A Google Business Profile for commercial real estate firms is free, and it does one job a website cannot: it is the panel Google shows when an owner or a tenant types your firm's name. Set it up with a real office address or as a service-area business, link your own website, keep one listing per office, and ask the clients you closed with for a review.
We wanted to know how many commercial brokerages have done that. So we took the 34 Sacramento-region commercial brokerages from our audit of their websites and looked each one up through Google's own Places data, the data behind Google Maps. As of 2026-10-17:
Commercial brokerages, Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado and Yolo counties
A Google listing we could tie to the firm
No listing we could find
A listing with the right name, but we could not tie it to the firm
Firms with a working website of their own but no listing
Of the 19 listings: no reviews at all
Of the 11 with any reviews: median number
Share of all 220 reviews held by the top two firms
Of the 19 listings: no website linked, or a link that does not load
| What we found | Count |
|---|---|
| Commercial brokerages, Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado and Yolo counties | 34 |
| A Google listing we could tie to the firm | 19 |
| No listing we could find | 13 |
| A listing with the right name, but we could not tie it to the firm | 2 |
| Firms with a working website of their own but no listing | 6 of 21 |
| Of the 19 listings: no reviews at all | 8 |
| Of the 11 with any reviews: median number | 7 |
| Share of all 220 reviews held by the top two firms | 77% |
| Of the 19 listings: no website linked, or a link that does not load | 4 |
We build websites for commercial brokers, so weigh this accordingly. Everything above is measured, the method is at the end, and no firm is named for a gap.
Six firms with a website have no listing
It is easy to assume the firms that bothered to build a website also claimed the free Google listing. In this sample most did: 15 of the 21 with a working site of their own show up on Google Maps. Six do not, in the searches we ran, which means a tenant who reads that firm's name on a sign or a flyer and searches it gets a website at best and somebody else's panel beside it.
The firms without a website mostly have no listing either. Four of the 13 do, and three of those four leave the website field empty, which is honest, since there is nothing to link.
Google says the profile counts toward being found as well as being checked. Its page on how local ranking works says "Businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results." Google also sells the ads that sit above those results, so read that as the platform's own advice about its own product. It is still the only source that knows.
Owners and tenants do look. A 2023 study LoopNet commissioned with Google found that "80% of tenants and 89% of investors who hired a broker" keep searching online on their own. LoopNet sells exposure to brokers, so weigh it accordingly too.
Use an address Google will accept
Commercial brokers work out of executive suites, shared offices, home offices and mailbox suites more than most businesses with "Inc" on the door, and Google's guidelines are specific about which of those count:
- A mailbox or virtual office does not. "If your business rents a physical mailing address but doesn't operate out of that location, also known as a virtual office, that location isn't eligible for a Business Profile."
- A co-working office counts only with conditions. It needs "clear signage," has to receive "customers at the location during business hours," and must be "staffed during business hours by your business staff."
- A home office should be hidden. "If you're a service-area business, you should hide your business address from customers." You then list the area you serve instead.
One of the 19 listings in our sample is set up as a service-area business with no address, and another shows only its city and ZIP code. The other 17 show a street address. If the address on your license is a numbered suite at a mail center, a listing at that address is the kind Google removes, so use the office you actually work from or go service-area.
Hours are optional if you work by appointment
Five of the 19 listings show no hours. For most businesses that is a gap. For a commercial brokerage it may be the right call: Google's guidelines say "certain types of businesses shouldn't provide hours," including "those that operate only by appointment." If clients can walk in, list the hours. If every meeting is booked, leave them off and say "by appointment" in the description.
One listing per office, under the name you use now
Google's rule is short: "There should only be one profile per business." Its help page on duplicates adds what happens otherwise: "If a profile is considered a duplicate, it won't show on Google Search or Maps." You do not get to choose which one survives.
