Google sorts local businesses into two kinds. Storefronts serve customers at their address. Service-area businesses go to the customer: plumbers, roofers, cleaners, pest control, mobile mechanics, photographers, DJs. Plenty of businesses are both, like a shop that also does house calls.
Setting it up
- Verify with your real addressGoogle still needs an address to verify you, even if it will be hidden. It must be where you actually run the business. A PO box, a virtual office or a mailbox store isn’t allowed.
- Clear the address from your profileIn the profile’s location settings, remove the address from public view and keep it only for verification.
- Add your service areaChoose cities, ZIP codes or counties. Google allows up to 20 areas, and suggests the area shouldn’t extend beyond about two hours of driving from where you’re based.
- Match your websiteList the same towns on your website, on a page a customer would actually find useful. A page per town is fine when each one says something true about working there.
What to expect
A hidden-address business tends to show up most strongly near where it’s actually based, and less in towns far away, even if they’re in the service area. Listing twenty towns doesn’t change where Google thinks you are. Reviews that mention the towns you serve, and pages on your site about those towns, help more than the service area setting itself.
Written by Nikita Huttenlocher, founder and lead engineer at Huttenlocher Technologies, a web design and software company in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.