Why is my business not showing up on Google Maps?
Who publishes this: OfficeStaff.ai helps Australian local businesses get found on Google, trusted through reviews and booked through their website and past customers.
The short answer
Because your Google ranking is not one number, it is a different result for every place a customer is standing.
You can sit in the top three at your own front door and vanish two suburbs away. Most owners have never seen this, because the only place they ever check is their own desk.
The Yellow Pages have not gone anywhere
Think about how people used to find a plumber. They opened the Yellow Pages, looked at the first big ad, maybe the second, and rang it. Almost nobody worked their way down to the little one at the bottom of the page.
Google Maps is the same thing with a different cover. When somebody searches, Google shows three businesses on the map. Most people ring one of those three and never scroll. They only look further if all three have bad reviews.
The difference is that the Yellow Pages showed everyone in town the same page. Google shows a different page to every person, depending on where their phone is.
Want to see where you actually turn up across your area, not just at your front door? Get your Free Growth Audit.
Why your ranking changes street by street
Search for what you do while standing in your own carpark and you will probably look great. Google knows where you are, you are nearby, and there you are.
Walk two suburbs over and search the same thing. The three businesses on the map may be completely different, and yours may not be there at all.
This is why the single number some agencies report to you is close to meaningless. "You rank number two" is not an answer to anything unless it comes with where. The only way to see the truth is to check a grid of points spread across the area you actually serve, and look at what Google shows at each one.
When you do that you get a map, not a score. Green where you are in the top three, red where you are nowhere. Most owners find a small green patch around their address and red everywhere else, and they have been paying for marketing the whole time.
The address thing almost nobody mentions
Here is something we keep running into, and it surprises people.
A business with a real street address on its Google profile tends to hold up far better across an area than a business without one. We have looked at listings where a business with an address and very few reviews was still beating a business with a much stronger review profile that had no address showing.
That matters enormously if you are a mobile or service area business, because Google lets you hide your address, and plenty of operators do. It is worth knowing that the hidden address is not free. You are trading it for reach.
That is not a reason to publish your home address if you work out of your house. It is a reason to know what it is costing you, and to work harder on everything else if you decide to keep it hidden.
What people try first, and why it does not work
Most owners, when they realise they have a problem, go and add some keywords to their website. Or they buy a package of directory listings. Or they pay for ads, which works exactly as long as you keep paying.
None of that touches the thing that decides the map result. The map is mostly about your Google profile itself, how complete and current it is, how close you are, and your reviews.
So the usual first move is to spend money on the website while the profile sits there with the wrong hours, three photos from 2019 and a category that does not match what the business actually does.
What to actually do
Look at your profile before you spend a dollar anywhere else. Hours, including public holidays. Every service you offer, written the way customers say it. Photos from this year. The right primary category.
Post something. An open profile that has not been touched in two years looks closed.
Get your reviews moving, because review count and score feed into the map result as well as into whether someone rings you.
And see your actual map before you accept anyone's report. If a provider cannot show you where you turn up across your service area, they are not working on the thing that makes your phone ring.
The bit that comes after being found
Getting found is only the start. The moment a customer sees you on that map, they do the next thing automatically, which is compare you to the other two.
That is where reviews decide it. How many Google reviews does a business need?
About the author
Greg Hamlyn
Greg Hamlyn has been in business since 1981, and has spent more than twenty years coaching other business owners, most of them trades and service businesses around Australia. He started OfficeStaff after watching the same thing happen over and over. Good operators paying for marketing that never once showed them where they actually turned up, sitting on customer lists they never used. He will tell you if you are not a fit. Based on the Gold Coast.
Read next
How many Google reviews does a business need?
There is no magic number. What matters is having more reviews than the businesses you are compared to, some recent ones, and a reply under every one.