Why You're Not Showing Up On Google Maps

When somebody in Kissimmee needs a plumber, they don't read a website. They open the map, look at three results with stars under them, and call one. Whatever happens on your website happens after that, if it happens at all.

So the map listing is not a small thing you do alongside the website. For a local business it's the larger of the two, and it's free, which makes it the strangest thing in this business to see left half-finished. It is left half-finished constantly.

I'm writing this a couple of weeks after filing my own, for this business, in Orlando. It's still pending verification as I type. That's relevant — it means everything below is what I actually just did, and where I don't know something, I'll say so rather than fill it in.

First: it's a listing, not a website

The thing that appears on the map is a Google Business Profile. It's free, you claim it rather than build it, and it's separate from your website — which is why a business with a lovely website can be invisible on the map, and a business with no website at all can be at the top of it.

You claim it at Google's own Business Profile site. Don't pay anyone for this part. If you get a call from someone offering to "verify your Google listing" for a fee, that's not how it works.

The decision most people get wrong on the first screen

Google asks early whether you have a location customers visit. Your answer is one of two kinds of business, and it changes everything after it.

A storefront has an address customers come to. A shop, a gym, a restaurant, a facility with a door.

A service-area business goes to the customer instead. Plumbers, electricians, landscapers, mobile detailers, house cleaners, and — as it turns out — a developer who works from a desk and meets clients at theirs. If that's you, the order of operations matters more than the website does.

If you're the second kind and you work from home, you can enter your address for verification and then hide it from the public listing, and you should. What shows instead is the list of areas you serve. I set mine to Orlando, St. Cloud, Kissimmee and Winter Park, which is honestly how far I'll drive, and left the address off the public profile.

Getting this wrong in the other direction — claiming a storefront that customers can't actually visit — is the thing that gets listings suspended. It's not worth it.

The category is doing more work than you think

You pick a primary category from Google's own list, and it's one of the most consequential fields on the whole profile. It's a large part of how Google decides which searches you're a candidate for at all.

Pick the one that describes what you do, not the one that describes what you'd like to be known for. I chose "Website designer," which is not the most flattering description of what I do — I build software, and a fair bit of what I sell is automation — but it's the one somebody actually types. The flattering category with no search volume is a worse choice than the plain one people use.

You can add secondary categories. Add the ones that are genuinely true and stop there.

Verification, which is where everyone stalls

This is the part I can't give you a clean answer on, because mine is still in it.

Google verifies that the business is real before the listing goes live. Depending on what it decides to ask for, that can be a postcard to an address, a phone call, a video, or a set of documents. It doesn't always tell you in advance which one you'll get, and it doesn't always take the same amount of time. Mine has been pending for a couple of weeks now, and I'm not going to invent a number for how long yours will take when I don't yet know how long mine will.

What I can tell you: fill in the details accurately before you start it, because a listing where the name and the details don't match anything else about you is a listing that gets asked more questions. Your business name on the profile should be your actual business name, not your business name with three keywords stapled to the end of it. That's against the rules, it's an easy way to get suspended, and everybody can tell.

What actually decides who shows up

Once you're verified, three things move you.

Distance. You will not rank in a town you're nowhere near, and no amount of effort changes that. This is why a service-area list that reflects where you'll genuinely go is worth more than one that claims half the state.

Completeness. Hours that are right, including the holiday ones. A phone number that rings a phone somebody carries. Photographs of your actual work — not stock images, not the one photo from 2019. Services listed out. A description written like a human wrote it. This is the part that's entirely within your control, costs nothing, and is left undone by most of your competitors.

Reviews. This is the big one, and it's the reason I'd tell most local businesses that the highest-value thing they could do this month has nothing to do with a website. Reviews, in volume, recent, and answered. Not a burst of five from three years ago — a steady trickle, with you replying to them, including the bad ones, briefly and without arguing.

The part I sell, and the part I don't

Asking for reviews is the thing people don't do, because it's awkward and because it's one more thing to remember at the end of a job. That's an automation problem, and it's the one I'd fix first: a message that goes out on its own a day after the work is done, with a one-tap link straight to your review page. It runs whether you remember it or not, which is the entire point. I build that, and it's the piece of this I'd genuinely argue for.

If you'd rather just describe the business and have the whole thing handled, start here. The rest of it is free and you can do it this week. Claim the profile. Pick the honest category. Put in real hours and a real number. Add photographs of jobs you've actually done. That's an evening, it costs nothing, and for a local business it will do more than a website redesign will.

If you want the whole thing handled — the listing, the site, and the review requests going out by themselves — that's what I do. But I'd rather you did the free part either way.