Show your gym's real equipment, desk hours and door hours on Google Maps

What a person checks before a gym joins their week

People look for a gym near a route they already travel: a gym near me, a gym open early, a gym with a squat rack. They are checking whether this club fits into their week.

• Distance is judged as a trip that repeats several times a week, from home or from work.
• Equipment decides the shortlist, and the business name says nothing about it: how heavy the dumbbells go, whether there is a free rack, which cardio machines stand on the floor.
• Photos are read as an inventory. People count racks and benches, and many can tell this club's floor from a stock picture.
• Hours are judged at the time the person would come, early in the morning or after work.
• The way in matters more than for most businesses: where to park, which door, how the turnstile works.
• A newcomer looks for a way to start, whether a membership, a single visit or an introductory session, whichever the club actually offers, and for what happens on the first visit.

The fields a gym is actually judged on

Here the fields describe a room and a routine, and a gym gets only a few of them, so each one has to be used well.

• Services listed as zones of the floor: free weights, machines, cardio, the functional area, the stretching space, named the way members name them.
• A primary category that matches how the room is used. A floor people train on alone and a studio with a class timetable are different businesses on the map.
• Attributes that someone coming straight from work needs: changing rooms, showers, lockers, parking, an accessible entrance, a women's area where one exists.
• Staffed hours and card access hours kept apart. Where the profile offers a second type of hours, it carries one of them; where it does not, the difference is written in the description.
• Photos ordered as a walk from the car park and the members' door to each zone, and a link that opens this club's page rather than the group's home page.

Settings a gym profile uses before the January rush

Each item below is a setting in the profile and the reason a club leans on it at the turn of the year, from the category list to the opening date of a new site. Your team confirms the fact first, and only then does the manager edit.

1. 1

   Name the pool or the sauna in the services and photos, not as a category

   The most specific entry the list offers goes first as the primary category, with a few additional ones for departments, not one for every service. Google tests a category by what the business is, not by what it has, and its guidelines name a swimming pool category as wrong for a health club, so a pool or a sauna the club runs itself is described in the services and shown in the photos. A cafe, a physio room or a shop run by another operator inside the club is different: it gets a profile of its own, and its category stays off the club's. The list differs by country and a category cannot be invented, so the manager reads the list the club's country shows before choosing.

   Google's help on this: Manage your business category

2. 2

   Give each joining drive a start and an end

   An Offer post needs a title, dates and a time, and an Event post a title with start and end dates, so a January or September drive can leave the profile on its last day instead of promising terms that no longer exist. Posts can be scheduled ahead, and a drive that runs long is edited, not reposted. A post without a date range is archived after six months, and a phone number in its text can get it rejected.

   Google's help on this: Create & manage posts on your Business Profile

3. 3

   Set the New Year closure for the desk, and say in words what the card still opens

   Google recommends confirming the hours for every official holiday, including those equal to the regular day, and special hours are meant for a short stop, six days at most. For a club the dated entry describes the desk: on that date it stands in for the regular hours and says nothing about the door. Whether the card still opens the door goes into the description or a post, in the club's own words. A refit that shuts the whole club for more than a week is a temporary closure, not special hours; a zone behind hoarding is neither, and goes into the services.

   Google's help on this: How to set Special hours

4. 4

   Open the visitor updates in the Maps app each month

   Members can post photo updates from the Google Maps app, and an owner cannot stop them. Those photos often show what has changed, which at a gym may be a machine that has left or a changing room that looks different. The manager opens the updates by visitors, tells you what they show and files a report on any picture that breaks Google's content policies; the decision to remove it is Google's.

   Google's help on this: About photo updates from customers

5. 5

   Create a new site's profile with its opening date set

   A club that has not opened can set an opening date up to a year ahead, and its profile appears on Google 90 days before that date. In those weeks it can carry posts, photos of the fit-out and a description, while visitors cannot add reviews or photos until the club officially opens. After opening, the profile wears a Recently opened tag for 90 days.

   Google's help on this: Add a business opening date

Posts for the weeks a gym is full: joining drives, new kit, holiday hours

Useful posts for a gym are about equipment and access: what is new on the floor and what is different about getting in this week.

• New equipment or a reopened zone, photographed where it stands.
• Hours that are usually calmer, published as information rather than a promise.
• Changes to the way in while they last: a closed car park, a side door in use, a lift out of service.
• Holiday and short-day hours for both the desk and card access, put up before the day and taken down after it.

What the manager keeps in line, and what only the club can say