Every guide to this is written as one numbered list that starts from nothing: make an account, add your business, pick a category, done. That list is correct for a business that opened last week and wrong for a business that did not, because Google may already hold a listing for your address that it built from other sources. Follow the create flow on top of a listing that exists and you end up with two, which is a harder problem than the one you started with.
So the first step is not a step. It is a question: which of these three situations are you in?
Search your business name and city on Google Maps, on a computer, and look at what comes back.
Door one: nothing is there
If the business genuinely does not appear, you are adding it. Google's route is business.google.com/add, then "Add your business to Google", then the on-screen steps for your details, then "Select a verification option, and follow the on-screen steps."
Google states the price plainly on the same page: "You can add or claim your business at no charge."
Door two: it is there, unclaimed
Any business that has been trading a while may already have a listing it never made, which is why the create-from-scratch guides misfire. Google's documented route is to open Maps on a computer, search the business name and city, then select "Claim this business" and "Manage now", choose a verification option and follow the steps. The same path exists in the Maps app: tap the profile, then "About", then "Claim this business" and "Manage now".
You are not creating anything here. You are taking ownership of a record that already collects your reviews, your photos and your directions requests.
Door three: it is there and somebody else verified it
An agency that stopped replying, a former manager, a franchise office, a web designer from four years ago. Google has a separate flow for this and it does not run through the create form.
Its help page says that if "a verified Business Profile for your business on Google Search or Maps is owned by someone else, you can request ownership from the current profile owner." You go to business.google.com/add, enter the business, pick it from the list, and choose "Request Access". Google then notifies the current owner by email, and per Google: "The current profile owner is then notified by email and has 3 days to respond."
If nobody responds in that window you may get the option to claim the profile yourself, which then routes you into verification. Google is careful to say this is not guaranteed: "The option to claim a profile isn't always available."
Start this one early. It is the slowest of the three and it is the one with another human in the loop.
Get the name and the address right before you type them
Two fields on the form are governed by rules stricter than they look, and both sit in Google's guidelines for representing your business rather than on the form itself.
The name is your name, not your pitch. Google's guidelines rule out marketing taglines in the name field, using "TD Bank, America's Most Convenient Bank" as the example of what to trim back to "TD Bank". They also rule out special characters and irrelevant legal terms such as LLC, LTD or INC unless you can show real-world proof, such as signage, that they belong there. Adding your city or your service to the name is the same error in a different coat. It reads as free ranking and it is the thing a competitor reports.
The address has to be somewhere you really are. Google asks you to "Create your Business Profile for your actual, real-world location" and says that "P.O. boxes or mailboxes located at remote locations aren't acceptable." It also expects a business showing an address to "maintain permanent fixed signage of their business name at the address."
If you travel to customers instead, you are a service-area business, and Google says to hide the address: "If you're a service-area business, you should hide your business address from customers." It also puts a boundary on the area itself, saying "the boundaries of your profile's overall service area shouldn't extend farther than about 2 hours of driving time from where your business is based." Drawing a service area across half a state is not ambition, it is a flag.
Verification is the next thing, and it is not your choice
Whichever door you came through, the profile does not really exist until it is verified, and the method you get is assigned rather than selected. That is its own subject and we have written it out in full: Google Business Profile verification, every method.
Once you are verified, the profile is a live asset rather than a form you filled in. Optimising a Google Business Profile covers what to do with it next.
Then connect it to the thing that actually moves it
A verified profile with four reviews on it ranks like a profile with four reviews on it. The asking is the work, and it only works if the link you send lands on the right listing, which matters more than usual if you have just resolved a duplicate or taken a profile back from someone else.
Confirm which listing a searcher sees with our Place ID finder, then build the one-tap link from it with the Google review link generator. ReviewKit sends that link to each customer after the job, which is the part nobody remembers to do by hand.