The boring profile field AI is now reading
Here’s a corner of your Google Business Profile almost nobody has touched in years, and it’s suddenly worth twenty minutes of your time.
Your business description. That little box most businesses filled in once, a decade ago, with something vague, and never looked at again.
For years the SEO crowd knew this field did nothing for your local rankings. It genuinely didn’t move the needle in the map pack, so everyone quite sensibly ignored it. That advice is now out of date. (It’s part of the same set of Google Business Profile basics I walk clients through, just the corner of it that’s changed most quietly.)
Why it matters again
New data shows AI is picking this field up and referencing it directly when it answers questions about local businesses. So while it still won’t lift you up the map pack, it is feeding what AI says about you.
Which means a stale, generic description written ten years ago is now actively working against you. It’s the raw material AI has to work with, and if it’s woolly, so is the recommendation.
How to write it properly
Go into real detail about what you offer and exactly where you operate. Every service, every town.
And write it in plain, direct sentences that state the facts simply. “Smith’s Plumbing provides boiler repairs in Lytham St Annes, Blackpool and Poulton-le-Fylde.” Subject, action, place. It reads a bit flat to a human, but that’s precisely the structure a machine can parse without guessing.
That’s the whole trick. Clear, specific, factual sentences that spell out who you are, what you do, and where you do it. No marketing fluff, no “we pride ourselves on excellence.” Just the plain facts, stated plainly, so AI can lift them straight out and put your name forward.
Three before-and-afters
Enough theory. Here are three businesses I’ve made up, each starting with the kind of description I see every week, then rewritten the way Google and the AI actually want to read it. Watch what comes out, and what goes in.
Hartley Electrical, an electrician near Poulton
Before:
“At Hartley Electrical we pride ourselves on delivering a first-class, professional service. With a real passion for quality and a friendly, dedicated team, we go the extra mile to exceed your expectations every time. Your local one-stop shop for all your electrical needs. Get in touch today for a free, no-obligation quote.”
After:
“Hartley Electrical is a NICEIC-registered electrician based in Poulton-le-Fylde, covering Blackpool, Thornton-Cleveleys, Lytham St Annes and Kirkham. We carry out domestic rewires, fuse box and consumer unit upgrades, EV charger installation, fault-finding, and EICR safety inspections and landlord certificates. We work on homes, rented properties and small commercial units across the Fylde coast.”
The before could be any electrician in the country. The after hands the AI four towns and seven services it can match you to. If someone asks it for an EICR in Kirkham, only one of those two gets you named.
Greenside Landscapes, a garden firm in St Annes
Before:
“Greenside Landscapes are passionate about transforming outdoor spaces. Our friendly team pride themselves on quality craftsmanship and attention to detail, delivering bespoke solutions tailored to your needs. No job too big or too small. Contact us for a free consultation.”
After:
“Greenside Landscapes is a landscaping and garden maintenance company based in St Annes, covering Lytham, Ansdell, Fairhaven, Kirkham and Wrea Green. We design and lay patios, driveways, fencing, decking and turf, and we offer regular garden maintenance, hedge cutting and one-off garden clearances. We work on domestic gardens and small commercial grounds across the Fylde coast.”
Same story. “Bespoke solutions tailored to your needs” tells a machine nothing. “Patios, driveways, fencing, decking and turf” tells it exactly which searches you belong in.
Bluebell Home Cleaning, covering the north Fylde
Before:
“Bluebell Home Cleaning is your trusted local cleaning partner. We’re passionate about making your home sparkle, with a reliable team that treats every home as if it were their own. Fully insured and dedicated to excellence, we go above and beyond on every single clean.”
After:
“Bluebell Home Cleaning provides domestic cleaning in Cleveleys, Thornton, Bispham and Blackpool. We offer weekly and fortnightly regular cleans, one-off deep cleans, end-of-tenancy cleaning and oven cleaning. All our cleaners are insured and DBS-checked. We clean houses and flats across the north Fylde coast.”
Notice the after still keeps the things that genuinely matter, insured and DBS-checked. Those are facts, and facts are welcome. It’s the empty adjectives, the “passionate” and the “dedicated to excellence,” that earn their place in the bin.
None of the rewrites are clever. That’s the point. They’re a bit dull to read, and they’ll win you work anyway, because the thing deciding who to recommend isn’t reading for style. It’s reading for facts it can trust.
While we’re clearing out old advice: two myths to ignore
The description field is one bit of stale SEO wisdom worth revisiting. Here are two more, so you don’t waste time on them.
You may have heard that a review “counts for less” if it’s left at your premises, or counts for more if the customer writes it at home. It doesn’t. Google doesn’t geotag reviews for ranking, and controlled tests have repeatedly shown no effect. The same goes for geotagging your photos, which is another long-running myth. Anything that makes leaving a review more fiddly just gets you fewer of them, so don’t bother.
The takeaway
Fix the description once, properly, and you’ve handed the AI clean raw material to recommend you from. It’s five minutes of plain writing for a field that’s quietly become one of the ways a machine decides whether to say your name.
Do it alongside pulling your real keywords out of your Performance data and collecting reviews the way Google now wants, and your profile is working as hard for you in AI answers as it does in the map pack.
Getting every corner of your online presence speaking plainly to the machines - profile, reviews, website and social feed alike - is the whole point of our local SEO and AI-search work.
Want your profile written so AI puts your name forward? Get your free audit and I’ll tell you straight what your listing is telling the machines right now, or book a call if you’d rather talk it through. It’s the sort of thing our local SEO work is built around. Either way you’re dealing with me, and I read every message myself, so drop me a line at hello@inkon.co.uk.