<\/span><\/h2>\nAlmost every diner decision now happens inside Google’s own interface: photos, rating, hours, price level, and whether it says “busy now”. Many people never reach your website.<\/p>\n
Work through these in order:<\/p>\n
Primary category, as specific as possible.<\/b> “Italian restaurant” or “Vietnamese restaurant”, not “Restaurant”. The specific category is what makes you eligible for cuisine filtered searches, which are where the qualified traffic is.<\/p>\n
Attributes, all of them.<\/b> Outdoor seating, takeaway, dine in, delivery, wheelchair accessible, good for groups, accepts reservations, licensed, BYO, dog friendly, high chairs, live music. Each one is a filter someone uses. Leaving them blank removes you from those results.<\/p>\n
Dietary attributes especially.<\/b> Vegan options, vegetarian, halal, gluten free. These drive highly motivated searches and most restaurants leave them unset.<\/p>\n
Hours, including public holidays.<\/b> Set special hours for every public holiday. Australians search on public holidays constantly, Google surfaces “hours might differ” warnings, and a restaurant with confirmed holiday hours gets the click.<\/p>\n
Photos, updated constantly.<\/b> Restaurants are the most visual category in local search. Food photos, interior, exterior with signage so people can find the door, and the bar. Upload weekly rather than in one batch. Exterior shots matter more than owners expect, because people use them to recognise the place while walking.<\/p>\n
Reservation and ordering links.<\/b> Connect your booking system. Point the ordering link at your own online ordering, not the aggregator, for reasons covered below.<\/p>\n
Posts.<\/b> Specials, events, seasonal menus. Low effort and most competitors ignore them.<\/p>\n
Our Google Business Profile optimisation checklist<\/span><\/a> covers the full setup, and how Google’s local search algorithm works<\/span><\/a> explains the map pack ranking factors.<\/span><\/p>\n