The short answer. Your Google Business Profile is the box with the map, the stars, and the phone number that shows up when someone searches “excavation companies near me.” It is free, it is where most of your calls from strangers start, and most contractors set it up once in 2019 and never touch it again. Done right, it takes an afternoon to fix and ten minutes a week to feed. This guide is the afternoon.
It is written for excavation, land clearing, septic, and demolition companies, but the steps are the same for any contractor who works at the customer’s property instead of a storefront.
Why the profile matters more for dirt work than for most trades
When a homeowner needs a plumber they call the one they used last time. When a homeowner needs three acres cleared or a house torn down, they have never done this before and they do not know anyone who does it. So they search. In September 2026, “excavation companies near me” runs 22,400 searches a month in the United States. “Land clearing near me” runs 8,000. “Demolition contractors near me” ran 500, up from 150 in June.
Every one of those searches shows a map with three businesses in it before it shows a single website. That box is called the local pack. If you are in it, you get the call. If you are not, you are on page one in name only.
Think of the local pack as the front row at the equipment auction. Everybody in the building can see the machine, but the three guys in the front row are the ones the auctioneer is looking at. Your profile is how you get a seat there.
What decides who gets in the box
Google has said for years that three things drive the local pack: relevance, distance, and prominence. In contractor terms:
- Relevance. Does your profile say you do the thing the person searched for? Your categories, your services, your description, and your posts all count.
- Distance. How close are you to the searcher, or how close is the searcher to your service area? A service-area business gets judged on the area it lists.
- Prominence. How well known are you? Review count, review rating, how recently reviews came in, how many photos, how often the profile is updated, and how much the rest of the web mentions you, including your own website.
You control all of relevance, most of prominence, and the service-area half of distance. That is a lot of control for a free tool.
Step one: claim it and set it up as a service-area business
If you have never claimed the profile, search your company name on Google, find the box on the right, and click “Own this business?” If the box does not exist, go to business.google.com and create it. Verification is usually a video call or a postcard. Do it from the business address, with the lettered truck in the driveway.
Then the single most important setting for a contractor: hide your address and set a service area.
Most excavation companies run out of a house, a shop on the same property, or a yard with no sign. Google’s rules say that if customers do not come to your location, you should hide the address and list the area you serve. Contractors who show a home address, a PO box, or a virtual office are the ones getting suspended in 2026. Contractors who list up to 20 real cities, counties, or zip codes they actually work in are fine.
List the towns you really drive to. Not the whole state. If you will go 60 miles for a full day of work, list the towns inside that circle. Google matches your service area against where the searcher is standing.
Step two: categories, and why “Excavating Contractor” is not enough
Your primary category is the strongest relevance signal you have. Google’s category list has several that fit dirt work:
- Excavating contractor
- Demolition contractor
- Land clearing service (added in recent years; check that it appears in your list)
- Septic system service
- Landscaper (some land clearing outfits use this as a secondary)
- Snow removal service
- Paving contractor, Concrete contractor, and others if you actually do them
Pick the primary that matches most of your revenue. Then add every secondary category you legitimately do. A company that does excavation, septic installs, and snow removal should have all three. A company that lists “Demolition contractor” but mostly does grading is telling Google the wrong thing.
Do not add categories for work you do not do. Google checks, customers check, and a mismatch costs more than it gains.
Step three: the services list
Under each category you can list services with a short description. Most contractors leave this blank. Fill it in with the exact names people search:
Site prep. Grading. Septic installation. Septic pumping. Basement excavation. Utility trenching. Driveway installation. Gravel delivery. Land clearing. Lot clearing. Forestry mulching. Brush removal. Stump grinding. Residential demolition. Mobile home demolition. Pool removal. Concrete removal. Snow plowing.
Each one gets two sentences in plain words. “Septic installation. New systems and replacements for homes and cabins in Cass, Beltrami, and Hubbard counties. Licensed installer, we handle the permits.” That is it. Match the names to the service pages on your website so Google sees the same words in both places.
Step four: the description
You get 750 characters. Use them to say what you do, where, and what makes you the safe choice. Write it like you would say it on the phone.
Weak: “We are a full-service excavation company committed to quality and customer satisfaction.”
Better: “Northwoods Dirt Work does site prep, septic installation and pumping, driveways, and snow removal for homes and cabins within an hour of Park Rapids, Minnesota. Dan runs the machine and answers the phone. Licensed septic installer. Two excavators, a skid steer, and a tri-axle, so we finish the job without waiting on a sub. Site walks are free and usually same week.” The company is made up. The shape is what matters.
Names, towns, machines, and a promise about the phone. Nothing in there could be pasted onto another company’s profile.
Step five: photos are the whole game
Profiles with photos get more calls. That has been true since Google started publishing numbers about it, and in dirt work the effect is bigger because the machines are the proof. A mulching head on a track loader tells the buyer more in one second than three paragraphs.
What to upload, and keep uploading:
- Your equipment, with the lettering visible. Each machine, on a job, not in the yard.
