There are streets in your own town where your business doesn’t exist

Right now, four miles from your front door, somebody is typing your trade and your town into their phone.

They will get three businesses. They will ring one of them.

You have probably assumed you are one of the three. Most owners do, and near your own postcode you very likely are. But go two miles north and it changes. Go three miles east and it changes again.

This guide explains why Google shows different businesses on different streets, how to see where you disappear, and the three fixes, in order, that bring the red back to green. There is a free checker in the middle for the fix most owners get wrong.

How Google decides which three businesses to show

Google says its local results are based on three things working together (Google Business Profile Help):

Put those together and you get the problem. Near your base, distance carries you, so you show up even with a thin profile. Further out, distance starts working for whoever is closer, and only relevance and prominence can carry you over the top of them.

Google does not have one set of results for your town

It has a different set on every street. Where somebody is standing when they search matters as much as what they type, and for local trades it often matters more.

Which means “we come up on Google” is not a fact about your business. It is a fact about the spot you were standing in when you last checked, usually your own kitchen.

The way to see the truth is to check your position at dozens of points across the area you serve and plot them on a map. Green where you are in the top three, amber where you are just below, red where you do not come up at all. Click any square on the example below to see what a customer standing there would see.

Most owners look at their own map for about four seconds and understand their entire marketing problem. The red usually starts about a mile from the front door.

Why nobody checks

Because until recently, checking properly cost a few hundred pounds a month and you had to know what a geo-grid was. So owners check from home, see themselves at number one, and get on with their day.

Checking by hand doesn’t really work either. An incognito window still knows roughly where you are, and asking a mate across town to search for you once tells you about one street on one day. You need many points, checked at the same time, to see the shape.

That is what the free Google Maps scan does: it checks your position across a grid of points around your business and sends you the map.

What to do about the red: three fixes, in this order

1. 1First

   Fix what is wrong

   Old phone numbers, old addresses, misspelt names.

2. 2Second

   Claim what exists

   Directories that built a page for you from scraped data.

3. 3Third

   Add what matters

   A handful of the right directories, not two hundred.

4. ✓Then

   Earn the distance

   Complete profile, fresh photos, a steady flow of reviews.

None of these cost money. Name, address and phone must match everywhere.

None of these cost money, and the order matters. Adding new listings while old wrong ones are still out there makes things worse, not better.

1. Fix what is wrong before adding anything new

Somewhere out there a directory has your old phone number, your old address, or your name spelled differently. Google uses those mentions to work out whether you are a real, established business. When they disagree with each other, it is less sure, and a wrong listing can do more damage than a missing one.

The details that have to match everywhere are your business name, address and phone number. Check yours below. Put in your details exactly as they appear on your Google Business Profile, then paste what each directory shows.

Small differences matter less than big ones. “&” against “and”, or “Ltd” missing, is unlikely to hurt. An old phone number or a previous address is the kind of mismatch to fix first.

2. Then claim what already exists

Plenty of directories have already created a page for your business from scraped data. It is your business and somebody else’s information. Search your business name and phone number, list every directory page that comes up, and claim each one so you control what it says.

3. Then, and only then, add the ones that matter

A handful of the right directories beats two hundred of the wrong ones. Most of the long tail are scrape-farms that exist to pad a report. Start here:

Members of the Society get the Citation Builder, which lists the directories that matter for their trade and town and tracks which ones are done.

Then make your profile earn the distance

Once your details are consistent, relevance and prominence are what carry you further out. Google’s own advice is to keep the profile complete and accurate, and to get and respond to reviews. In practice that means:

• Your primary category is the most specific one that fits (for example “Plumber”, not “Contractor”).
• Every service you offer is listed, with a short description.
• Your service areas cover the towns you actually want work from.
• Opening hours are right, including bank holidays.
• You have added real photos of your work in the last month.
• You ask every happy customer for a review, and reply to every review you get.

0 of 6 done.

Check yours

We will run the map for you for nothing. Put your details in here and we will email it within a day. No card, and nobody will ring you.

If it comes back green everywhere, genuinely well done, and you can stop reading. Almost none do.

Your two jobs this week

Members of the Society get jobs like these every week, with the tools to do them and somebody checking they got done. Start for £1 if you want somebody keeping count.

Google Maps visibility questions owners ask