Google Business Profile for CPAs, From Setup to Self-Defense
A Google Business Profile for CPAs does more marketing work than anything else the firm owns, and it usually gets the least attention. Before a prospective client ever reaches your website, the profile has already shown them your rating, your reviews, your hours, your photos, and a call button. For a lot of searchers that's the entire decision. They never click through to your site at all.
Which means the listing you claimed years ago and haven't opened since is out there making first impressions on your behalf, every day. Let's fix that. And then let's cover the part almost nobody mentions: keeping the thing from being stolen.
Complete beats claimed
Claiming your profile was step one. Most firms stopped there, and a claimed-but-empty profile ranks like one.
The primary category decides which searches you can appear for at all, so choose the one that matches how clients actually look for you, and use the secondary categories for the rest of the practice. Fill in the services list with plain names. Write the business description like a person answering "what do you do," not like a brochure.
Then the parts firms skip. Photos of your actual office and your actual people, because a searcher deciding who gets their Social Security number wants to see that you exist, and stock photography convinces nobody. Hours that reflect reality, including the reality of filing season. If you're open Saturdays in March, say so on the profile, because "Closed" at 10am on a Saturday sends a stressed searcher straight to the next firm down. The profile is the single biggest lever in local search for accountants, and completeness is most of the lever.
Signs of life
Google notices whether a profile is maintained, and so do people. An update posted around each deadline, fresh photos a few times a year, and answers in the Q&A section go a long way.
The Q&A section deserves five minutes of your attention. You can seed it yourself, so put the questions people actually call to ask: do you take on S-corps, what should I bring to a first appointment, do you handle IRS letters, do you work with clients remotely. Every answered question there is a phone call you didn't need to have and a signal that someone's home.
Reviews do the persuading
Your rating and your last few reviews are the loudest things on the profile. A searcher comparing three CPAs reads them the way you'd read references, except these references also decide whether Google shows you at all.
Two habits matter more than any tactic. Ask for reviews steadily instead of in bursts, and respond to every single one, including the good ones. The mechanics of asking without begging, and without triggering the failure mode that torches a firm's rating in a week, are covered in our review strategy for tax preparers.
The part where someone tries to steal it
Here's the uncomfortable part. Business profiles get hijacked, and a CPA firm's profile, sitting there with years of reviews and a steady stream of high-value callers, is exactly the kind of target that pays.
The Better Business Bureau has warned about exactly this scam. It starts quietly: a scammer requests ownership or management access to your profile through Google's normal process. If the request sails through unnoticed, and it often does, because the notification lands in an inbox nobody checks, they're in. They swap your phone number for theirs. They swap your website for theirs. The callers your reviews just convinced now ring a stranger's desk, and that stranger is happy to take a deposit. Owners in the BBB's reporting have found themselves locked out of their own listings, and some scammers demand payment to hand the profile back.
The scam works for the same reason phishing works in February. The request looks routine, it arrives when everyone's drowning, and nobody at the firm owns the job of noticing. The defense is the same muscle, too. A firm that trains itself to squint at suspicious emails during filing season should aim some of that squint at its Google notifications, because the profile is just another account worth stealing.
Keeping it yours
None of the defense is hard. It just has to be somebody's job.
Know which Google account actually owns the profile, and make sure it isn't a former employee's personal Gmail. Check that account's inbox, or forward it somewhere that gets read, because ownership requests come with a response window and silence works in the requester's favor. Review who has manager access and remove anyone who's left the firm or the old marketing agency. And glance at the listing itself now and then, because Google accepts "suggested edits" from the public, and a changed phone number is the kind of thing you want to catch in a day, not a quarter.
If a takeover does land, document everything and work Google's restoration process immediately. It's recoverable. It's also weeks of your life you won't get back.
What it's worth in February
Run your own numbers on this. If the profile produces even one extra client a week during filing season, and for well-maintained profiles in most markets that's conservative, the annual value covers a lot of Saturday mornings spent answering Q&A. The profile compounds, too. Every review, photo, and answered question keeps working next season.
Most firms don't need convincing at this point. They need someone to own the rhythm, which is what our Google Business Profile management service exists for: setup, upkeep, review workflow, and monitoring for the hijack attempt you'd rather never think about.
For how the profile fits alongside your website, reviews, and everything else, the full picture is in our marketing guide for accounting firms.
