Most directors think of their website as the front door to their center. The first impression. The place where families decide if they want to learn more.
That's not quite right anymore.
For most families searching for childcare today, the first impression isn't your website. It's your Google Business Profile (GBP). It's the information panel that appears when someone searches your center's name or looks for preschools in your area. It's the thing they see before they click anything: your name, your rating, your photos, your hours, a snapshot of what other families said about you.
That panel is doing more work than your website. And most centers haven't given it nearly enough attention.
PMG's 2025 research on how families find child care found that Google accounted for 84.5% of U.S. search engine market share. Bing, Yahoo, and everything else split the rest. For practical purposes, being visible on Google isn't one channel among many. It's the channel.
What families actually see first.
When a family types "preschool in [city]" or even just your center's name into Google, they're met immediately with the local pack: a map with three to five results, each showing a business name, a rating, a photo, and basic information. Below that, and sometimes embedded within it, is your full profile: hours, photos, services, questions and answers, reviews, a description, a link to book a tour.
Families are reading this before they read your homepage. They're forming opinions here. They're deciding, in seconds, whether to click through or keep scrolling.
A profile that's incomplete, has no photos, or shows a 3.1-star rating doesn't get the click. Not when there's a fully-built profile with warm photos and 4.8 stars next to it.
What a complete profile actually looks like.
Completeness isn't just about filling in every field, though that matters. It's about creating a profile that tells a consistent, compelling story about who you are and what families can expect.
The business category matters more than most people realize. Preschool or Day Care Center should be your primary category. Google uses it to determine what searches you're relevant for. An incorrect or missing category quietly removes you from searches you should be appearing in.
Photos are probably the highest-leverage element on the profile. Real photos. Not stock images. Not the logo in a white box. Photos of your actual classrooms, your outdoor space, your teachers working with children. Families are trying to picture their child there. They can't do that with generic imagery. A curated set of authentic photos, a minimum of ten replaced and refreshed over time, signals an active, real, trustworthy center.
The description is your moment to say something. Not just your name and address. Not just "we offer quality childcare." Something real. What your philosophy is. What age groups you serve. What makes the experience at your center different. It doesn't have to be long. It has to be honest and specific.
The Q&A section is almost always overlooked. It shouldn't be. Families ask the same questions repeatedly: do you offer infant care, what are your hours, are you licensed, do you have openings. Having those answered directly on your profile means families get their questions resolved without needing to pick up the phone or navigate your website. It also tells Google you're engaged and responsive.
An incomplete profile isn't a neutral thing.
This is the part that matters most. A profile that's half-filled, or claimed but not maintained, doesn't just fail to impress. It actively sends a signal. Families read an incomplete profile as a center that isn't paying attention. If you can't keep your own Google profile current, what does that say about how you run your center?
That's an unfair inference. But it's the one families make. And they make it in about four seconds.
Your GBP isn't a set-it-and-forget-it tool. It's a living first impression. Keeping it complete, accurate, and current is one of the simplest and highest-impact things a center can do to improve visibility and the quality of the impression it makes before a family ever reaches your website.
The front door has moved. Make sure it's worth walking through.
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