Google Is Now Writing Your GBP Services. Here’s How to Control What It Says.

You didn’t add that service. You’re sure of it.

But there it is, sitting in your Google Business Profile, listed under Services, described in language that sounds almost like yours but not quite. You didn’t write it. You didn’t approve it. And your customers can see it.

This isn’t a glitch. It’s Google’s AI, and it’s been doing this for a while now.

What’s Going On

Google has been using Gemini AI to automatically generate service listings inside business knowledge panels. It launched quietly: no announcement, no notification to business owners, no opt-in required.

The AI pulls from multiple sources: your website copy, customer reviews, photos you’ve uploaded, your business category, and aggregated data from similar businesses in your area. It uses all of that to infer what services you offer, then writes descriptions and adds them to your profile.

it gets it right. A plumber who does emergency pipe repair might find that listed accurately. But “right” is far from guaranteed.

The AI has no way to know which services you’ve discontinued, which you stopped offering because they were unprofitable, or which ones belong to a competitor across town it confused you with. It fills gaps with its best guess.

Joy Hawkins at Sterling Sky: one of the most-cited GBP researchers in local SEO: documented this in February 2026. She noted that AI-generated content in GBPs isn’t new territory. Google has already deployed it for business descriptions (via the “Suggest description” tool), restaurant menu summaries, and Q&A sections. The services section is just the next layer.

The direction is clear: Google is building toward a fully AI-managed local search experience. Business owners who aren’t paying attention will have less and less say over how they appear.

This ties directly into picking the right GBP categories, which is worth a read.

Why This Matters More Than It Sounds

Your GBP services section isn’t decorative. It’s a ranking signal.

Sterling Sky tested the impact of adding services across multiple industries and markets. The finding: adding the right services to your profile can improve your ranking for related keywords within 24 to 72 hours. The flip side of that finding is what concerns us here. Wrong services create confusion about what your business does, which works against you.

If Google’s AI decides you offer services you don’t, and leaves them there uncorrected, a few things happen:

You get the wrong calls. Someone searches for a service you don’t do. They find your profile, call you, and waste your time and theirs. That’s not a near miss. It’s a call you never wanted.

Your reviews get complicated. When customers show up expecting something your profile implied but you don’t offer, that disappointment ends up in a review. The AI doesn’t get the one-star rating. You do.

Your ranking signal gets muddied. Google matches businesses to searches based on profile completeness and relevance. A service list full of inaccurate AI content sends mixed signals about what you do.

None of this happens overnight. It compounds quietly. That’s the danger.

We put together a complete our full GBP optimization checklist to help with exactly this.

How to Find Out What’s on Your Profile Right Now

This is a two-minute check. Do it now if you haven’t recently.

Open your Google Business Profile dashboard. Go to Edit Profile. Click Services.

What you’ll see is your current services list, including anything Google’s AI may have added, modified, or expanded without your knowledge. Look carefully, not just at whether the service names sound right, but at the descriptions.

The AI write in a neutral, generic voice. If a description reads like it came from a brochure for every business in your category rather than yours specifically, that’s a flag.

While you’re there, check these things:

• Are there services listed you don’t offer?
• Are there services missing that you do offer?
• Do the descriptions reflect what you say and do, or do they read like a generic summary?
• Are prices listed that don’t match your current rates?

The last one catches people off guard. Google has been pulling pricing data from reviews and websites and surfacing it in service listings. If your prices changed and your profile didn’t, customers may see old numbers.

For the full breakdown, see setting up your GBP services list.

How to Fix It

You can edit, remove, and add services directly in your GBP dashboard. Google doesn’t lock you out of your own profile.

Step 1: Remove what’s wrong. Find any AI-generated services you didn’t add and don’t offer. Delete them. Don’t leave them in place thinking “it’s probably fine.” It isn’t.

Step 2: Correct descriptions. For services you do offer, replace generic AI descriptions with your own language. Be specific. “Emergency pipe repair, same-day service within a 30-mile radius” is more useful to customers and to Google than “Plumbing services available in the area.”

Step 3: Add what’s missing. The Sterling Sky research found that adding specific, granular services, not just the broad category: improves ranking for related keywords. If you specialize in a particular type of work, name it explicitly. Don’t assume Google knows.

