Google Business Profile setup for auto body and collision shops
Categories, services, photos, hours, Q and A and posts for a collision shop profile, plus the certification and carrier details most shops leave out.
- Categories: primary is the whole ballgame
- Services: write out what people actually type
- The description, and the sentence about choice
- Photos: the before-and-after is the product
- Hours, including the one almost nobody lists
- Q and A: answer your own questions
- Posts: use them for the customer-pay offers
- Messaging, booking and the estimate link
- The monthly ten minutes
- Frequently asked
Your Google Business Profile is the storefront for a business most customers reach on a phone, one-handed, standing next to a car they just wrecked. Most collision profiles are half built. 35.4% do not even link a website, and only 14.9% publish an email address.
Here is the full setup, in the order that matters, with the parts specific to collision that generic checklists miss.
Categories: primary is the whole ballgame
Set the primary category to Auto body shop. Not Auto repair shop, not Car repair and maintenance service. The primary category is the single strongest lever you have on which searches you appear in, and if your primary says general repair you will be competing for oil change queries and losing collision queries.
Then add secondary categories only for work you actually do and want more of:
- Auto dent removal service, if you do PDR
- Auto painting, if you sell paint-only and cosmetic work
- Auto restoration service, if you do it
- Truck repair shop, if you have the bays for commercial
- Car detailing service, if you sell detail as a standalone
Do not add categories to "cover more ground". Google dilutes a profile with unrelated secondaries and you end up ranking for nothing well.
Services: write out what people actually type
Under Services, add every repair type as its own entry with a two-sentence description. This is free text that Google indexes and that AI answer engines read directly.
The list to build, at minimum: collision repair, bumper repair and replacement, paintless dent repair, auto painting and color matching, frame and unibody straightening, hail damage repair, quarter panel repair, windshield and glass replacement, aluminum body repair, EV collision repair, fleet and commercial repair, insurance claim assistance.
For each one, write like you are talking, not like you are stuffing keywords: "Paintless dent repair. We remove door dings, hail dents and minor creases without filler or paint, usually same day, typically $125 to $450 depending on the number of dents and panel access."
That price range does more for your call rate than any other single change to the profile.
The description, and the sentence about choice
You get 750 characters. Spend the first two sentences on what a driver actually needs to know: that they choose the shop, that you work with their carrier, and what makes you different.
"You have the right to choose your own repair shop. We are a family-owned collision center in Mesa, we work directly with every major insurer, and the owner inspects every vehicle before it leaves. I-CAR Gold Class, aluminum-body F-150 certified. Free estimates, Saturday drop-off, and we handle the claim paperwork and the rental coordination so you make one phone call, not five."
Rules on how you may describe insurer steering vary by state, so confirm the wording with your own department of insurance before you publish it.
Photos: the before-and-after is the product
98.9% of collision listings have at least one photo, so having photos is not an advantage. Having the right ones is.
The set that works:
- Exterior of the building with the sign readable, so people can find you while driving.
- The office and the person who greets customers. Faces reduce anxiety in a distress purchase.
- The paint booth and the frame rack. This is the proof you are a real shop and not a broker.
- Eight to twelve before-and-after pairs, shot from the same angle, same distance, decent light. Label them in the file name and caption: "quarter-panel-repair-silverado-before".
- Certification plaques, photographed close enough to read.
Add three or four new photos a month. Recency is a signal and an abandoned photo set looks like a closed shop.
Hours, including the one almost nobody lists
Only 36.1% of collision shops publish Saturday hours and 6.6% publish Sunday. 8.5% list nothing at all, which shows a driver an unhelpful blank.
Collisions happen on weekends. If you can staff a service writer from 8 to noon on Saturday for estimates and drop-offs, do it and put it on the profile. It is a low-cost differentiator in a field where roughly two thirds show weekdays only. If you cannot, list your real weekday hours and let missed-call text-back handle the rest, covered in the missed calls guide.
Q and A: answer your own questions
The Q and A section is public, unmoderated, and mostly empty on collision profiles. Anyone can answer, including a competitor. Seed it yourself from a second Google account and answer from the business account. Eight questions, written the way customers ask them:
- Do I have to use the shop my insurance company recommends?
- Do you work with [carrier names in your market]?
- Do you handle the rental car?
- How long does a bumper repair take?
- Do you do paintless dent repair, and what does it cost?
- Are you certified to repair aluminum-body trucks?
- Do you offer a warranty on the paint?
- Can I get an estimate from photos?
Vote your own answers up so they display first. This is one of the few places on a profile where you control the words a driver reads at the moment of highest doubt.
Posts: use them for the customer-pay offers
Google Posts expire and few people browse them, but they are indexed and they take four minutes. Post weekly, and post the cash work rather than collision: a PDR before-and-after, a bumper scuff repair with a price, headlight restoration, a hail clinic date. Collision work does not need promoting because the demand is involuntary. Cosmetic work does.
Each post: one photo, 80 to 150 words, a price or a range, and a Call button.
Messaging, booking and the estimate link
Turn on messaging only if someone will answer inside 15 minutes during business hours. A slow reply is worse than no messaging at all.
Set the appointment link to your online estimate request page, the one that lets a driver upload photos of the damage. That single link converts phone-shy customers who will never call you, and it captures the job at 9pm when your competitor's voicemail picks up. Build details are in website essentials.
The monthly ten minutes
- Add three photos, at least one before-and-after pair.
- Publish two posts.
- Answer every new question and every new review.
- Confirm hours for any upcoming holiday.
- Check the Performance tab for calls, direction requests and website clicks, and note the trend.
That is the whole job. Shops that do it hold map pack positions against consolidator locations with ten times the ad budget.
Frequently asked
Should I have a separate profile for each location? Yes, one per physical address with its own phone number and its own reviews. Do not point them all at one number.
Can I list a service area instead of an address? No. A body shop is a premises business. Hiding the address hurts you and can get the profile suspended.
Do keywords in the business name help? Adding words you do not have on the sign violates Google's naming policy and gets reported, usually by the shop across town. Use your real name.
If you want the profile rebuilt and maintained, local SEO and Google Business Profile work is one of the services in the free 14-day trial. Check your starting point in the benchmark report first. Text or call (385) 832-6175.