Google Business Profile checklist for Ethiopia

Everything here is free and takes an afternoon. Work down the list in order — it is sorted by how much visibility each item typically recovers, not by how easy it is.

Do these first

1. Set a specific category. Not “establishment”, not “shop”. The most precise one that describes what you actually do.
2. Link your website. If you do not have one, link whatever you do have that you control — even a single page.
3. Fix your opening hours, including holidays. Wrong hours send people to a closed door, which costs you the customer and earns you a bad review.
4. Add your phone number in international format — +251 followed by the rest, the same digits everywhere you list them.

Then these

5. Upload at least ten photographs, and keep adding a few every month. Interior, team, and the work itself.
6. Write the description, using the words customers would search rather than the words your industry uses internally.
7. Add landmark directions. “Near Edna Mall, Bole” is how people navigate here, and Google matches what people actually type.
8. Enable messaging if you can answer it reliably. An unanswered chat is worse than none.

Then keep going

9. Ask for reviews steadily. Two to five a week looks natural. Twenty in a day looks bought, and is treated that way.
10. Respond to every review within two days, negative ones first, calmly and by name. Responses are read by far more people than the review itself.

What not to do

Do not buy reviews, trade them, or filter unhappy customers into a private form before they can post. All three violate Google policy and risk the profile you are trying to protect.

How to tell if it worked

Watch direction requests and calls in your profile insights, not rankings. Rankings vary by where the searcher is standing. Direction requests are people asking Google to take them to your door.