The Google Business Profile setup that fills a child care center
Categories, licensing details, the photo rules that protect children, hours that match your drop-off window, posts, and the Q&A parents are already asking.
For most families, your Google Business Profile is the entire first impression. A parent types "daycare near me" at 9:40pm, sees three centers, taps yours, and in about twelve seconds decides whether to open your website or go back and tap the next one. Everything below is about those twelve seconds.
Across 64,363 child care listings, 18.4% have no hours posted and 33.2% have no website linked. The average profile in this category is thin. That is your opening.
Categories, in the right order
Your primary category is the single strongest ranking lever on the profile. Pick the one that matches what parents type, not what your license technically says.
- A center-based program serving infants through pre-K: primary category "Day care center." Add "Preschool" as a secondary.
- A program whose identity is educational and whose families search that way: primary "Preschool," secondary "Day care center."
- A licensed home program: primary "Family day care service."
- Montessori, Reggio or a similar method: use the specific category if it exists (there is a "Montessori preschool" category) and keep "Day care center" secondary.
For scale, the category counts in our dataset run "Day care center" at 32,317 listings, "Preschool" at 16,322 and "Family day care service" at 3,339. If you offer before and after school care, add "After school program" as a secondary. Do not add categories you cannot legally provide. Google does not check, but a parent who calls about something you do not offer is a wasted call and often a bad review.
Put your license number in the description
The description field allows 750 characters and Google does not use it for ranking. It does get read by parents and by AI assistants summarizing your business, so use it for the four things a parent is looking for and cannot easily find:
License number and licensing state. Ages served, stated as ranges. Hours including your earliest drop-off and latest pickup. Tuition range, or at minimum "tuition from $X per month."
A workable pattern: "Licensed [state] child care center, license #123456, serving infants six weeks through pre-K in the [neighborhood] area. Open 6:30am to 6:00pm Monday through Friday. Full-time and part-time schedules, tuition from $1,190 per month. Tours by appointment, most weekdays at 10am."
That paragraph answers more parent questions than most center websites do.
Photos, and the rule you cannot break
95.9% of child care listings have at least one photo, so having photos is not an advantage. Having the right twenty is.
The rule first: no identifiable child appears in any marketing photo without written parental consent on file for that child. Not on Google, not on Facebook, not on your website, not in a flyer. Get a media release signed at enrollment with a real opt-out, keep an opted-out list somewhere the person taking photos will actually see it, and re-check it before every upload. Some state licensing rules go further than this. Yours is the standard that applies.
That still leaves you plenty. Shoot the infant room with cribs made up. The toddler room from the doorway at child height. The art wall. The daily schedule board. The playground with the fall surfacing visible. The kitchen. The sign-in area with the security keypad. The parking and drop-off flow, which is a genuine deciding factor for a parent doing a 7:45am handoff before work. Staff portraits with names and credentials, which is the most underused photo type in the category. Hands, backs of heads and blurred motion where children are present.
Add photos monthly. Google timestamps them and a profile that has not been touched in two years looks closed.
Hours that reflect how families actually use you
Only 7.5% of centers list Saturday hours and 5% list Sunday. If you serve nurses, restaurant staff, first responders or anyone on a rotating shift, saying so in your hours puts you in a field of almost nobody.
List your true opening time, not your program start. If the doors open at 6:30am and circle time starts at 9, the hours say 6:30am. Working parents filter on the opening time. Use the special hours feature for holiday closures, teacher in-service days and the winter break, because a parent who drives over on a day you are closed remembers it.
Posts, and what to actually post
Google posts expire after about a week and almost no center uses them, which makes them cheap attention. Four that work in this niche:
- Openings. "Two toddler spots opening in September, ages 18 months to 2 years." This is the single highest-performing post type for a center and it is just inventory.
- Milestones and program news. A new curriculum, a teacher earning a CDA credential, a licensing inspection passed clean.
- Enrollment deadlines. "Fall enrollment paperwork due August 15."
- Events parents can attend. An open house, a playground day, a parent night.
One a week is plenty. Write them like a note to a parent, not like an ad.
The Q&A section is doing damage right now
Anyone can ask a question on your profile and anyone can answer. Unanswered questions sit there in public. Worse, a wrong answer from a stranger sits there too.
Seed it yourself. Post the questions parents actually ask and answer them from the business account: What are your ratios? Are you licensed and what is your license number? Do you have infant openings? What is tuition? What happens if my child is sick? Do you provide meals? Is there a waitlist and how long? Are you accredited? Do you accept state child care assistance vouchers?
Eight to ten seeded questions with clear answers, and then check weekly for new ones. A question that sits unanswered for a month tells a parent exactly how you handle communication.
Attributes, services and the rest of the fields
Fill everything. Add "Identifies as women-owned" if it applies. Set the service area if you draw from surrounding towns. Add a public email address, because only 25.4% of centers have one and evening researchers want a low-stakes way to ask a question. Link to the tour request page on your site, not the homepage, and use a booking link if your scheduler supports it.
Then read Google's own guidelines at support.google.com/business once a year, because the rules on descriptions and categories move.
Frequently asked
Should I make a separate profile for each location? Yes, one per licensed physical location, each with its own address, phone and hours. Never one profile covering two buildings.
Will a home daycare profile show my house address? You can list a service area and hide the street address. Many licensed home providers do exactly that, and Google supports it.
What if my listing has an old owner or wrong hours? Claim it through the verification process rather than creating a new one. A duplicate splits your reviews, and in a category where the median is 6 reviews, you cannot afford to split anything.
Profile work is one of the services in the free 14-day trial, set up in your own account. Text or call (385) 832-6175. Compare yourself against the national figures in the benchmark report, and if reviews are your gap, start with the reviews guide.