three, and that your contact details are identical everywhere. If you are planning to change your name or logo, update the profile as part of the same project. A rebrand without losing your rankings lists what else to update.

Does your logo look right in a small circle? Send it over and I will tell you plainly whether it works there and what a profile version should look like.

Sources

• Google Business Profile Help, Guidelines for representing your business
• Semrush, Google Business Profile photo size guidelines