Martial arts schools

Tell parents and adults on Google Maps what your martial arts school teaches, to whom, and how to start

On Google Maps, your manager lays out which disciplines your school teaches, which of them run for children, teens and adults, how a newcomer's first class works and when each group is on the mats, all in the words your coaches confirm. A gym sells time on an open floor; your school sells a coached group with its own discipline, and the listing should say so. Each edit is agreed with you before it goes live and logged in your dashboard.

One location from €75 a month

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The request is free and creates no obligation; a manager replies within one business day.

Disciplines, age groups, the hall, then the schedule

Each step answers a question a parent or an adult has before walking onto the mats, taken in the order a newcomer actually asks them.

1

Name the disciplines the school really teaches

Your coaches confirm which disciplines have a group this season, for example judo, karate, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, boxing or MMA. Each becomes its own service with its own text, written by the coach who teaches it. A discipline that survives only in an old post, with no group behind it, comes off the listing.
2

Split the age groups and describe the first class

Children, teens and adults get separate services, each with the age range the school sets and the point at which a child moves up. Beside them, the first class is described as the school runs it: booked or walk-in, which group, whether the newcomer trains or watches. It is called free only if the school says it is.
3

Show the hall and the gear a beginner needs

The school confirms which entrance and which room each group uses, and the pin is checked against that door. What to wear to the first class and what the school lends, such as gloves or a gi, is written in the coach's words, together with what a beginner can buy later.
4

Publish the schedule by group and by season

Weekdays and times are published for each group, and the fall start, the summer schedule and any break go up as posts with their dates. Competitions and gradings appear only as the school announces them, never on our own initiative and never as a promise that a student will take part.

Which disciplines, which ages, and where does a newcomer start?

Send the profile link with three short answers: the disciplines, the age groups and how the first class works. Your manager reads the listing as a parent and as an adult would, marks any belt claim, mixed group or old first-class offer that would mislead, and proposes a package.

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Two readers, one school: what a parent and an adult check first

Two very different people search for the same school. A parent is looking for a place for a child of a certain age and often has no firm view on the discipline yet. An adult usually arrives with the discipline already chosen and opens the listing to check that this school really teaches it.

The discipline is the first filter for the adult. Somebody who typed BJJ near me wants to see a Brazilian jiu-jitsu group on this listing, not a general martial arts sign with a karate class behind it.
Age is the first filter for the parent. A listing that shows grown men sparring and says nothing about a children's group leaves the mother of a seven-year-old guessing whether her child belongs there at all.
The start comes next: can a beginner come with no experience, is there a first class to join or to watch, does it need booking, and what happens after it. When the listing is silent on this, the call gets put off for another month.
The schedule is read group by group. A parent needs the afternoon slot for the children's group, an adult needs the evening one, and a single line of opening hours answers neither of them.
Photos are read for the hall: mats or a ring, the locker rooms, a place where parents can sit, and whether the people on the mats look like the person who is about to join.
Reviews are read differently by the two readers. Parents look for how coaches treat children and how a group is supervised; adults look for how beginners are brought into sparring and whether the training matched the name on the door.
The way in is checked last and is easy to get wrong: a hall inside a sports complex, a basement under a store, a room rented from another club, with a door the map does not show.

Where a school's listing mixes up disciplines and age groups

These listings go wrong when they blur two things the school keeps strictly apart on the mats: which discipline is taught, and to which age group.

Every discipline sits under one word, martial arts, so the person who wants boxing and the person who wants judo both have to call to find out whether their sport has a group here.
Children's and adults' groups share one service and one description. Parents bring a small child to an adult evening class, and adults assume the school only works with kids.
The first class is described with an offer the school stopped running, or not at all. A newcomer either arrives expecting something free or never arrives.
The pin marks the main entrance of the sports complex while the hall is reached from the back of the building, and the first class starts with a late, anxious child and a parent on the phone.
The hours field shows the school open all day long, while the hall is locked between groups. A parent who comes at noon to sign a child up finds nobody there.
Belts, dan grades, coaching titles and federation memberships were typed into the description by whoever set the profile up, in words the school cannot back with a single document.
Photos of children on the mats and at gradings are published without a recorded yes from their parents, and a mother finds her son in the gallery before anyone at the school thought to ask.

Where a school's groups live on the profile

Nothing in the Business Profile is built for a discipline, an age group or a class time. Those facts end up scattered over the category, the services, the description, the photos and posts, and every one of them has to tell the same story about who trains here and when.

