Pet boarding facilities
Your boarding kennel on Google: which animals, which papers, which handover windows
An owner starts looking for a boarding kennel or a cattery weeks before a trip, and reads every line of your listing with the animal asleep on the couch beside them. They want to know whether you take a dog this size or a cat that has never left home, which papers you ask for at the gate, when they can drop off and pick up, and where the animal will actually sleep. A dedicated manager keeps your Business Profile honest on each of those points, exactly as your team confirms them, and every edit lands in the log in your dashboard.
One location from €75 a month
Discuss my profileThe request is free and creates no obligation; a manager replies within one business day.
Who is accepted, the stay, the place as it is, then the reviews
Four steps, in the order an owner works through them while planning time away.
- 1
Say which animals you take and on what conditions
The facility confirms the species and sizes it accepts, the vaccinations and papers it asks for, and any rule on age, temperament or a first visit. The facility's own wording of the species list and the vaccine rule goes into each service entry, the description and the posts. We publish the rule; how it applies to one animal stays your decision.
- 2
Make the stay easy to arrange
The listing says how a stay is requested and when it counts as booked, and the request link is opened to its last screen. Drop-off and pickup windows are published apart from office hours, and the dates that fill early, summer and the winter holidays above all, are flagged well ahead. No line on the listing says a place is free.
- 3
Show the place as it really is
Rooms, runs, time outside, heating, cameras and a vet on call appear only as the facility confirms them, and a vet only in your words. Photographs show where an animal sleeps and spends the day in an ordinary week, and they change when the place does.
- 4
Keep a worried owner's review from turning into a vet conversation
A review about a stay often carries a week of worry. The reply thanks the owner, says how feeding and the day are run, and asks them to call; it never comments on weight, health or mood, and it never says how the next stay will go. A review that says an animal was hurt or ill goes to you first.
Send the link and the sheet you hand a new owner
Send the link to the listing with the sheet you hand a new owner: the species and sizes you take, the vaccinations you ask to see, and the two handover windows. A manager reads the listing the way a nervous owner would, marks where those rules and the listing part ways, and proposes the package that fits the address.
Discuss my profileHow an owner chooses a boarding kennel or cattery on the map
The search starts long before the trip and ends with a short list of two or three places. A listing makes that list when it answers what an anxious owner would otherwise have to call and ask.
- Species and size come first. A cattery, a kennel that takes dogs up to a certain weight and a place that also boards rabbits and guinea pigs look alike on the map until the listing names what it takes.
- Then the conditions of entry: which vaccinations the facility wants to see, how recent they have to be, whether a parasite treatment or a record book must come along. An owner who learns this at the gate has lost the booking and often the trip with it.
- Then the dates. The reader is planning around a flight, a wedding or a hospital stay, so the real question is how a stay is requested and at what point it counts as confirmed.
- Then the two handover windows: when an animal can be dropped off on the first morning and picked up on the last day, including a Sunday evening after a late flight home.
- Photographs are studied for one thing, where the animal will sleep. Rooms, runs, the exercise yard and the cat room are what the owner wants to see, not a stock picture of a dog in a meadow.
- Reviews are read for how other animals came home: settled or unsettled, whether the facility kept in touch during the stay, how smoothly the pickup went.
- Many owners want to look around before they book. Whether the facility allows a visit, and on which days, can decide between two places a few miles apart.
What goes stale on a boarding listing
A wrong line here rarely costs a single sale. It leaves an owner with packed bags and an animal the facility cannot take, found out the day before departure.
- A species list nobody has touched since the cat room was turned into storage, so cat owners keep requesting stays at a place that now boards dogs only.
- Entry rules that changed at the facility but not on the listing: a vaccine that is now required, a minimum age for puppies, an introductory visit before the first night. The refusal then happens at the gate with the car already loaded.
- Hours that describe the office while drop-off and pickup run in narrower windows. An owner straight from the airport arrives after the last pickup time, and the animal stays another night.
- A summer post saying bookings are open, still up when every run is taken, and read by owners as a promise that their dates are free.
- Text in the description or the services calling the animals safe and happy or watched over by a vet, when no vet is on call and nobody can promise how an animal will cope with a stay.
- A gallery of borrowed or years old photographs. The owner who expects individual runs with a view of the yard and finds a corridor of cages writes about the difference.
- A listing switched to temporarily closed over a busy holiday to stop the calls. Google then shows the place as closed to everyone, including owners who are planning a stay months later.
