Google Business Profile in Asia: The 2026 Country-by-Country Guide

Last updated July 22, 2026 — market-share figures are June 2026 Statcounter data; regulatory facts current as of publication.

Setting up a Google Business Profile in Asia follows the same mechanics as anywhere — but the stakes and the traps differ by country. In India and most of Southeast Asia, Google is effectively the only front door; in Japan it beats the local giants; in mainland China and South Korea it isn’t the play at all. Here’s the honest 2026 map.

Key takeaways

• India is the most Google-dependent large market on Earth — 97.85% search share (Statcounter, June 2026); Google reported 50M+ daily Maps searches and 900M+ monthly consumer-business connections in India. A verified profile there is not optional.
• Video verification is the regional default — plan for signage, premises and documents on camera; postcards are functionally dead in Asia (documented cases of postcards never arriving across months of attempts).
• Two honest exceptions: mainland China (Google blocked since 2010 — list on Amap/Baidu instead) and South Korea (Naver Map leads today; Korea’s February 2026 map-export approval makes claiming your profile now a smart hedge).
• Google’s chat feature died in July 2024 — across Asia the replacement is the local messenger on your profile: WhatsApp (India), Zalo (Vietnam), LINE (Thailand/Japan), KakaoTalk (Korea).
• The setup steps themselves are universal — run our master setup checklist, then apply the country notes below. Tools like ReputeMap handle the part that never ends: review requests and replies.

Asia in eight numbers

Each fact is one sentence, sourced and dated — cite them with their anchors.

• 97.85% — Google’s share of search in India, the most Google-dependent large market on Earth (Statcounter, June 2026).
• 50 million+ — daily Google Maps searches in India, per Google’s own India announcement (Google, 2023).
• 86.1% vs 61.3% — Japanese diners who use Google to find restaurants vs those using local gourmet platforms (TableCheck survey, n=1,100, 2022).
• 88% check, 46% distrust — Indians who routinely read Google reviews vs those reporting low or zero trust in them (LocalCircles, n=56,000+, 2022).
• 360 million — Amap daily active users in mainland China, where Google Maps has been blocked since 2010 (Alibaba Group, Oct 2025).
• 27.05M vs 11.71M — Naver Map vs KakaoMap monthly users in South Korea; Google Maps trails both (MobileIndex via Korea Herald, 2025).
• February 27, 2026 — the date South Korea conditionally approved Google’s map-data export after two decades of refusals, clearing the way for full Google Maps in Korea.
• July 31, 2024 — the date Google retired Business Profile chat; in Asia, WhatsApp, Zalo, LINE and KakaoTalk are the replacement channels.

The market reality, country by country

Market	Google search share (June 2026)	Where customers find businesses	Verification reality
India	97.85%	Google Search + Maps, WhatsApp	Video; phone edits need matching documents
Vietnam	95.59%	Google, Zalo, Facebook	Video (postal-only era is over)
Indonesia	93.65%	Google, WhatsApp, Instagram	Video; review-incentive suspensions documented
Philippines	90.3%	Google, Facebook	Video; align legal vs trade name first
Japan	59.04% (+ Yahoo! Japan runs on Google)	Google Maps beats gourmet sites for discovery	Video; standard
South Korea	contested: ~46% (Statcounter) vs ~30% (local panels)	Naver Place, KakaoMap	Claim GBP as a hedge; watch 2026 changes
Mainland China	— (Google blocked since 2010)	Amap (360M daily users), Baidu Maps, WeChat	GBP not applicable

Sources: Statcounter per-country data (June 2026); Google India (2023); Alibaba Group (Oct 2025); Korea Herald / MobileIndex (2025). Korean split shown both ways because international and local measurement disagree.

India: the highest-stakes profile you’ll ever set up

With 97.85% search share and Google’s own reported 50M+ daily Maps searches, an Indian business without a verified profile is invisible. Three India-specific realities the US-focused guides skip:

• The phone-number regime. Documented practitioner cases (2025) show phone-number edits freezing in “pending” until official documents — a utility bill or registration showing the same number — go through Google’s dedicated India escalation form. Keep the profile number identical to the one on your website before touching that field.
• Never bulk-rename or re-home listings. A documented 2025 case: a 12-branch coaching chain, operating since 2006, had all 12 profiles suspended simultaneously after consolidating accounts and trimming location suffixes from names. Make structural changes one listing at a time, weeks apart.
• The trust paradox is your strategy. A 56,000-respondent LocalCircles survey found 88% of Indians routinely check Google reviews — while 46% report low or zero trust in them. In a market that reads everything and believes half of it, volume alone doesn’t win; a profile where the owner visibly replies to every review, including the angry ones, is what reads as real. (Also note: Google removed the Q&A feature from Indian profiles in 2024 — ignore any checklist telling you to seed it.)