A primary category that names what the school is, a martial arts school or the discipline it is known for, chosen from the names Google offers in your country. Other disciplines join as secondary categories only when a group of their own exists.
One service per discipline and age group, for example judo for children, judo for adults and boxing for teens, each with the age range the school sets and a line on who the group suits.
A service for the first class, written the way the school runs it: whether it needs booking, which group a newcomer joins, what to wear, and whether the newcomer trains or watches.
The description, which names the disciplines, keeps children's groups and adult groups in separate sentences, and leaves the details to the services.
Hours need a decision. Google's guidelines name class schedules among the varied-hours cases that should not carry regular hours, so the field shows when someone answers the phone or stays empty, and the times of each group live in the services, in posts and on the linked page.
Attributes a family checks before the first visit, such as a wheelchair-accessible entrance or restrooms, set only where the building really has them.
A link from the profile that opens the schedule or the sign-up page for this school, not the home page of the sports complex it rents from.

The monthly questions the manager puts to the head coach

Once a month the manager goes through a fixed list of questions with the school, following the four steps of the workflow, and touches the listing only where an answer is new. The facts come from the head coach or whoever keeps the schedule.

Whether a group opened, closed, moved to another evening or changed its age range, and whether a discipline was added or dropped.
Whether the first class still works as the listing says: booked or walk-in, which group, what to bring, and who meets the newcomer at the door.
Whether anything changed about the hall: a new entrance, a second room, a summer move, a parking lot closed for repairs.
Which gradings, competitions or seminars the school has put on its own calendar, with their dates, and which past ones still have to come down.
The sign-up link is followed all the way through, so a parent reaches the children's form and not one built only for adults.
New photos are checked against the list of parents and adult students who agreed to be shown, before any of them is queued.
Reviews that arrived since the last month are sorted into children's groups, adult groups and the hall, so each goes to whoever answers for it.

Settings for a school that teaches children and adults under one roof

Settings that matter to a school with children's and adult groups, from the category list to the sign-up form, each with its reason. The head coach confirms the fact, and only then does the manager edit.

1

If your discipline is missing from Google's list, take the nearest general category

A business cannot invent a category for Google's list, and the list is not the same in every country, so a discipline may have no entry of its own where the school is. Google's guidance is then to choose a general category that describes the business, plus a few additional ones, not one for each class. The discipline itself goes into a service and its description, written by the coach who teaches it.

Google's help on this: Manage your business category
2

Choose which sign-up form is the preferred link

When a profile holds more than one link, Google lets the business mark one as preferred, and it then sits at the top. A school with one form for a child's first class and another for adults sets the one most visitors need as preferred, and the manager taps each link on a phone to see that it lands on the right form. A link from a booking partner the school does not use is removed through that partner.

Google's help on this: Manage your local business links
3

Decide whether the summer break is a closure

Google's rule is the temporary closure mark for a stop longer than a week or for the off-season, and special hours for anything shorter. A school whose hall shuts completely in August can use the closure, knowing that on broad searches a temporarily closed business can rank after open ones. A school that keeps summer groups going stays open and posts the summer schedule with its dates.

Google's help on this: Mark your business as closed
4

Look at the photos parents add after a grading

Parents and students can post photo updates from the Maps app, and the school cannot stop them. After a grading or a tournament, a picture of someone else's child may be up before anyone at the school has asked a parent. The manager reads the visitor updates each month and lists them for you; where a photo breaks Google's content policies, the report is filed from the same screen and Google decides.

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

Replying to a parent about a child, and to an adult about their own training

A school's reviews come from two directions: parents writing about a child, and adults writing about their own training. The reply has to suit the reader, and it never speaks about a child in a way the parent did not start.

A parent's review is answered to the parent. The reply never repeats the child's name, age, belt or anything the child did in class, even when the review mentions it.
When a review praises a coach, the reply names the group or the discipline. A coach's name appears only if the reviewer used it first.
If a review says the classes fell short of what the family hoped for, the reply describes how the group trains and offers a conversation, and never promises that another season will change it.
A complaint about how beginners are brought into sparring is answered in the head coach's own words about how the school does it, not with a general sentence about safety.
When the same thing comes up in several reviews, such as a children's group that is too big, a cold locker room or a class that starts late, the manager passes it to the head coach as a list by group, because the fix happens in the hall.
An adult who came for one discipline and found another gets a plain answer about what the school teaches, and the listing is checked for the words that misled them.

Where a human has to step in

When a review concerns an injury, a fight, a child's safety or how a coach behaved, the manager brings it to you at once and drafts no reply until you have decided what the school will say.
A reply never offers a refund, a free month or a move to another group that you have not agreed to in writing.