- Finished work. A graded pad. A cleared lot. A lot with the house gone and the grass coming in. Before and after from the same corner if you have it.
- The crew, and you. People hire people. The owner standing next to the machine with his name in the caption.
- The truck. Lettered, on a job site, in your town.
- Logo and a cover photo that is a real job, not stock.
Take a photo with your phone at every job. It takes eleven seconds. Upload three a week. A profile that gets a new photo every week looks like a company that is working. A profile with the same six photos from 2021 looks like a company that might not be.
Never use stock photos. Google’s guidelines say not to, and your customer can tell. The excavator in the stock photo is not yours, and neither is the trust it borrows.
Step six: reviews, and what changed in 2026
Reviews are the biggest prominence signal you control, and they are the thing a nervous buyer reads before anything else. Three rules.
Ask every customer, the same way, every time. The day the job wraps, send a text: “[Company]: Thanks for having us out for the [service] job. If you have a minute, a Google review helps a small crew like ours: [link].” Every customer gets the identical message. You can send it yourself or set it up to go out automatically when a job is marked done.
Do not gate. Google’s 2026 review policy update made it explicit: you cannot screen customers by how happy they are and only send the link to the happy ones. You also cannot offer a discount, a gift card, or a free load of gravel for a review, and you cannot set up a tablet or kiosk on site for reviews. Google reported blocking or removing 292 million policy-violating reviews in 2025 and said it would suspend profiles that keep doing it. The safe path is boring: same neutral ask, everyone, no incentive.
Reply to every review, including the bad one. Two sentences. Thank the good ones by name and mention the job. For the bad one, stay calm, state the facts once, and offer to talk offline. Buyers read your replies to see how you handle a problem, and they weigh that more than the one-star itself.
Steady beats a burst. Fifteen reviews spread over a year rank better and look more real than fifteen in one weekend. Aim for one or two a month and never stop.
Step seven: posts, questions, and the stuff most contractors skip
Posts. A short update with a photo, once a week or so. “Wrapped a 4-acre forestry mulching job outside Walker this week. Booking October now.” It keeps the profile active, and active profiles rank better. It also shows a buyer that you are working right now.
Questions and answers. Anyone can ask a question on your profile and anyone can answer it. Seed it yourself with the five questions you get on every call: Do you do site walks for free? How far do you travel? Do you handle the septic permit? What is the difference between mulching and clearing? Do you plow in winter? Answer each in two sentences. Now the buyer gets your answer instead of a stranger’s.
Hours. Set them honestly. If you answer the phone from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., say so. If you do not answer on Sunday, say that too. Buyers who call during listed hours and get voicemail leave a worse impression than buyers who see you are closed.
Phone number. The one that gets answered, or the one that texts back when it does not. See missed call text back for dirt-work companies. Your profile can send 30 calls a month and it does not matter if 20 of them die in voicemail.
Website link. Point it at your homepage, and make sure the homepage loads fast on a phone and has the same services and towns the profile lists. Google reads both. So does the customer.
Step eight: the ten-minute weekly routine
Set a reminder for Friday afternoon.
- Upload two or three job photos from the week. Caption them with the machine and the town.
- Post one update.
- Check for new reviews and reply.
- Check the Q&A for new questions.
- Look at the profile’s performance tab. Note calls, direction requests, and website clicks. Write the numbers down. In six months you will have a trend, and the trend will tell you if the work is paying.
That is it. Ten minutes. Most of your competitors do none of it.
The mistakes that get contractors suspended
Google suspends profiles more than it used to, and a suspended profile means no local pack, no reviews, and weeks of appeals. The common causes in 2026:
- Showing a residential address instead of hiding it and setting a service area.
- Keyword stuffing the business name. “Bemidji Excavation Septic Land Clearing LLC” when the legal name is “Nelson Excavating.” Use the real name.
- Multiple profiles for one business at different addresses to cover more towns. One business, one profile, one service area.
- Review gating, incentives, or reviews from your own employees.
- Stock photos, or photos of equipment that is not yours.
- A category list that does not match what you actually do.
Every one of those is a shortcut. Every one costs more than it saves.
How the profile and the website work together
The profile gets you in the box. The website closes the deal. The buyer sees three companies in the map, taps the one with the best photos and the most recent reviews, and lands on the website. If the site takes nine seconds to load on a phone, or the phone number is below the fold, or the photos are stock, the buyer goes back and taps the next one.
Shepard Excavating in Laporte, Minnesota launched a new site August 10, 2026. In the 28 days through August 31, Search Console recorded 81 clicks from 2,050 impressions and 173 different search phrases, including “septic pumping near me” and “class 5 gravel near me,” from people who had never heard the name. The profile put them in the box. The site kept them. Numbers are early, dated, and on our results page.
If your profile is sending clicks to a site that is losing them, I will look at it and tell you the three things I would fix first. Two business days, no charge. Show me what you would fix.