Google · Business Profile
Your Google profile if you work at customers' homes or on site
Plumbers, electricians, painters, photographers, home services, consultants who go to the client: you have customers, but no shop to receive them in. You can still have a Google profile and show up on Maps. The rules are different, though, and getting them wrong is the most common way to have the profile suspended.
Address hidden, service area shown
If you do not receive customers at the business address, which is often your home, the address must not appear on the profile. You enter it so Google knows where you are, then hide it and list the service areas: the towns, provinces or postcodes where you go to work. Google accepts up to 20, and asks that the area not reach beyond about two hours' drive from your base.
And if some customers do come to you?
Then you are a “hybrid” business: you can show the address together with the service areas. But only if someone is really there at that address during the hours shown, with a sign or a recognisable doorbell. Seeing the odd customer at home by appointment is usually not enough.
No convenience addresses
A PO box, a virtual office, your accountant's address: the temptation to get a pin on the map in a bigger town is there. It is against the rules, and Google looks for them. The typical result is a suspended profile, with the reviews disappearing along with it.
Verification
Before showing the profile Google wants to check the business exists. For businesses that work off-site it often asks for a short video: the vehicle you work with, your equipment, a business document. It is not hard, but it needs preparing: the video must be shot without cuts, and what you show must clearly be yours.
How people find you without a visible address
A profile without premises competes with fewer tools, so everything else must be complete: the right category, the list of services, photos of work done, customer reviews, the hours you answer. And a website with a page for each service and the areas you work in: the profile and the site strengthen each other.
If you would rather not deal with it
We manage our clients' profiles, verification included, and ownership stays with you. If you have premises open to the public, the guide is The Google profile of a business with premises. If searching for yourself turns up two profiles, read Two Google profiles for the same business.