Parents and adult students each get a reply that suits them

The manager writes replies that never repeat a child's name, age, belt or class activity. Reviews about sparring or how beginners are brought in are shown to the head coach and published after approval.

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Posts that follow the school calendar

Posts for a school follow its calendar: a group opening, a change to the schedule, a grading the school has announced, a summer break and the day training resumes.

A new group, with its discipline, age range, weekdays and start date, and a line on how a newcomer joins it.
Schedule changes for the season: the fall start, the summer schedule, a group that moves to another evening, each with the date it takes effect.
Gradings, competitions and seminars as event posts, only once the school has announced them itself, with the dates and the organizer named as the school names them.
What a beginner needs for the first class, in the coach's words: what to wear, what the school lends, such as gloves or a gi, and what can wait until later.
Current pictures of the hall: the mats, the ring or the cage where there is one, the locker rooms and the bench where parents wait.
A new coach joining, introduced in their own words; a belt, grade or title goes in only in the form they use and can prove on paper.

The school's own hall, and the rented gyms it uses a few evenings

One location

A school with its own hall has one address, one door and a schedule that changes every season. The job is to hold the disciplines, the age groups, the first class and the entrance to what the coaches confirm each month.

A network

A school may train in more than one place: its own hall plus rented school gyms or rooms in a sports complex a few evenings a week. Only a place the school runs itself, under its own sign and with people there during stated hours, can carry a profile of its own; a rented slot in a building run by others is named in the services and posts instead. A location with a profile of its own is billed on its own package, apart from the others.

What the head coach confirms, and what the manager keeps in line

What the manager does

Keeps disciplines and age groups as separate services, and keeps the description free of anything that blends children's groups with adult ones.
Keeps the first class described exactly as the school runs it, and removes any line about a free lesson the school does not offer.
Publishes schedule changes, gradings and competitions only once the school has announced them, and takes each one down after its date.
Removes any promise about what a child will learn to do, feel or become, and any title or membership the school has not confirmed.

What you confirm

Which disciplines run for which ages this season, and the age at which a child moves up to the teen or adult group.
How the first class works: booking or walk-in, which group, what to wear, and whether a parent may stay and watch.
Which entrance and which room each group uses, whether it trains on mats or in a ring, whether shoes come off at the door and where a parent may sit during class, plus what changes over the summer.
Every belt, grade, title and federation membership you want shown, in your wording, with the document behind it.

Four weeks from one catch-all service to one group per discipline and age

an example of the process, not a client result

Week 1

Who trains here. Together you write down every discipline and age group the school runs this season, with the age boundaries the coaches set. Anything on the listing that is not on that list is marked to come off.
Week 2

Services and the first class. The single catch-all service becomes one service per discipline and age group, and the first class is described in the school's own words. Titles, belts and memberships without a document behind them come off.
Week 3

The hall and the schedule. The pin is checked against the entrance the groups actually use, the hours field is fixed or emptied, and the school sends pictures of the door, the mats and the locker rooms.
Week 4

Replies, consent and the report. The review backlog is answered in the voice agreed at the start, any picture of a child whose parent never said yes is taken down, and the closing summary is in writing: the edits made, the groups whose descriptions still wait for a coach's confirmation, and the pictures or papers still missing.

This is an example, not a result from any school: the usual order of the work, which a school with one discipline and one hall gets through faster than one with four disciplines and a rented gym.

Checks for a school, made as the parent of a six-year-old and as a boxer would

Find your school on Google Maps and read the services as the parent of a six-year-old would. If you cannot tell which group that child would join, neither can the parent.
Read the listing as an adult who wants one discipline, say boxing. Check that the word appears in a service, and not only in a photo caption or last year's post.
Look for how a beginner starts. If the profile says nothing about the first class, or promises a free one you no longer run, that is the first line to fix.
Walk from the parking lot to the pin with a phone in your hand. If it lands on the main door of the building while the groups use a side entrance, a newcomer's first evening starts late.
Look at your hours for a weekday noon when no group is on the mats. If Google says open, a parent will come to sign up and find a locked door.
Open each photo that shows a child. If the parent's consent is not on file, take that picture down today.

See your school as a parent and as a boxer would, or ask us

The manager reads the listing both ways, checks that each discipline appears as a service and that the first class is described accurately. You get back only the decisions that belong to the school.

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What a school's listing never promises, and which halls it cannot claim

Nothing on the listing promises that a child will learn to defend themselves, grow more disciplined or be safer, and no reply takes credit for a change a parent describes. The profile describes the training, not what it will do for a child.
Belts, dan grades, coaching titles and federation memberships are published only in the school's wording and only with paper behind them. They are never our own statement about a coach or a school.
A hall the school rents for a few evenings a week, from a public school or from another club, usually cannot carry a profile of its own under Google's rules. It is named in the services and posts, and eligibility is decided by Google.
Photos of children are published only with a recorded yes from a parent, and a frame showing a recognizable child comes down as soon as the parent asks.

