Guides Presence
Set up your church on Google in one evening
For most first-time visitors, the Google panel — not your website — is the first thing they see. Here is how to make it right.
Search for almost any church and the first thing that appears is not its website. It is a panel on the right of the results, with hours, photographs, a map and reviews. That panel is a Google Business Profile, it is free, and in most churches nobody owns it.
Getting it right takes one evening and changes more than a month of social media.
Claim it before you edit it
Your church probably already has a profile, created automatically or by a member years ago. Search for your church name, and look for “Own this business?” or “Claim this business”. Verification is usually by postcard or phone call to the address on file, so start it early — the rest of this list can wait for the code to arrive.
Claim it with an address the church controls, not a personal account that leaves when a volunteer does. Add a second manager the same evening.
Hours that mean something
Most churches enter Sabbath morning and leave it there. Add every gathering a visitor could attend: Sabbath School, the divine service, prayer meeting, youth night. Use the special-hours field for camp meeting weeks and holidays, so a visitor never arrives at a locked door.
Wrong hours are worse than missing hours. Someone who drives across town to a dark building will not try a second time.
Photographs that answer “will I fit in?”
Upload the entrance from the street, the car park, the foyer, the sanctuary with people in it, and one photograph of the children’s area if you have one. Ten good photographs are plenty.
Keep them current. A photograph of a building that has since been repainted quietly tells people the church stopped paying attention.
Keep it alive
Google lets you post short updates and answer questions people ask. Post your next series, your Christmas programme, your community meal. It takes minutes, and it keeps the profile from going stale.
Watch the questions section. If nobody answers, someone else will — and they may answer wrongly.