Ready to grow?Short answer: Open your Google Business Profile dashboard, find the Products section, and add each item with a name, category, an optional price, a short description, and one clear photo. Those products then show in your Knowledge Panel on desktop, a Products tab on mobile, and on Google Maps. The whole job takes about 20 minutes.
A bakery I looked at recently had everything right. Good hours, 90-odd reviews at 4.8 stars, a warm photo of the counter. Someone searches "bakery near me," taps the profile, and sees a name, a phone number, and a map pin. What they do not see is the sourdough, the custom birthday cakes, the Saturday cinnamon rolls that sell out by ten. All of that sits in the shop, and none of it sits on the profile. The Products section is empty.
That is the gap this fixes. The Products section is a shelf Google gives you for free, inside the profile people already look at before they decide to walk in or call. Most owners never fill it. Filling it is one of the highest-return 20 minutes you will spend on your online presence, because it puts the thing you sell in front of a person who is already looking at you.
What is the Products section, and how is it different from Services?
The Products section is where you list the tangible things you sell: a loaf, a drill, a pair of boots, a candle. Each entry is a small card with a photo, a name, an optional price, and a short description. Think of it as a row of shelves inside your profile.
Services are a different section for a different thing. Services are what you *do*: a haircut, a boiler repair, a tax return, a dog groom. If you run a shop that sells objects, Products is your section. If you run a trade or a practice that sells your time and skill, Services is yours. Plenty of businesses use both. A hardware store sells drills (products) and also cuts keys and mixes paint (services). If you are not sure where your work fits, the walkthrough in our guide to setting up the Services section covers the other side of this in the same plain steps.
One idea to hold onto before you start: this section is a storefront, not a catalog. You are not trying to list everything you have ever stocked. You are trying to show the handful of things that make someone tap "Directions" or "Call."
Where do your products actually show up?
This is the part that makes the 20 minutes worth it. According to Search Engine Land's guide to Google Business Profile products, the products you add can appear in three places: the Knowledge Panel on desktop, a dedicated Products tab on mobile search, and on Google Maps.
Picture each one. On a laptop, someone searches your business name or your category, and your profile box shows on the right of the results, with your products lined up in it. On a phone, they tap your profile and there is a "Products" tab sitting next to Overview and Reviews, full of cards. In Google Maps, someone browsing pins near them can see what you carry without opening a website at all.
So the payoff is not abstract "visibility." It is a specific loaf, at a specific price, showing up next to your name at the exact moment someone is deciding between you and the shop two streets over. That decision often happens right there on the profile, before anyone reaches a website. The Victorian Government's Business Victoria points out that roughly 78% of Google searches result in a visit within a week, which tells you how close the profile sits to the actual buying moment. A complete profile is not a nice-to-have. It is the shop window for the people already at your door.
If you want the full picture of how these signals feed AI answers and map rankings too, our Business Profile optimization guide connects the sections together. This article stays on Products.
Step 1: Open the Products section in your dashboard
Sign in to the Google account that manages your business. You can do this straight from Google Search: search your own business name while signed in, and your profile management tools appear at the top of the results. Or go to your Business Profile from the account menu.
Look for the "Products" or "Edit products" button. On most profiles it sits in the row of options along the top of your dashboard, near Posts and Photos. Tap it. If the section is empty, you will see a prompt to add your first product. That empty state is exactly what your customers have been seeing, so this is the moment it changes.
Step 2: Add the product name and category
Start with one product. Pick a real bestseller, not the obscure thing you wish sold more. Search Engine Land notes that each product entry can hold a name, a category, an optional price or price range, a description, and a photo. Name and category come first.
The name is the single most important line, because it is what a scanning eye reads. Be specific. "Sourdough loaf" beats "Bread." "18V cordless drill" beats "Power tools." "Custom birthday cake" beats "Cakes." A person skimming a phone screen decides in about a second whether a card is the thing they want, and the name is what makes that decision. Write it the way a customer would say it out loud.
The category groups similar products together so your section stays tidy. A bakery might use "Breads," "Cakes," and "Pastries." A hardware store might use "Power tools," "Hand tools," and "Paint." Keep the categories few and obvious. You are sorting a shelf, not building a filing system.
Step 3: Decide whether to add a price
Price is optional, and the choice is worth two minutes of thought rather than a reflex.
Add a price, or a price range, when the number helps the buyer say yes. A set price on a fixed item ("Sourdough loaf, $7") removes a question and pre-qualifies the person who taps through. A price range works well for things that vary ("Custom birthday cakes, $45 to $120"), because it signals the ballpark without pinning you to one figure. Buyers who see a range self-select. The ones who tap already know roughly what they are in for.
Leave the price off when your numbers move a lot, when you are mid-season and about to change them, or when the real conversation is a quote rather than a shelf price. A hardware store running frequent promotions might skip prices to avoid a card that says one thing while the till says another. There is no penalty for leaving it blank. This is the same judgment call we walk through in our piece on showing prices on your website, and the logic carries straight over to the profile.
The one rule: if you show a price, keep it current. A stale price on your profile does more harm than no price, because it turns up as a small broken promise at the counter.
Step 4: Write a short description and add one clear photo
The description is two or three sentences, not a paragraph. Say what the thing is, who it is for, and the one detail that makes it yours. "Naturally leavened sourdough, baked fresh every morning. Ready by 8am, and it holds for three days." That is enough. You are helping a decision, not writing a label.
Then the photo, which does most of the work. This is where a lot of profiles fall down, so treat it as the main event, not the finish. One product, well lit, filling the frame, shot on a plain background or a clean bit of counter. A real photo of your real loaf beats any stock image, because the person tapping wants to see the thing they will actually get. Blurry, dark, or busy photos read as "this business does not pay attention," and that impression sticks to everything else on the profile.
When we set up profiles for owner-run shops, the Products section is almost always the last thing anyone touches. The owner has hours, photos, and reviews sorted, and then the actual things they sell sit nowhere on the profile. The pattern we see over and over: once a bakery adds its six best sellers, each with a clear name and a real photo, the profile stops looking like a directory entry and starts looking like the shop window it already is. Nothing else about the business changed. The shelf just got stocked.
If photos are the weak point across your whole profile, not just Products, our guide to Business Profile photos covers lighting, angles, and what Google actually shows first.
Repeat these four steps for each product. Six to a dozen strong entries beats fifty weak ones. When someone opens the Products tab, you want every card to earn its place.
Should you use Product Studio to polish your photos?
If your product photos need help and you are short on a lightbox and a spare afternoon, there is an optional tool. Search Engine Land reports that US-based merchants can use Product Studio, Google's own generative AI image tool, to edit product images: it can remove a messy background or generate a clean scene around the item.
Treat it as polish, not the foundation. Start with a real photo of the real product, then let the tool tidy the background or drop it onto a neutral setting. It is genuinely useful for a hardware store that shot a drill on a cluttered bench and wants it to sit clean. It is a poor substitute for showing the actual thing you sell. If you are outside the US or you would rather not touch AI editing, a phone photo near a window does the job perfectly well.
Which of the three ways to add products should you use?
Search Engine Land lays out three routes to get products onto your profile: the Business Profile dashboard, in-store products, and Google Merchant Center. For almost every owner reading this, the answer is the first one.
Use the dashboard. It is the walkthrough above, it is free, it takes 20 minutes, and it needs nothing more than the account you already manage your profile with. Vendasta's how-to for local marketers frames the Products section as a free "digital storefront" that most profiles leave empty, and walks the same dashboard steps, because that is the route that fits a small owner.
The other two are heavier. In-store products and Google Merchant Center pull from a product feed, which suits a shop with a real online catalog and inventory it wants synced automatically. That path connects to Google Shopping and the free listings there, which is a bigger project with its own payoff. If you sell online at real volume and want your stock flowing into Shopping, our guide to Google Shopping free listings is the next step. But do not start there. Fill the dashboard section first, see it show up, then decide whether a feed is worth the setup.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Products section free?
Yes. Adding products through your Google Business Profile dashboard costs nothing, the same as your hours, photos, and posts. Google Merchant Center and its Shopping listings are also free to list on, though setting up a product feed is more work than the dashboard route most owners should start with.
How many products should I add?
Enough to show what you are known for, not your whole stock. Six to a dozen strong entries, each with a clear name and a real photo, works better than fifty thin ones. Lead with bestsellers, because the Products tab is a shop window, not a full inventory list.
Do I have to add a price to every product?
No. Price is optional on every entry. Add a set price when the number helps someone decide, use a range for items that vary like custom cakes, and leave it off when your prices move often or the real answer is a quote. If you show a price, keep it current.
How long until my products show up on Google?
Usually within a short while of saving them, though Google can take time to refresh what appears in the Knowledge Panel and Maps. If a product is not showing after a day or two, check that it saved with a photo and category, since incomplete entries are the most common reason a card does not appear.
That bakery from the start still had the empty section a week later, until someone spent one morning on it. Six loaves, six photos, six honest prices. The shop did not change. What changed is that the sourdough finally showed up where the searching happens, next to the name people were already tapping. Stocking the shelf is the kind of small, repeatable profile work Fonzy keeps on autopilot for owners who would rather be baking, so the storefront stays full without you remembering to fill it.
Sources
- Search Engine Land: where products appear, the three ways to add them, the fields each entry holds, and Product Studio for US merchants
- Business Victoria (Victorian Government): roughly 78% of Google searches result in a visit within a week
- Vendasta: the Products section as a free digital storefront most profiles leave empty, with the dashboard steps