Google's own help for this kind of business

Each link opens an article of Google Business Profile Help, in this page's language where Google offers one. The line under it says why it matters here.

Manage your business category
A school's discipline may have no category of its own, and the article says what to choose instead and how many additional ones to add.
Guidelines for representing your business on Google
Says that classes on varied schedules should not show regular hours, and covers where an individual practitioner may have a separate page, the case of a coach with students of their own.
Business eligibility and ownership guidelines
Lists an ongoing class at a location you do not own or have the authority to represent among the things that cannot hold a profile, which settles a rented gym.
Manage your services on your Business Profile
One service per discipline and age group is a job for the services editor, and the article covers how custom services are added and what their names may not contain.
Manage your local business links
Sets out how to mark one sign-up link as preferred and how to remove a booking link a partner added.
About photo updates from customers
Parents and students add photo updates from the Maps app that the school cannot block, and the article covers where to look and how to report.
Mark your business as closed
The summer break is a temporary closure only when the hall shuts for longer than a week, and the article says how it is marked and what it can do to ranking.

What is the same for every industry

The industry page above is about what changes from one business to the next. The part below is the same for a restaurant and a dental practice alike: the packages, the split of duties and the rules Google sets. It applies to the Google Business Profile, the listing many still call Google My Business.

How the packages work here

Each location we service is on one of three packages. The package sets how many posts and review replies a month are included, how the profile details are updated, and whether the monthly optimization, the catalog of goods and services and the advertising are included. Prices are on the pricing page. See the prices Everything the team handles

Start

Profile upkeep

€75 per Google location per month · without VAT

4 posts or offers a month
Up to 50 review replies a month
3 requests to update the profile details
Photo updates
Review QR code
Basic monthly report
Manager's first reply: up to 2 business days

Business

Profile development

€149 per Google location per month · without VAT

24 posts or offers a month
Up to 200 review replies a month
Regular updates to the profile details
Monthly optimization and SEO of the profile
Goods and services added gradually
Content plan and competitor analysis
Extended monthly report
Quarterly consultation
Manager's first reply: up to 1 business day

Pro

Profile development and advertising

€249 per Google location per month · without VAT

Everything in Business
24 posts or offers and up to 200 review replies a month
Initial setup and launch of Google Ads
Ad copy and images prepared
Advertising in one language
Campaigns run and optimized every month
Extended report with the advertising work and plan
Manager's first reply: up to 1 business day

The manager proposes, you approve

The manager drafts every change, post and reply from your materials. Nothing is published, restored or billed without your yes; a flagged edit or a package switch waits for you.

Who does what, in every industry

What the manager does

Checks the profile regularly and keeps a written record of the agreed data.
Prepares the updates to the profile details, the posts and the offers from your materials and the agreed plan.
Replies to reviews within the monthly limit, in the tone you set once at the start, and hands anything sensitive back to you the same day.
Writes the monthly report and puts recommendations into the dashboard chat instead of acting on them alone.

What you confirm

The facts only you know: current hours, prices, services, photos, who is on the team this month.
The tone of replies, set once at the start, and the wording of anything escalated to you.
The yes before a value someone else changed is restored and before a location moves between packages; nothing is charged without it.

What works the same way in every industry

Ownership and access: the profile stays the property of the business. The manager works from the business's own account with manager rights, and the first step of the first month is confirming who owns the profile and who else still has access.
Suspension: if Google suspends a profile, the manager looks for the likely cause, corrects the data to match the paperwork the business holds and files the request to reinstate. This is part of every package. Timing and the decision stay with Google.
Duplicates: a second profile at the same address, or an old one left after a move, is reported to Google with the evidence. What stays and what merges is agreed with you before anything is sent.
Measuring: when you agree to it, the website link in the profile gets tagging, so visits that start on the profile show up separately in your analytics. Calls and direction requests are counted in Google's own profile statistics, and only you know which of them became a customer.
Recurring customer questions: the answers are written into the profile's own fields and updates, worded as you confirmed. Google turned off the questions and answers API for Business Profiles on 3 November 2025 while it reworks the feature, so this part of the work does not rely on that section.

