Being found locally
Proximity decides the map results and no amount of work on a website changes it. What moves local visibility and what cannot be moved.
Category
Getting
found.
Businesses spend heavily on local search, often without knowing what actually affects their position.
Two different results, constantly confused
When someone searches for a nearby service, they usually see a map with a short list of businesses and a separate list of regular web results below it. These results are ranked differently and improve through different kinds of work. Treating them as one system leads to wasted effort.
The map is dominated by where the business physically is relative to where the person searching is. That is not a claim about an algorithm’s weighting; it is the observable behaviour, and it is why the same business is prominent at home and invisible twenty miles away no matter what is done to its website. The ordinary results below are far more responsive to what is actually on your pages.
The profile is the asset, and it has rules
The business profile that feeds the map is the single most consequential thing most small businesses own online, and it is governed by published eligibility rules that a surprising number of businesses are quietly in breach of. Rented mailing addresses are not eligible. Co-working desks are not eligible unless the office is signed, staffed and receives customers. Service areas have a stated outer limit.
These are not grey areas or community folklore. They are written down by the platform, and the stated consequence of ignoring them is suspension, which costs more than whatever the breach was supposed to win.
Reviews are where the legal exposure is
Reviews are often treated as a marketing tactic, but many common practices are regulated. The Federal Trade Commission addresses offering incentives, asking only satisfied customers, undisclosed staff reviews, and delaying negative reviews. Its guidance does not look favourably on any of them.
The version that is both permitted and effective is also the least effortful: ask everyone, once, after the work is done, and keep doing it. A business earning a few fresh reviews every week is in a stronger position than one sitting on hundreds of old ones, because recency carries weight that volume does not.
Being open is part of being found
Your opening hours can affect whether you appear when someone searches. Keep regular and holiday hours accurate, especially on days when fewer competitors are open.
The 6 pages in getting found
Your business profile
Google’s own eligibility rules, in its words: virtual offices, unstaffed addresses, how far a service area may reach, and what gets a profile suspended.
Setting up your Google profile
How to create or claim a Google Business Profile, choose a category, get through verification (including the video option), and avoid the mistakes that get profiles suspended.
Claiming your Yelp page
How to claim or add your business on Yelp, verify it, keep it claimed, and respond to reviews, plus Yelp’s rule against asking for reviews and what a Consumer Alert means.
Reviews, and the rules
Asking only the customers you think are happy is a practice the FTC describes as misleading. What you may do, and what has to be disclosed.
Does your domain matter?
Why a keyword domain doesn’t help a local business rank, what decides the map instead, and when a domain still matters. With a short video.
Shorter answers
- Can I rank in a town twenty miles away?
- In the ordinary web results, yes, and it is worth having. On the map for that town, realistically no, proximity dominates there. The reliable routes into a distant market are a real staffed location or paid advertising. Being found locally.
- Can I use a virtual office or a mailbox as my address?
- No. Google’s guidelines say “P.O. boxes or mailboxes located at remote locations aren’t acceptable”, and that a rented mailing address you do not operate out of, a virtual office, “isn’t eligible for a Business Profile”. Your business profile.
- What about a co-working desk?
- Only if that office “maintains clear signage, receives customers at the location during business hours, and is staffed during business hours by your business staff”. All three, not one of them.
- How large can my service area be?
- Google states the boundaries “shouldn’t extend farther than about 2 hours of driving time from where your business is based”, with one profile for the central location rather than one per town.
- Can I offer a discount for leaving a review?
- You may invite all customers to leave honest reviews and you may offer an incentive, but you “can’t condition an incentive, for example, a discount, on a review being positive”, and the customer has to disclose that they got one. Reviews, and the rules.
- Can I ask only the customers I think are happy?
- The FTC says asking only customers “you think are more likely to be happy with your product would be misleading if it substantially skews the favorability of the reviews”. Ask everyone, or the sample is the problem.
- Should my main category be broad or narrow?
- As narrow as is still accurate. The primary category does more work than any other field. “Water heater installation” can outperform “plumber” for a business that mostly installs water heaters because it matches what people type and faces less competition.
- Do opening hours really matter?
- Whether a business is open at the time of a search affects whether it is shown. Keep regular and holiday hours accurate. Holiday hours are the part most businesses forget.
- Can an employee or a relative post a review?
- Only with the connection made clear. The FTC’s position is that an endorsement by a relative or employee “is misleading unless the connection is made clear”, and an employee endorsing an employer “should disclose your relationship to the company”.
- Should I ask customers for Yelp reviews?
- No. Yelp asks businesses not to ask anyone for reviews, and it can put a warning on a page that it believes is trading for them. You can still show customers you are on Yelp. Claiming your Yelp page.
Next: your website.
Checking the thing your customers actually see, and whether all of them can use it.
Your website