Google My Business offers several options for business owners to indicate how they reach customers in each city. Service area business listings allow you to include your company's local service area without needing to publish the physical address of your business location. Google Maps is an excellent marketing resource for local businesses, but not all businesses operate from a physical location. Business owners who want their companies to appear on the list but don't have a physical location can access Google Maps.
The announcement will generate leads and help grow the business by acquiring new customers. Any business that doesn't have a physical location should continue to search for an ad on Google Maps. According to Google, if your company has a physical location (such as an office) but you only travel to customers, you have a service area company. These companies can set up service areas, but they must not show their business addresses.
If you serve customers at your company location and travel to customers, that makes you a hybrid company, which can show both a public business address for customers to visit and a service area. If you're setting up your profile, you can hide your address by checking “no” when asked if you serve customers in your location. If you ever don't know how your Google business profile should be set up, you can schedule an appointment with one of your small business advisors. Often, when someone opens several business accounts with the same address, it's a home-based business or a bad actor.
That said, there are some situations in which what appears to be an independent company may have the same (or almost the same) address as another company. Select the option I deliver products and services to my customers and your company will appear in the ad without an address. Often, small businesses can't add their business to the Google map because they don't actually have a physical address. Without this verification process, fake companies could fill out the listings and weaken the validity of Google Maps.
You'll need to sign in to your Google business profile when you receive this postcard to enter the code that contains the postcard. This is because, when you try to add a new business profile with an address that is already attached to another profile, Google marks it as a “duplicate location” (Google). Google emails a card to the address with a verification code to ensure that the company operates at the designated address. You may have already requested your ad and entered a business location, but you want to start over as a service area company.
As Bonelli points out, in general, Google does not want registered companies to appear on Google's business profile, since the platform was originally created for companies with physical storefronts and, later, came to include companies in the service area. In other words, Google's business profile affects your ability to capture the attention of potential customers who are actively looking for a company like yours. As a result, it's no surprise that SEO experts routinely tell local businesses: “Reclaim and optimize your Google business profile.”.