Google's rules that apply to every profile

Local ranking is Google's own weighing of relevance, distance and prominence. No service can buy a position or promise a place in the results.
Verification, eligibility and which categories exist are Google's rules and differ by country.
Photos and reviews left by other people cannot be deleted by us. Where they break Google's rules they can be reported, and Google decides.
Booking, ordering or delivery features are connected only when you already run them with a provider Google supports in your country.
The number of posts and review replies per month is fixed by the package, and what is unused in a month does not carry over. On Start the profile details are updated on agreed requests, on Business and Pro regularly, as the business changes.

Reviews: the same policy everywhere

We do not ask only happy customers for reviews, do not offer anything in exchange for one and do not remove reviews: Google takes down a review that breaks its rules, and the author can delete their own.
We do not promise a rating, a position in the results or more customers. We promise the agreed process, every month.

Sources for Google's rules

We last checked the Google rules on this page against Google's Help pages in September 2026.

What the team handles for this industry

Profile data Your Google Maps listing details are right, and we keep them that way Content A Google Maps listing that looks alive: posts and offers go out on a plan Reviews Reviews answered by a person who knows your business

See the prices

The rest of the local SEO work

This page is about the profile: what a manager keeps correct on the map every month. Local search also depends on the website itself, on citations and on the pages a customer lands on after the map. Those we handle separately, and the express review points to which of them is actually holding you back.

Hand over the schedule and the first class, keep the coaching

A manager sets up the disciplines by age group, the first-class details and the entrance for each group, then updates them each season. You confirm the groups, the rooms and the rules on mats and shoes.

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Frequently asked questions

How do we keep children's and adults' groups from blurring together in the description? +

Give each its own sentence. The description names the disciplines first, then says which groups are for children and from what age, then which are for teens and adults. The services carry the details, one per discipline and age group, so a parent never has to read about adult sparring to find the children's schedule.

How do we show several disciplines without implying they all follow one training program? +

Each discipline gets its own service, written by the coach who teaches it: how a class is built, whether there are belts or ranks at all, and when sparring begins. Boxing and karate should not share one paragraph about gradings, because a newcomer reads that paragraph as a promise about both.

Can the listing say the first class is free? +

Only if the school runs it that way and says so. Otherwise the profile describes what does happen at a first class, booked or walk-in, which group, what to wear, and leaves the question of cost to the school's own page or a phone call.

Our coaches hold black belts and federation titles. Can the profile say so? +

Yes, as long as each grade or title is phrased by you and a certificate or a federation card backs it. The manager sees that paper first; the listing then shows the title as the school's claim about its coaches, never as ours.

We rent a public school gym two evenings a week. Can that gym have its own listing? +

Usually not. A gym you hire for two evenings is run by someone else, and Google does not give a listing to a group that trains regularly on borrowed mats in a place the school has no right to represent. Those evenings are named in the services and in posts, with the entrance to use, and your main hall keeps the profile.

Should each of our coaches have a listing of their own? +

Only a coach who takes students on their own account, which is what Google means by an individual practitioner. Otherwise a coach's listing at your address can pull reviews away from the school and can read as a duplicate; the manager lists every such profile and you decide together which of them survive.

A parent's review says their child got hurt in sparring. Who answers it? +

The school does. The manager brings it to you and drafts nothing until you have seen it. What happened, in which drill or round of sparring, and what the coach did next are for you to settle with the coach and the family. The public answer leaves out the child's name and the injury itself.

Can we publish photos from a grading or a tournament? +

Yes, where every recognizable child in the frame has a parent's recorded yes and the school could show it if asked. Wide shots of the hall and the mats, with nobody identifiable, need no such list.

Which discipline is the primary category when the school teaches four? +

The one that fills most of the week's groups, chosen from the list Google shows in your country. A category cannot be created, so a discipline with no entry of its own goes into a service instead. The others are added as secondary categories only where a group of their own exists, and only a few, not one for every class.

Parents ask in reviews whether the school is safe. Can the description say so? +

It can describe how the school runs, in the head coach's words: who supervises a group, how beginners are brought into sparring and where parents wait. A word such as safe is a promise the listing cannot keep, so it stays out.

A neighboring industry, and what is different there

Gyms and fitness clubs The equipment this club really has, how a first visit works, staffed hours and card access, and photos taken in this building, kept accurate on your Google profile every month. Dog trainers and training schools Where your lessons happen, at your ground or in the owner's home, which formats and course start dates are open, and the specializations you confirm, kept current on your Google profile.

A profile where a parent finds the children's group and an adult finds their discipline

Send the link to your school's profile and the weekly timetable by group. A manager reads both, then replies inside one business day with the first fix and a package proposal.

Discuss my profile

We work on Business Profiles under Google's rules for agencies. What to expect from an agency, Google explains in Tips for working with third parties to manage your Business Profile.