You fix leaking taps, teach maths in students’ homes, or clean offices after hours. Your “business address” is your flat, and the last thing you want is strangers turning up at your door or your home appearing on a map. Yet when people search for a plumber or a tutor nearby, the businesses that come up are on Google Maps.
Google has a setup for exactly this: the service-area business. You can have a Business Profile without showing an address, and tell Google the areas you travel to instead. It works, but there are a few rules and some honest limits to understand first.
Which kind of business are you?
Google’s guidelines separate businesses by where customers are served. Work out which one fits you before you touch any settings, because the answer decides whether your address should be visible.
| How you serve customers | Examples | What to show on Google |
|---|---|---|
| Only at the customer’s location | Plumbers, electricians, AC technicians, pest control, home tutors, house cleaners, mobile mechanics | Hide the address and set service areas |
| Only at your premises | Shops, salons, clinics, cafes | Show the address; no service area needed |
| Both, at a staffed location and on visits | A clinic that also does home visits, a repair shop that also collects, a caterer with a counter | Show the address and add service areas |
The deciding question is simple: during your listed hours, can a customer walk in and be served at that address? If yes, show it. If no, and your work happens at their place, hide it.
Working from home does not by itself rule you out. But listing a home address as a shopfront when customers cannot actually visit does go against the guidelines, and so does using a virtual office, a mailbox or a co-working address you do not really operate from.
Setting it up
When you create or edit a profile, Google asks whether you have a location customers can visit, and whether you serve customers at their location. The wording and screens change from time to time, so look for those two questions rather than a particular menu.
- Enter your real business address even if you will hide it. Google uses it privately, including for verification.
- Choose not to show the address to customers if you serve them only at their location.
- Add your service areas. You can usually enter cities, districts, neighbourhoods or postcodes. Pick the places you genuinely travel to for work.
- Fill in the rest of the profile fully: category, services, hours, phone, website and real photos of your work, your van, your tools or your team.
Our step-by-step guide to setting up a Google Business Profile covers the general setup screens in more detail.
On choosing areas: list where you will actually take jobs. Adding a city you never visit does not make you appear there in any dependable way, and it means calls you will have to turn down. Google has guidance on how far a service area should reasonably extend, so read its current help pages rather than guessing.
Hybrid businesses
A physiotherapist with a clinic who also visits elderly patients at home. An appliance repair shop that sends technicians out. A bakery with a counter that also delivers. These are hybrids, and they should show the address and add service areas.
The one condition is that the premises must be staffed during the hours you list. If the shop is really a storeroom that nobody can walk into, you are a service-area business, not a hybrid, and the address should be hidden.
If you run two genuinely separate operations, such as a shop in one town and a team that serves another, think carefully before creating a second profile. A profile is meant for a real location. Our post on name, address and phone consistency also matters here: a hidden address still needs to match the one you give elsewhere.
What verification still needs
Hiding your address does not mean skipping verification. Google still needs to confirm the business is real and run from where you say.
- Google chooses which verification methods you are offered; you cannot pick freely.
- If you are asked for a video, be ready to show things that prove the business is real and yours. Depending on what Google asks for, that may include your work vehicle with signage, your tools or equipment in use, the area where you operate, and something that shows you manage the business, such as business documents in your name.
- Use the same business name on your vehicle, invoices, website and profile. Mismatches make verification harder.
- Do not rush to a co-working desk or rented letterbox to get a “proper” address. That can lead to verification failing or the profile being suspended later.
Showing your areas on your website, honestly
Here is where many service businesses go wrong. They are told to create a page for every town: “Plumber in Area A”, “Plumber in Area B”, forty times over, each with the same text and the town name swapped. Google calls this kind of thing doorway pages, and it treats them as spam. They also read badly to customers.
A better approach for a small service business:
- One clear “Areas we serve” section or page. List the towns, districts or postcodes you cover, in plain text.
- Say how it works. Do you charge a visit fee beyond a certain area? Are some areas only on certain days? Can people outside the list still ask? Be specific without inventing promises.
- Put your service area near your phone number on the contact page, so people know before they call.
- Use real work as proof, if you have it and the customer agrees: a short note and photos of a job in a named neighbourhood says more than a page of keywords.
- Only make a separate page for a place when you have something genuinely different to say about it, such as a separate branch or a distinct service only offered there.
Our post on writing website content that converts covers how to write that page so it answers the questions customers actually ask.
What to expect from ranking
Be careful with anyone who promises you will rank across every area you list. Google says local results depend mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. For a service-area business, distance is still measured in some way from your business location, even when the address is hidden, though Google does not explain the details.
In practice, many service-area businesses find they show up most readily closer to their base and less readily far away, even inside their listed areas. That is normal and not a sign something is broken. What helps across the board is the same work any local business does: an accurate, complete profile, steady genuine reviews from real customers, a website that clearly describes your services and areas, and consistent details everywhere you are listed.
Quick answers
Will hiding my address hurt me? If you serve customers at their location, hiding it is what Google’s guidelines ask for. Showing a home address customers cannot visit is the bigger risk.
Can I list areas in other cities I sometimes travel to? You can list where you genuinely work. Listing far-off places you rarely visit is unlikely to help and may bring calls you cannot take.
Can I add a map of my service area to my website? Yes, if it helps customers. A plain list of areas is easier to read on a phone, so include one either way.
If you want a second pair of eyes on whether your profile is set up as the right type, or help choosing honest service areas and writing the areas page, our Google Business Profile setup service covers exactly that. We will tell you what fits Google’s guidelines and what does not before we change anything.
Next in this series: Suggested Edits: When Others Change Your Google Listing
