Google Business Profile for septic companies: categories, services, photos, hours and the fields half the trade leaves blank
A field-by-field setup for a septic company's Google profile, from the right primary category to service areas, hours, photos of real jobs and the posts that bring inspection calls.
Your Google Business Profile is the listing that shows up on the map when someone types "septic pumping near me" into their phone from a house with a gurgling toilet. For most septic companies it is the single biggest source of new calls, and most of them have never opened the dashboard past the phone number.
The data backs that up. 48.6% of septic listings show no hours. Only 15.8% show a public email. 32.2% have no website linked. The companies that fill in the whole profile are competing against half a field. Here is how to fill it in, section by section, in about two hours.
Category and name
Primary category: Septic system service. That is the category Google uses for the trade, and it is the one all 9,348 companies in the benchmark data share. Do not pick Plumber as primary even if you do some drain work; you will rank for plumbing searches you cannot serve and lose the septic ones.
Secondary categories, add what you actually do: Excavating contractor if you install, Portable toilet supplier if you rent units, Drainage service, Waste management service for grease traps. Three or four is plenty.
The business name is your legal name as it appears on the truck. Do not add "Septic Pumping and Inspection Fast Service" to the name. Google suspends listings for that, and a suspension during inspection season costs weeks.
Service area, not a storefront
Most septic companies work from a yard with no customer visits. Set the profile as a service-area business and hide the address. Then list the service area by county and town, not by radius. A 40-mile radius drawn over a lake and two counties you do not serve wastes the listing. Twenty named towns and the counties they sit in tell Google exactly where to show you.
If you do have a shop customers visit to pay or pick up riser kits, show the address and keep the service area too.
Services and the price fields
Under Services, add every job you do as its own line with a short description and a price or range where you can:
- Septic tank pumping, $300 to $500, 1,000 to 1,500 gallon tanks, lid exposed
- Septic inspection for real estate, $350 to $600, written report same day
- Locating and uncovering the tank, $75 to $150
- Riser installation, $250 to $600 per riser
- Baffle and filter replacement
- Effluent pump replacement
- Distribution box repair
- Drain field repair and replacement
- New septic system installation, including permit and soil evaluation
- Aerobic system maintenance contracts, where your state requires them
- Grease trap pumping for restaurants
The service list is what Google reads when it decides whether you match a search for "drain field replacement" or "aerobic septic maintenance." Companies that list only "septic service" do not show up for the specific, high-ticket searches.
Hours, including the honest version
Set real hours. If you answer the phone from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and take emergencies after that, list 7 to 7 and put "24-hour emergency pumping, call" in the description. If you truly answer at 2 a.m. on Thanksgiving, mark it open 24 hours. Only 16% of septic companies do, and holiday backups are the most urgent calls of the year.
Do not mark 24 hours and then send a 9 p.m. call to a voicemail box. The caller moves on, and sometimes leaves a one-star review about it. 28% show Saturday hours and 19.5% show Sunday. If you work weekends, say so; you are in the minority and it is a reason to be chosen.
Photos that do the selling
92.8% of listings have at least one photo, so having photos is not the edge. Having the right ones is. Upload 20 to 30 over the first month, then two or three a week:
- The pump truck, clean, with the phone number visible, in a customer's driveway
- A tank with the lid off, before and after pumping
- A riser installed flush with the lawn
- A drain field being laid, pipe and gravel in the trench
- A finished install graded and seeded
- An inspection report on a clipboard, address blurred
- The crew, named, in company shirts
- The office or yard, if you have one
Name the files before uploading: "septic-pumping-conroe-tx.jpg" rather than "IMG_4471.jpg". Geotagged photos from the actual job site, taken on your phone, carry location data Google can read.
Description, posts and the question box
The description gets 750 characters. Use the first sentence for what you do and where: "Family-owned septic pumping, inspection, repair and installation serving Shelby, Spencer and Anderson counties since 2009." Then licenses, years, emergency availability, and the services list in plain words. No keyword stuffing; Google reads the Services section for that.
Post once a week. A post is a photo and 100 words. Good posts for septic: "Spring thaw backups, what to do before you call," "Selling a home on septic? Here is what the inspection covers," "We pumped 40 tanks in Hanover this month." Each one with a call button. Posts expire from view after a week or so, which is why one a week matters.
Google has been winding down the old Questions and Answers box and increasingly answers customer questions with AI pulled from your profile, site and reviews. That makes the Services descriptions and the business description more important, not less. If the profile says you do real estate inspections and reviews say so too, the AI answer will too.
The review link and the messaging switch
Get your review link from the profile dashboard and put it on the invoice, the truck magnet and in the text your tech sends at the tailgate. The reviews guide has the script.
Turn on messaging only if someone will answer it inside an hour. A profile that shows "usually responds in a day" is worse than no messaging. If you do turn it on, route it to the same person who handles missed-call texts.
Frequently asked
I have two listings, one old one with the wrong number. What do I do? Claim both, mark the old one as a duplicate through the dashboard, and keep the one with reviews. Two listings split your reviews and confuse the map.
Should I list prices on the profile at all? Yes, as ranges. A pumping range on the profile gets you the call from the homeowner who was going to call three companies for quotes. Hiding it sends that call elsewhere.
How long until profile changes show up? Most edits appear within a few days. Category changes and hours can trigger a short review by Google. Do not make ten changes the week before inspection season starts.
Setting the whole profile up, photos and weekly posts included, is one of the services in the free 14-day trial.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, septic companies among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor