A one-hour checklist: set up your Google services list for interior season

By Steven Von · 2026-10-18 · 3 min read

A one-hour checklist for painting contractors to rebuild the Google profile services list for winter interior work, with names, starting prices and photos.

Exterior season is ending, and the calls that keep a painting crew busy through February are interior jobs: bedrooms, cabinets, trim, ceilings, whole-house repaints before a sale. But most painting profiles still read like it is July. The services list says "exterior painting" and "house painting," and nothing about the work you want to sell next.

This checklist fixes that in about an hour. Do it this week, before the first cold snap sends people searching for indoor projects.

Before you start (5 minutes)

• Open your Google Business Profile while signed in and choose Edit profile, then Services.
• Have your price sheet next to you, or at least your typical price ranges for the jobs you want.
• Pull up five to ten good interior photos from this year on your phone. Before and after pairs are best.

Step 1: clear out the junk (10 minutes)

Google fills in suggested services when you pick a category. Many painters have services listed they never offer, like "wallpaper installation" or "commercial striping." Delete anything you do not want calls for.

Then look at what is left. If the top of the list is all exterior work, that is the first thing a homeowner sees in winter. The list has no real sort order you control, so the fix is to make sure the interior services are complete and clearly named.

Step 2: add the interior services you want to sell (15 minutes)

Add each as its own service, with a plain name a homeowner would search. Some examples:

• Interior room painting
• Cabinet painting and refinishing
• Ceiling painting and popcorn ceiling repaint
• Trim, doors and baseboard painting
• Whole-house interior repaint
• Drywall patch and paint
• Accent walls

Skip the clever names. "Kitchen transformations" means nothing to someone searching "cabinet painters near me."

Step 3: write one or two lines for each (15 minutes)

Each service gets a short description. Use it to answer the questions people ask on the phone.

For example, under cabinet painting: "We remove doors, spray them in our shop and paint frames on site. Most kitchens take four to six days. Starting at $3,500 for an average kitchen." That price is a placeholder. Use your own number, or a range if your jobs vary a lot.

A starting price does two things. It filters out people who expected $400, and it tells everyone else you are not going to hide the number. Our pricing and quoting guide covers how to set ranges without boxing yourself in.

Step 4: add fresh interior photos (10 minutes)

Upload the photos you pulled. Name the files plainly before upload if you can, like "cabinet-painting-white-shaker.jpg." Add at least one photo for each of your top three interior services.

Almost every painting listing has at least one photo. 97% do, in our data. What separates you is recent photos of the work people are about to search for. A profile whose newest picture is a siding job from May looks quiet in November.

Step 5: check hours and the booking link (5 minutes)

39.4% of painting listings show no hours at all. If yours is one, add them. If you do estimates on Saturdays, list Saturday hours. Only 34.1% of painters do, and weekends are when a lot of homeowners look at their walls and decide.

Then tap your website link and make sure it lands on a page that offers interior work, not a page about exterior color consultations.

The quick checklist

1. Delete services you do not offer.
2. Add six to eight interior services with plain names.
3. Write one or two lines and a starting price for each.
4. Upload five to ten recent interior photos.
5. Add or fix hours, including Saturday if you do estimates then.
6. Check that the website link goes to the right page.

Why it is worth an hour

Reviews take months to build. Across the 88,392 painting listings we track, the median has 11 reviews and the top tenth has 107 or more. You cannot close that gap this week. A complete, seasonal services list you can finish before lunch. The benchmark report has the rest of the numbers, and the Google Business Profile guide covers the settings this checklist does not.

Set a reminder for April to swap the focus back to exterior work.

If you would like someone to manage your profile or any one service for you, the free 14-day trial needs no card. See the free trial page or text or call (385) 526-5679.

Steven Von, Editor
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, painting contractors among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor