Google Business Profile for service area businesses

Plumbers, cleaners, mobile mechanics, dog walkers, tutors, caterers. If you travel to your customers and do not serve them at your own address, Google treats you as a service area business, and the listing works differently.

Who counts

Google defines a service area business as one that visits or delivers to customers directly but does not serve customers at its business address. If people never come to you, you are one.

If customers do come to you some of the time, such as a shop that also delivers, you can show your address and set a service area as well.

Hide your home address

Google’s guidance is direct: if you do not serve customers at your business address, remove the address from your profile. For most sole traders working from home, that is a relief as much as a rule. Nobody needs your house on Google Maps.

One exception worth knowing: Google does not allow businesses selling age restricted products, such as alcohol, to use service areas. They need a storefront.

Setting your service areas

You add areas by editing the profile’s location settings and entering suburbs, postcodes or regions. Google sets two limits:

• Up to 20 service areas.
• The area should generally not extend beyond about two hours of driving from where the business is based.

You also cannot set a radius around your business. You have to name the actual places.

Be honest about the areas

Listing every suburb you might conceivably drive to does not extend your reach. Distance is still a ranking factor, and a sprawling list mostly tells Google you are not sure where you work. Name the areas you actually serve most, and let your reviews from customers in those areas do the rest.

This is also why suburb pages rarely help. We explain in Google reviews in Melbourne’s southeast.

Reviews matter more without a shopfront

A service area business has no building for customers to judge. The listing is the shopfront, and reviews are most of what is in the window. A card handed over at the end of every job is the simplest way to build them. See review cards for tradies.

Source

• Google, Manage your service areas