The fields and facts a boarding booking depends on
The species list, the vaccination rule and the handover window reach the owner through categories, services, the description, hours and posts, which is where most of what decides a boarding booking travels.
- A primary category for boarding in the wording Google's list offers, with a kennel, cattery or day care category added only for a part of the business that really runs.
- Species and sizes as the facility accepts them, the animals it does not take said just as clearly, and the ones accepted only after a first visit flagged as such.
- Entry conditions in the facility's own words: the vaccinations and papers it asks to see, what it expects on parasite treatment, any rule on age, temperament or neutering. The listing states the rule; how it applies to one animal stays the facility's call.
- Each form of stay as its own service: overnight boarding for dogs, a cat stay, day care where you run it, an introductory visit, each with what it includes as you describe it.
- Hours that separate the office from the handover: when the phone is answered, and the windows in which animals arrive and leave, as an additional hours type where Google offers one for your category and as a line in the description where it does not.
- A booking or request link that opens the facility's own form or booking system, beside a sentence saying a stay is confirmed only when the facility replies.
- Attributes the facility confirms, such as parking at the gate and payment methods, and photographs of rooms, runs and the yard as they look in an ordinary week.
The monthly pass at a boarding facility
Each pass follows the owner's own order of questions: will they take my animal and on what papers, how do I book and hand it over, what is the place really like, and what did other owners say.
- The dashboard keeps the agreed picture of the address: species and sizes, entry conditions with the date the facility last confirmed them, forms of stay, handover windows and what the place has.
- The pass opens with the intake rules, because they change quietly: a new vaccine requirement, a room shut for repairs, a lower size limit after a run was rebuilt.
- Handover windows are checked against the facility's schedule for the coming month, and arrangements for the holidays go in weeks ahead, since owners ask about those dates early.
- Posts about busy periods get a take-down date when they are written, and none of them says places are free. They say how to ask and how early people usually do.
- The gallery is held up against the place. When a run is rebuilt, the cat room moves or the yard closes for the winter, the photographs follow.
- Every text on the listing is read for health, safety and veterinary wording. What turns up is brought to you, and nothing about care is reworded without your say.
- At month end the record lists the requests that fell through for a reason the listing could have prevented: a species you do not take, a vaccine nobody knew was required, a pickup window that closed before the flight landed. Each one is a line on the listing to fix.
Five settings a boarding facility should get right before the season
Every item names one edit in the profile and why a kennel or cattery needs it, with the Google help page that supports it underneath.
- 1
Choose the boarding category first and add day care only if it runs
Pick the primary category from the boarding wording on Google's list, and add a day care or other extra category only for a part of the business that really runs. Google asks for a few additional categories for real departments, not one for every service, and a category change can trigger a new verification.
Google's help on this: Manage your business category
- 2
Set the office hours first, then the handover windows
More hours, such as pickup, do not display until regular hours are set, and Google advises setting them as a subset of the regular hours. So the office hours go in first. A handover window that runs outside them, like a Sunday evening pickup, goes into the description as its own line.
Google's help on this: How to set More hours
- 3
Enter holiday handovers as special hours
Handover days change around public holidays, and owners ask about those dates early. Each holiday with different or no handover hours is entered as special hours, and Google suggests confirming official holidays even where the hours are the same. A closure of up to six days is special hours, and anything longer is temporarily closed.
Google's help on this: How to set Special hours
- 4
Give every busy-season post an end
Posts older than six months are archived unless a date range is set, so a summer notice with no end would still be showing in January. Put the take-down date into the monthly plan, and use an Event with a start and an end for a dated introductory visit day. Keep phone numbers out of the post text: a post that includes one risks rejection.
Google's help on this: Create & manage posts on your Business Profile
- 5
Look at the photos owners add after a stay
Owners photograph their animal in the run or the yard, and those pictures appear next to yours. Once a month open the visitor updates in the Google Maps app, reply where a reply helps, and report any picture that breaks Google's policies. You cannot stop customers from posting them.
Google's help on this: About photo updates from customers
Answering reviews of a boarding stay
A boarding review is often written by someone who spent a week worrying, and it is read by people about to do the same. The manager drafts replies in the tone agreed at the start, you approve them, and the monthly number comes from the package.
- A warm review is answered by thanking the owner and naming the kind of stay, with nothing said about the animal's health, weight or mood beyond what the owner wrote.