Southeast Asia: Google’s home turf with local traps

Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand are 90%+ Google markets (Statcounter, June 2026 — Vietnam’s local engine Cốc Cốc holds under 4%). The traps are practical:

• Malaysia: match the profile name to your SSM-registered business identity or expect verification friction; and don’t wait on postcards — a documented case shows a clinic receiving zero postcards across four attempts over three months. Go straight to video.
• Philippines: resolve the legal-name vs trade-name question before creating the listing — mismatches between registration papers and the public-facing name are a recurring verification blocker.
• Indonesia: a documented 2024 case saw a retailer suspended within a week of trading free merchandise for five-star reviews (54 reviews in seven days). Incentivized reviews violate Google policy everywhere; in a fast-growing review market the filters are watching for exactly this pattern.
• Thailand: video verification assumes street signs and house numbers exist. Rural and soi-addressed businesses have documented failures for lack of them — prepare alternative evidence: utility bills with the address, permanent signage in frame, neighboring landmarks.
• Vietnam: the postal-only verification era (documented as late as 2020) is over — video is the path, and your profile should carry a Zalo contact: 78.3M monthly users (2025), ahead of every foreign app.

Japan: Google quietly beat the local giants

Japan looks like a 59% Google market until you notice Yahoo! Japan’s search runs on Google’s engine — and that for the highest-value local vertical, the fight is already over: in a 1,100-respondent TableCheck survey, 86.1% of diners used Google to find restaurants versus 61.3% for the gourmet platforms. The playbook: complete profile, Japanese-language description and services, fresh photos, and replies to reviews in Japanese. LINE dominates messaging — put your LINE Official Account on the profile, and note Japan is one of the few Asian markets where Reserve with Google booking has operated.

The two honest exceptions: China and South Korea

Mainland China: GBP is not the play. Google Search left the mainland in 2010 and Maps is blocked. The platforms that matter: Amap — a record 360 million daily active users on October 1, 2025 (Alibaba’s official figure) — and Baidu Maps. If mainland customers matter to you, that’s where listing effort goes; your Google profile still serves Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Chinese travelers searching abroad.

South Korea: claim it, but build on Naver. Korean measurement is genuinely split — Statcounter shows Google at ~46% vs Naver ~44%, while local panel data shows Naver ~63% vs Google ~30% — but for maps, it isn’t close: Naver Map leads at 27.05M monthly users vs KakaoMap’s 11.71M (MobileIndex via Korea Herald, 2025), and Google Maps has run for years without full navigation because Korea barred map-data export. That changed on February 27, 2026, when regulators conditionally approved Google’s export request — Google Maps in Korea will now improve. The 2026 move: keep Naver Place as your primary listing, and claim + complete your Google profile today so you’re positioned before your competitors notice the shift.

Reviews and messaging: adapt the universal playbook

Two regional adjustments to the standard review strategy:

1. Reply in the reviewer’s language. Asian profiles collect reviews in English plus the local language (sometimes several). Replying in kind doubles your indexed profile text and reads as local care — a Bangkok café answering a Thai review in Thai and an English review in English is doing it right.
2. The messenger replaces chat. Google shut off its built-in chat in July 2024 (its own help page now points businesses toward text and WhatsApp). The Asian translation of that advice: put the market’s dominant messenger where customers can see it — WhatsApp in India (500M+ users), Zalo in Vietnam (78.3M), LINE in Thailand (54M) and Japan, KakaoTalk in Korea (~45M) — and answer there as fast as you’d answer a phone call.

For the setup itself — eligibility, naming, the video-verification kit, the launch week, and the 60-day trust window — everything in our setup checklist applies globally; this page is the Asian delta. And the part that outlasts setup — a steady flow of reviews and same-week replies across languages and time zones — is exactly what ReputeMap automates for $29–49/month: requests by email, QR or link, every review in one inbox with an AI-drafted reply you approve, and negative-review alerts within minutes, wherever your customers are.

Every market-share figure above is June 2026 Statcounter data; platform user numbers are from the companies’ own releases or major-outlet reporting, dated inline. Consumer-survey figures are labeled with source and year — see our statistics hub for the verified global numbers.