One firm in our sample has two listings at two different addresses, both pointing at its website. One of them is filed under no business type at all. Another firm's listing still carries the company's earlier name, while its website uses the current one. Neither is rare, and both come from the same thing: a listing created once and never opened again. Search your firm's name on Google Maps, claim every listing that is yours, and ask Google to merge or remove the extras.
The name itself has a rule too: "Including unnecessary information in your business name isn't permitted, and could result in the suspension of your Business Profile." Every listing in this sample got that right. None adds "Commercial Real Estate Sacramento" or a property type to a name that does not already carry it.
Reviews are the open lane
Eight of the 19 listings have no reviews. Three have one. Among the 11 with any, the median is seven, and 220 reviews in total are spread across the whole sample.
Two firms hold 169 of those 220, 77 percent: Jacks Commercial Real Estate, with 100 reviews averaging 5.0, and Gallaway Commercial, with 69 averaging 4.9. Both were also among the firms we named for good practice when we read what these sites show an owner. The rest of the field is close enough to zero that a firm asking every closed client for a review would pass most of it within a year.
Google says reviews count. The same ranking page: "More reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking." And its tips page gives the mechanics: "you can ask customers to visit a Google link or scan a QR code." What you cannot do is offer anything for a review, and you cannot ask your own agents to write one. Both rules are in our post on Google reviews for real estate, and they apply to commercial firms the same way.
Your brokers can have their own
Google treats real estate agents as individual practitioners. Its guidelines say a practitioner "should create their own dedicated Business Profile" if they work in a public-facing role and "can be contacted directly at the verified location during stated hours." A firm with several brokers in one office can have a profile for the firm and one for each broker.
The exception is the one-broker firm. If the principal is the only public-facing person at a branded firm, Google says "it's best for the practitioner to share a Business Profile with the organization." Many firms in this sample are exactly that size, so one profile under the firm's name is the right setup for them.
Our own listing
Flare Built has a Google Business Profile. It is set up as a service-area business with the address hidden, since we work with clients remotely and by meeting, it shows hours, and it links this site. It has three reviews. That is fewer than the median among the commercial firms above that have any, so the advice in the last section is advice we are taking too.
A Google Business Profile for commercial real estate, step by step
- Search your firm's name and city on Google Maps. Claim every listing that is yours. If there is none, create one at business.google.com.
- Check the address. A real office you work from, or service-area with the address hidden. Never a mailbox.
- Use the name on your door and your website today, not the one from three years ago.
- One listing per office. Report the extras.
- Link your own website, and make sure the link loads.
- Leave hours off if you work by appointment, and say so in the description.
- Send your last five closed clients the review link.
What we would build for a commercial brokerage
The listing is what a searcher sees first. The website is where they decide whether you are the broker for their building, so it needs what owners actually ask about: deals you have closed, who will do the work, your current listings on your own domain, and a phone number that matches the one on Google. We build those for commercial firms, and we will look at your listing and your site together if you send us your firm's name. Get in touch.
How we did this, so you can check it
- The sample. The 34 brokerages from our website audit: every corporation in the California Department of Real Estate's licensee file of 2026-09-23 with a mailing address in Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado or Yolo county and Commercial or CRE in its name, less four that turned out not to be brokerages in practice. It is a sample of firms that call themselves commercial, so it misses commercial brokerages with other names.
- The lookup. Google's Places API, searched on 2026-10-17 by firm name and city, then by the officer's name on the license. A listing counted as the firm's when its website matched the firm's own site, or its street address matched the address on the license. Every other candidate was read by a person and accepted only on an exact name plus a website or location that fit. Firms still unmatched were searched again by brand name alone and by their own web address. Thirteen were left.
- Two we left out of both counts. Each had a listing with the firm's exact name, but one was filed as a finance business and marked permanently closed, and the other as a general contractor, and nothing on either tied it to the licensed brokerage.
- What we could not see. The Places data does not show a listing's chosen category, whether it has been claimed, or what its description says, so this post makes no claim about any of those.
- Limits. Thirty-four firms with one kind of name in four counties, on one day. Nothing here is a rate for commercial brokers in general.