- An owner who says the dog came home tired, thinner or anxious gets a calm reply about how the facility runs the day and a request to call. The reply makes no medical statement, not even to reassure.
- A one star review from someone turned away at the gate is answered with the facility's general entry rule, never with anything about that animal or its papers.
- Complaints about the handover, such as a locked gate on a Sunday evening, are answered with the windows as they stand and gathered for the report when they repeat.
- Themes that keep coming back go into the monthly report: news during the stay, the pickup, rooms that did not match the photos. You see which worry returns most often.
- A review that names a different kennel, or plainly describes another place, is set aside and noted in the monthly report instead of being answered as if it were about you.
Where a human has to step in
- A review saying an animal was hurt, fell ill, got out or died during a stay reaches you the same day with nothing drafted. The public words are yours, and they discuss neither the animal's condition nor what caused it.
- No reply promises how an animal will cope next time or declares the facility safe. Replies describe how the place works, and that is all.
The owner who spent a week worrying gets a calm reply
The manager drafts replies that describe how the day runs and make no medical statement about an animal. You approve each draft before it is published, and repeated handover complaints go into the report.
What a boarding facility can publish
A useful post answers something an owner would otherwise save for a phone call, and it makes no promise about dates or about an animal's wellbeing.
- The shape of the season: when owners usually start asking about summer and the winter holidays, and how to send a request, with no word on how many places are left.
- A room, a run or an exercise yard that is new or rebuilt, photographed as it stands that week.
- Changes to the handover windows, a day with no drop-off or pickup, and holiday arrangements, each posted ahead of the date.
- How to get ready for a first stay: the papers to bring as the facility lists them, the animal's usual food, a familiar blanket, and the introductory visit where you run one.
- A day at the facility as you run it: walks, time outside, feeding, rest. Written in your words, and never implying that every animal will enjoy it.
- Pictures of guests only where the animal's owner has agreed to that picture going public, with no readable tag and no other owner's animal in the frame without that owner's yes.
One kennel, a home boarder, or several sites
One location
For a single kennel or cattery the work is one listing kept true to one place: the animals you accept and on what papers, the way to request a stay, the two handover windows and the rooms as they are. One manager returns to it each month and notes every change in the log.
A network
Where a business boards animals at several sites, each site keeps its own listing, because the cat room, the run sizes and the handover door differ from site to site and an owner is choosing the rooms where their animal will sleep. A boarder working from a private home is handled under Google's rules for addresses and service areas, and the manager checks what fits before anything is filed. Each location is billed separately.
Intake rules and handover windows: yours to confirm, ours to keep in line
What the manager does
- Keeps the species list, sizes and entry conditions in step with what your team confirms, and records each rule with the date it was confirmed.
- Opens the booking or request link through to its last screen and makes sure nothing on the listing reads as though a place is held before you confirm it.
- Reads every text for health, safety and veterinary wording and brings what it finds to you instead of rewording it alone.
- Checks each photograph of a guest for that owner's recorded consent, and for readable tags or other personal details, before it is queued.
What you confirm
- Which animals and sizes you accept this season, the vaccinations and papers you ask for, and any rule on age, temperament or an introductory visit.
- The handover windows by day, the dates you close or run holiday arrangements, and how and when a stay is confirmed.
- Whether a vet is on call and in what words that may be said, and the consent for every photograph of a guest animal.
The first four weeks: intake rules, then photographs, then the busy season
an example of the process, not a client result-
Week 1
The manager joins the listing from the facility's own Google account, and the axis is set down before any edit: species and sizes, entry conditions in your words, forms of stay, the two handover windows, and whether a vet is on call and how that may be phrased. The reply tone is agreed with you.
-
Week 2
The first batch of changes you approved goes live in one go: the intake rules in the services and the description, each form of stay as a service of its own, the handover windows beside the office hours, and the request link walked through to its last screen.
-
Week 3
The gallery is sorted by what an owner wants to see: rooms, runs, the yard, the cat room. Pictures without consent, or of spaces that have changed, come down. Waiting reviews are answered as far as the package reaches, and anything about harm is passed to you.
-
Week 4
The closing record names the requests the listing could have prevented, such as a species not taken or a vaccine nobody knew about. The busy season is entered ahead: holiday handover windows, and a post on how to request dates with its take-down date set before it goes up.
Read this as an example of the order at a kennel or cattery, not as any client's month. A facility whose intake rules live only in the owner's head starts there, and one with years-old photographs starts with the gallery.