Step 4: Add pricing where it makes sense. GBP lets you add price ranges to services. For businesses with predictable service costs, this is worth filling in. It helps customers self-qualify before they call, which means the calls you do get are more likely to convert.

Step 5: Set a review schedule. This isn’t a one-time fix. Google’s AI will keep making suggestions. The only protection is periodic review. Once a month, check your services section. Two minutes. Calendar it.

The Bigger Picture

The AI-generated services issue is part of a wider shift in how Google manages local business profiles.

It started with descriptions. Google began suggesting AI-written business descriptions, and some business owners accepted them without reading carefully. Then it moved to Q&A sections, where Google began answering common customer questions using AI: those answers appeared on profiles whether or not the business owner had seen them.

Services are the latest domain. It won’t be the last.

The pattern is consistent: Google is building an AI layer on top of local search that tries to be helpful to searchers even when business owners haven’t done the work themselves. The problem is that “helpful to searchers” and “accurate for your business” aren’t the same thing.

For a business owner who checks their profile once a year and calls it done, this is a growing liability. Google is making decisions about your business’s public representation based on inferred data, and some of those decisions will be wrong.

For a business that manages its GBP on an ongoing basis, this is manageable. You review, you correct, you stay ahead of it.

What Curve Manages for You

This is exactly the kind of thing that falls through the cracks when GBP management is something you do “when you get a chance.”

The moment you’re busy (and that’s a good problem for most business owners) is the moment you stop checking. That’s when the AI creep happens. A new service appears. A description gets replaced. Prices from two years ago resurface. You don’t notice. Customers do.

At Curve, reviewing and correcting your GBP services section is part of ongoing monthly management, not a setup-and-done checklist item. When Google changes something, we catch it. When AI-generated content appears, we evaluate and correct it before it causes problems.

This is one of the reasons the “set up your GBP yourself” playbook breaks down over time. It’s not the setup that’s hard. It’s staying on top of what Google keeps doing to your profile after you’ve set it up.

If you want to see what your current profile looks like and whether AI has made changes you haven’t noticed, the Gap Report is where to start. We review your GBP against what Google is currently showing, flag anything that’s off, and document the specific fixes.

Request your free Gap Report → curveseo.com/gap-report

FAQs

Can I turn off AI-generated services on my Google Business Profile?

No. Google doesn’t offer an opt-out for AI-assisted suggestions in GBP. What you can do is monitor your services section regularly and manually correct anything the AI adds or changes. Businesses that stay on top of their profile have fewer problems because there’s less of a gap for the AI to fill.

How often does Google’s AI update or change service listings?

There’s no published schedule. Google has said it uses signals from your profile, website, and reviews continuously. Changes can appear without notice. Monthly review is the practical minimum.

Do AI-generated services hurt my Google ranking?

Inaccurate services send Google the wrong relevance signal. When your profile lists services you don’t offer, Google matches your business to searches you don’t want, which means your profile appears for irrelevant queries, burns CTR signal on clicks that don’t convert, and dilutes the ranking accuracy you’ve built over time. Wrong services don’t just waste calls. They quietly work against the ranking you’ve earned.

What’s the difference between “suggested” services and AI-generated ones?

In GBP, Google may “suggest” pre-defined services based on your category. These appear as options you can accept or decline when setting up your profile. The AI-generated services we’re describing here are different: they can appear on your live profile without any action from you, inferred from external sources like your website or reviews.

Is this affecting all types of businesses?

Joy Hawkins’ research suggests it’s happening across industries, though the extent varies by category and how much data Google can gather about similar businesses. Service businesses with a thinner online footprint (minimal website, older reviews) may be more susceptible because there’s more room for AI inference to fill gaps.

Checklist: GBP Services Review

Do this once, then once a month:

• Log into your Google Business Profile dashboard
• Go to Edit Profile → Services
• Review every service listed: did you add it, or did Google?
• Delete any services you don’t offer
• Correct any descriptions that don’t sound like you or aren’t accurate
• Add any services you offer that aren’t listed
• Add price ranges where applicable
• Check for services with inaccurate pricing
• Calendar a repeat review for 30 days from now

Curve SEO is a productized Local SEO operating system for 1–3-location businesses. For $500/mo per location, we run your GBP, review flywheel, media, citations, and reporting: so you own your neighborhood without ad-spend roulette.