How Service-Area Businesses Show Up on Google Maps

If you go to your customers instead of having them come to you, Google wants you set up as a service-area business: your street address hidden from the public, and the towns or ZIP codes you serve listed instead. You can list up to 20 areas, and Google says the whole area shouldn't stretch more than about 2 hours of driving from where you're based.

That covers most plumbers, HVAC techs, electricians, roofers, house cleaners, landscapers and mobile groomers. Here's who qualifies, how to set it up, and what your profile shows once it's done.

Storefront, service-area or hybrid

Google's page on managing service areas describes two kinds of business that can use a service area:

Service-area business. You visit or deliver to customers but don't serve them at your own address. Google's examples are cleaning services and plumbers.
Hybrid business. You serve customers at your address and also go out to them. Google's example is a dine-in restaurant that also delivers. Its guidelines for representing your business add an auto repair shop that has a garage and also offers roadside service.

Everyone else is a storefront: a shop, a restaurant or a salon that people visit, with no service area at all.

Two rules decide where you land. A hybrid needs a real place customers can come to: Google's guidelines say the location should be staffed by your team and able to receive customers during its stated hours. And Google's service area page says a business without permanent signage on site isn't eligible as a storefront and should be listed as a service-area business.

So a contractor with a showroom that's open to the public on weekdays, with a sign out front, can be a hybrid. A contractor who works out of a spare bedroom, with no sign and no public hours, is a service-area business.

Hide the address

The guidelines say it plainly: if you're a service-area business, you should hide your business address from customers. Their own example is a plumber who runs the business from a home address.

Google's address help page points out that the address on your profile is public. To hide it:

Go to your Business Profile and select Edit profile, then Location.
Next to "Business location", select Edit.
Turn off Show business address to customers.
Select Save.

Two things to know. The same page says to enter an address Google can find so it can verify your business, and hiding it keeps that address off the public profile. And once the address is hidden, your profile shows only your service area. If you don't enter one, Google picks a local area for you, so enter your own.

Addresses that don't qualify

P.O. boxes and mailboxes at remote locations. Google's guidelines say these aren't acceptable.
Virtual offices. A rented mailing address you don't work from isn't eligible, and a service-area business can't list a virtual office unless it's staffed during business hours.
Co-working desks, unless the office has clear signage, receives customers during business hours and is staffed by your own people.

Set your service area

In Edit profile, then Location, select Edit next to "Service area".
Pick a suggested area or type one in. You can use cities, ZIP codes or other areas.
Add up to 20, then select Save.

Google says that if approved, service area edits may take up to 48 hours to show on your profile.

How to choose the areas

You can't draw a radius anymore. Google's page says you can't set your service area as a distance around your business, and if you set one up that way in the past, you can't edit it. You have to list cities, ZIP codes or other areas instead.

Google asks you to be as specific and accurate as possible. In practice:

List where you actually take jobs. A plumber based in Aurora, Illinois who works the western suburbs lists those towns, not the whole Chicago area because it sounds bigger.
Use ZIP codes in big cities. An HVAC company that only covers the north side of a city can list those ZIP codes instead of the whole city.
Stay inside about 2 hours of driving. That's Google's rule of thumb for the overall area, and the guidelines say larger areas may be appropriate for some businesses.
Match your website. The towns on your profile and the towns on your website should be the same list.

Google's service area page says the area helps people find your profile and shows customers where you work. It doesn't say that adding more towns gets you shown in more of them, and distance is still one of the main factors in local results, as we explain in how to show up in "near me" searches. Twenty towns you rarely drive to don't help a customer decide, and they don't bring you the jobs you want.

What customers see

With the address hidden, your profile shows your service area where a street address would be. The rest of the profile is the same as anyone else's: your name, category, hours, phone number, website link, photos and reviews.

Your hours should still be the hours customers can reach you. Google's guidelines ask for your regular customer-facing hours, and a hybrid business sets hours for when its staff is available. If you take emergency calls at night, set your profile hours to what you actually answer, and explain your after-hours setup on your website.

One area, one profile

Google's service area page says a service-area business can have only one profile for the whole area it serves. A separate profile for each town, with nobody working there, breaks that rule. So does listing a relative's address in the next county as a second "location".

The exception is a real second base. The guidelines say that if you have different locations with separate service areas and separate staff at each one, you're allowed one profile for each location. A landscaping company with a second yard, its own crew and its own trucks in another county fits that. A second phone number doesn't.

Make your website match

Your profile and your website should tell the same story:

Write the towns out on your site in normal sentences, the same list as your profile. Our contractor website checklist shows how to do that without copy-paste town pages.
Leave the home address off the site too. If you hid it on Google, putting it in your website footer undoes the point. Show your town, your state and your phone number instead.
Keep the name and phone identical on the profile, the site and every directory. We cover how in name, address and phone consistency.

Our websites for plumbers come with the service area written out by town and ZIP code, matched to the Google profile.

Check your site in a minute

Our free website checker shows whether your phone number is tap-to-call, whether your site links to your Google listing, and how fast it loads on a phone, explained in plain English. It takes under a minute.