Checks worth running on your listing before the busy season
- Pretend you own a large dog and read your listing, then do it again as the owner of an elderly cat. If either would have to call to learn whether you take them, the listing is not doing its job yet.
- Find the place where your listing says which vaccinations and papers you ask for. If a stranger cannot find it quickly, expect the next refusal to happen at the gate.
- Put the hours on your listing next to your real drop-off and pickup windows, Sunday evening first.
- Tap the booking or request button and go through to the last screen. Check whether anything there looks like a confirmed place before you have said yes.
- Open the first five photographs a stranger sees and count how many show where an animal actually sleeps.
- Search your description and posts for words like safe, vet, happy or stress free.
Read your listing as the owner of a large dog, or send it to us
The manager reads it again as the owner of an elderly cat, checks where vaccinations and papers are stated and sets your hours beside the handover windows. You answer only what the facility must decide.
What a boarding listing never states: free places, health, safety
- We make no claim about an animal's health or safety during a stay and publish nothing that reads as a promise of either. What the listing describes is how the facility works.
- Vaccination, parasite and document rules appear only as the facility states them, and a vet on call appears only if the facility confirms one, in its own words.
- We never publish availability or hold a place on the listing, and every post about a busy period points to the way to ask.
- Pictures of guests' animals go up only with that owner's consent for that picture. Google's own content rules apply on top.
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
The category tells Google what the facility is, and extra categories are for real departments such as day care, not for every service.
- How to set More hours
Pickup and similar hours are set here as a subset of the main hours, which is why the handover windows need the office hours first.
- How to set Special hours
Holiday handovers and a short closure are set as special hours without touching the regular week.
- Mark your business as closed
Being full is not a closure: this article says what temporarily closed is for and that such profiles can rank after open ones on broad searches.
- Manage your service areas for service-area & hybrid businesses
A boarder working from a private home can check here when an address is shown and when a service area is used instead.
- Create & manage posts on your Business Profile
It covers post types, the date range of an event, the archive after six months and the warning about phone numbers in post text.
- About photo updates from customers
Owners can add photos after a stay, and this article shows where to find, answer and report them.
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
- Tips to improve your local ranking on Google
- Guidelines for representing your business on Google
- Manage your business category
- Report inappropriate reviews on your Business Profile
- Manage your local business links
- Prohibited & restricted content (Maps User Generated Content Policy)
We last checked the Google rules on this page against Google's Help pages in September 2026.
What the team handles for this industry
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.
Let the profile say what the facility accepts
A manager sets up the animals and sizes you take, the handover windows and the holiday arrangements, then updates them each season. You confirm the vaccination rules and whether a vet is on call.
Dog daycare
Day care often shares a building and a name with boarding, but an owner looks for it with another question in mind: somewhere for the dog during a working day, week after week.
Dog daycare
A day care listing has to say plainly that it is day care: the dog goes home every evening, and an owner hoping for an overnight stay should learn that from the listing rather than on the phone. The hours that matter are the morning drop-off and the evening pickup of a working day, published apart from the description of the program, because a late pickup causes friction. Where the center assesses a dog before it joins a group, the listing explains how that assessment works as the center runs it, whether half days are offered, and what the day's routine looks like in the center's own words: group play, rest, walks, feeding. Photographs show the play area and the rest space, with the consent of anyone who can be recognized in the frame, and the center's own rule on showing clients' dogs. Where day care and boarding share one roof, each is its own service on one listing, and a separate listing is considered only where Google's rules allow it.
Discuss this kind of business →Frequently asked questions
How do we make clear the difference between overnight boarding and day care? +
How can we talk about free places without promising dates? +
Can the listing say which vaccinations we require? +
We call a vet when an animal needs one. Can we say there is a vet on call? +
Owners want to see the place before they book. Should the listing say we allow visits? +
A review says the dog came home stressed and thinner. How should we answer it? +
We take a lot of pictures of guests for their owners. Can we use them on the listing? +
We board animals in our own home. Does our address have to be public? +
When we are fully booked, should we mark the listing as temporarily closed? +
A neighboring industry, and what is different there
A boarding listing that answers the owner before the phone rings
Tell us where the facility is and, if you have them on paper, send the intake rules. A manager compares both with what the listing shows today, and the first answer comes within one business day: what owners learn from the listing now, what they cannot find on it, and a first estimate.
Discuss my profileWe 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.