A repair shop's Google Business Profile: categories, services and hours

Which category is a repair shop?

The one that says what the shop is. Google's guidelines for representing a business ask for as few categories as it takes to describe the core business, each as specific as possible, and offer a test: a category should complete the sentence "this business is a", not "this business has a". They also say not to use categories as keywords or to describe attributes, which rules out a category chosen for one job the shop happens to do.

For a general shop that means the general repair category; the guidelines' own examples use "Auto Repair Shop". A shop that does one kind of work, and only that, takes the specific category for it if the list offers one. Secondary categories are for other things the shop also is, such as a tire shop that is also a full repair shop, not for each job on the menu. Brakes, alignments and diagnostics are services, and they belong in the services list.

The same guidelines say Google can also pick up category information from your website and from mentions of the business elsewhere. So the trade named in your site's h1 and first paragraph should be the trade in the primary category. A profile that says transmission shop over a homepage that says complete auto care describes two businesses, and a reader of both, a person or an AI assistant, cannot tell which is right.

The services list and the service pages, in the same words

The profile's services list is where the jobs go, in the words drivers use and the words your site uses for the same job. A list that says "lube, oil and filter" beside a page headed "oil change" gives a reader two names for one service and nothing to join them. Where the profile lets you add a description or a price to a service, copy the service page's sentence and its figure.

The guidelines' rules for a service menu name a car repair shop as the kind of business that has one, and ask that it list the complete set of services on offer rather than a selection of popular ones. Treat the site's services page as that menu. If the profile lists a job, the site has a page or at least a line for it; if the site has a page for a job, the profile lists it.

Keep the business description to what the shop is and does. The guidelines ask for useful information about the services, the history and the mission, and rule out descriptions built around promotions or prices, and links of any kind. The coupon belongs on your site, in text, with its terms and its end date.

Hours, holiday hours and the hours for one service

Google's guidelines ask for regular customer-facing hours and allow special hours for particular days, holidays among them. For a repair shop those are the dates that matter: closed on a public holiday, open half a day before one, shut for a week in summer. Set them on the profile before the date, and post the same dates on the site's contact page that week. A reader who finds special hours in one place and none in the other has two schedules for one shop.

The guidelines also allow separate hours for a specific service, which as a rule they ask to sit within the main hours. A shop whose drop-off desk opens before the bays, or whose tire service keeps shorter hours, can say so there, and the site then says the same in words: "Drop-off from [time]; service bays from [time]."

On the site, the JSON-LD can carry the holidays too. schema.org's OpeningHoursSpecification states hours by day and time, and the property for exceptions is specialOpeningHoursSpecification. Give it the dates in validFrom and validThrough and no opening time, and it describes the shop as closed on those dates, because schema.org treats a specification with no opening hour as closed.

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "AutoRepair",
  "@id": "https://www.example.com/#shop",
  "openingHoursSpecification": [{
    "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
    "dayOfWeek": ["Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday"],
    "opens": "[opening time]",
    "closes": "[closing time]"
  }],
  "specialOpeningHoursSpecification": [{
    "@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
    "validFrom": "[first closed date]",
    "validThrough": "[last closed date]"
  }]
}

Name, address and the tow truck

The name is the one on the sign. The guidelines ask for the real-world name used on the storefront, the website and the stationery, and do not permit service or location information in it; a name padded that way can get the profile suspended. So "[Shop name] Brakes and Transmissions [Town]" is out. A franchise location uses the brand, which the guidelines allow for a fully dedicated franchisee, and a shop that sells a tire brand leaves that brand out of its own name.

A shop with a garage that drivers visit shows its address. If it also tows, or sends a mechanic out to cars, the guidelines describe that exact case: they give auto repair shops with a garage and roadside service as their example of a hybrid service-area business, which may show its storefront address and set a service area as well, provided the location is staffed and receives customers during its stated hours.

The site then names the same area in text, as a list of the towns you tow from or drive to, and in areaServed in your LocalBusiness markup. A service area on the profile with no towns named on the site, or towing promised "anywhere in the metro", leaves a question like "tow truck and repair near [town]" with nothing on your pages to match.

Attributes, and the other listings that have to agree

Attributes are the short facts the profile offers alongside the categories, most of them yes or no: accessibility, payments, amenities, how customers are served. Set only the ones that are true today, and give each a sentence on the site where it applies. If the profile says the entrance is wheelchair accessible, the contact page says how to get in; if it says you take appointments online, the booking page says how.

The profile is what Google shows in Maps and in its knowledge panel, and it is one listing among several that describe a shop: Bing's and Apple's map listings, the store locator a parts or tire brand keeps for the shops that carry it, a roadside assistance network's list of garages, the repair directories drivers use. Each carries a name, an address, a phone number and hours, and each goes stale on its own schedule. The shop is one entity only while they all agree.

The general rules for the profile, and why it has to agree with the site at all, are in the Business Profile article; this is the repair shop's version. The facts the site itself should state are listed in the repair shop overview.

Keeping the listing in step with the shop

• Before each public holiday, set its hours on the profile and post the same on the contact page in the same week.
• When you add or drop a job, change the services list and the service page on the same day.
• When the technician behind a specialty leaves, check the categories and services that depended on them.
• Read the profile's reviews and questions for facts drivers expected and did not find (a loaner, a Saturday slot, a make you take), and add the missing sentence to the site. Quote reviews that name a job on the site as text, with the reviewer's first name, the date and the platform; reviews as an AI signal explains why text is the form a crawler can read.
• Ask the assistants, with search on, when the shop is open on the next holiday and whether it works on a make you take. Where an answer is wrong, find the page it came from and fix it there; checking whether your shop is named turns those questions into a panel, and the free visibility check is a first reading of them.