Why isn’t my business showing up on Google Maps?
It is almost always one of eight things. Here they are in the order worth checking, starting with the free one that fools almost everybody.
You search your own business name and there you are. You search what you actually sell, something like plumber near me or dentist Doylestown, and you’re nowhere. Your competitor two towns over is sitting in the map with a photo and forty reviews.
This is the most common local search problem there is, and it’s almost always one of eight things. Here they are in the order worth checking.
1. You’re searching from your own office
Start here because it’s free and it fools everybody. Google personalizes results based on where you are. Standing in your shop, you’ll see yourself higher than a customer three miles away does.
Test it properly. Open an incognito window, or better, ask somebody across town to search the term and screenshot what they get. That’s your real ranking.
2. Your profile isn’t verified
An unverified Business Profile does not appear in the map results. Log into your Google Business Profile and look for the verification status. If it’s pending, finish it. Postcard verification takes about two weeks and video verification is usually faster.
3. Your primary category is wrong
This one costs businesses more rankings than anything else on the list. Google leans heavily on your primary category to decide which searches you’re eligible for.
If you’re a plumber whose primary category is set to Contractor, you’ll lose plumbing searches to every business that picked Plumber. Set the primary category to the most specific accurate option and use the secondary slots for the rest.
Pick the most specific category that is true. Broad categories feel safer and rank for nothing.
4. You’re outside the search radius
Proximity is one of the three things Google weighs in local results, and it’s the one you can’t change. If you’re in Perkasie, you’re not showing up for somebody searching in Yardley, no matter how good your SEO is.
This isn’t a problem to solve, it’s a reality to plan around. The fix is building service pages for the towns you want to reach so you can win the organic results underneath the map, where proximity counts for less.
5. You don’t have enough reviews
Review count, how recent they are, your rating, and whether you reply all feed into how prominent Google thinks your business is. Prominence is one of the three ranking factors and it’s the one most under your control.
If the businesses beating you have thirty reviews and you have four, that gap is doing more damage than anything technical on your website. We wrote a whole piece on closing it.
6. Your business information doesn’t match everywhere
Google cross-references your name, address, and phone number across the internet. If your address is “152 N Main St” on your website, “152 North Main Street” on Yelp, and “152 N. Main St. Suite 2” on an old directory, that’s three businesses as far as a machine is concerned.
Pick one exact format and make every listing match it, character for character.
7. Your website doesn’t say where you are
Your Business Profile and your website are supposed to confirm each other. If your site never names Doylestown or Bucks County outside of the footer, you’re asking Google to take your word for it.
Put your city in the page title of your main service pages. Put your full address in the footer with the same formatting as your profile. Add LocalBusiness schema. None of it is exotic and most local sites are missing all three.
8. You have a duplicate listing
If your business ever moved, changed names, or was claimed twice, there may be a second profile splitting your reviews and confusing Google about which one is real. Search your business name and address in Google Maps and look for a second pin. If you find one, request removal of the duplicate through the profile.
Work it in this order
- Verify the profile if it isn’t verified
- Fix the primary category
- Hunt down and merge duplicate listings
- Make your name, address, and phone identical everywhere
- Start asking every customer for a review
- Put your city and address on the website properly
- Post to the profile weekly
- Build pages for the towns proximity won’t get you
The first four are afternoon work and often move something within a few weeks. The last four are the long game.
Common questions
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A free visibility audit tells you exactly which of these eight is holding you back, and what your competitors are doing that you are not.