Listing services on a Business Profile, and which categories get the field

The services list is not a field every Business Profile has, and Google never publishes which categories get it. What it does document precisely is the shape of a service once you have the editor: either one of Google’s own predefined service types for your category, or a custom one you write yourself, with different limits and different moderation attached to each.

Whether you have the field at all

The help page for the services editor opens with a conditional rather than a rule: “Businesses in certain categories, like service businesses, might have the option to showcase their offerings directly on their Business Profile.” Certain categories, and might. That is the whole eligibility statement.

The profile editing page is no more specific. It files the editor under a heading reading “Menu or services (limited availability)” and describes it in one sentence, “Use the menu and services editor to keep your menu items or services, along with their prices, accurate.” The only hard line Google draws there is about the other editor: “The menu editor is for food and drink businesses only.”

That matters, because Google’s page about the menu editor names its eligible businesses outright:

Restaurants can list their menu items on their Business Profile on Google. This feature is available to food and drink businesses.

Two editors sit side by side in one profile and Google publishes the qualifying set for one of them. Where the list surfaces is documented:

When local customers search Google for an offering you provide, that service may be highlighted on your profile. On the Google Maps app, customers can view your full menu under “Services.”

Suggested services versus the ones you write

Inside the editor there are two kinds of entry, and Google describes both in one paragraph:

When adding services, you can choose from suggested options tailored to your business type. For example, a plumbing business might get options such as “Install faucet” or “Repair toilet.” You can also create and add custom services options.

The suggestions are per business type, and you are not limited to them: “If your service isn’t listed and you want to create your own service, select Add custom service.”

The Business Information API makes the same split explicit and names it. A ServiceItem holds a price plus exactly one of two objects, with the note “One of the following fields should always be set.” The two are:

Object	Google’s description
StructuredServiceItem	“Represents a structured service offered by the merchant. For eg: toilet_installation.”
FreeFormServiceItem	“Represents a free-form service offered by the merchant. These are services that are not exposed as part of our structure service data. The merchant manually enters the names for of such services via a geomerchant surface.”

The second is quoted as written, typo and all. A custom service is defined by exclusion: it is what is left when Google’s structured data has no entry for the thing you do.

A structured item carries no wording of yours, only an ID: “Required. The serviceTypeId field is a Google provided unique ID that can be found in ServiceType. This information is provided by categories.batchGet rpc service.” Even the name shown to customers is Google’s, “Output only. The human-readable display name for the service type.” You select from a list rather than write one.

A custom item is the opposite, and the API tells you not to use it for anything Google already models: “Required. Language-tagged labels for the item. We recommend that item names be 140 characters or less, and descriptions 250 characters or less. This field should only be set if the input is a custom service item. Standardized service types should be updated via serviceTypeId.”

The limits Google publishes, and where

Every published number sits in the API reference rather than in the help pages, so an owner working in the profile editor is never shown them.

What	Google’s published limit
Structured service description	“Optional. Description of structured service item. The character limit is 300.”
Custom item name and description	“We recommend that item names be 140 characters or less, and descriptions 250 characters or less.”
Price	“Optional. Represents the monetary price of the service item.”
Repeated entries	“Duplicated service items will be removed automatically.”

The custom limits are a recommendation, in Google’s own word, while the structured limit is stated flatly as a character limit. A price is a single figure rather than a range: “This will be treated as a fixed price for the service item.”

We found no published maximum on the number of services a profile may list in any page we read. We are not going to repeat a cap we cannot cite.

Are services moderated

Yes, and Google says one specific thing about it: “Custom services that violate policy will be automatically rejected. Avoid including profanity, gibberish, personal information, prices, or phone numbers in custom service names.” Note the odd pair in that list: prices are a field on the service item, and putting one in the service name gets the entry refused.

Automatic rejection is narrower than review, and the profile editing page’s general rule still applies to the edit as a whole, “We review your changes before we update them live on your profile.” Google’s guidelines add a completeness requirement, in the section covering both kinds of menu, which names service businesses directly:

A menu for a service business like a barber, spa, or car repair shop that lists the complete set of services that are available at the business.

It also rules out excerpts: “Sample menus that only list “popular items” (or similar excerpts) should not be submitted.”

What Google does not publish for services is a timeframe or a reason code. The menu editor page gives a delay for menus, “It can take 24-48 hours for your changes to display on Google Maps and Search.”, and nothing equivalent appears on the services page. Nor is there a published list of services rejection reasons, which is worth contrasting with review replies, where Google does publish an enum of the exact reasons a reply was refused. A rejected custom service name comes back with no documented explanation.

The honest gap

Google never publishes which categories get the services editor. The help page says certain categories, the profile editor calls it limited availability, and the only named set anywhere nearby belongs to the menu editor. The nearest thing to an answer is programmatic rather than editorial: categories.batchGet returns the parts of a category you ask for, “Required. Specifies which parts to the Category resource should be returned in the response.”, one language per call, “Required. The BCP 47 code of language that the category names should be returned in.”

So the check exists, one category and one language at a time, and it returns the service types for that category rather than a yes or no about the editor. We have not enumerated it and we are not going to assert a count of categories or service types we did not count ourselves.

The short version

If you have the editor, take Google’s suggested service types wherever one matches, because those carry Google’s IDs and display names, and keep your own wording for the genuine gaps. Write custom names as names, with no price or phone number in them, under the recommended 140 characters, and put the price in its own field. Expect the whole edit to be reviewed and a bad custom name to be refused without explanation. And if the services section is simply not there, no amount of editing will produce it, because that is a category question Google has not answered in public. For the review side of the same profile, see our comparison of review management software.