What You Need To Know About Hiding Your Business Address on Google Maps
If a potential client goes to the address you have listed on Google Maps only to find that your business does not have a physical presence in that location, you may run the risk of being penalized by Google. Hiding your business address on Google Maps will protect your listing from losing ranking or even being banned by Google.
Google prefers to not mislead users in any way; allowing confusion in address listing could lead to a growing distrust of Google’s services. This practice happened consistently enough inciting Google to develop strict guidelines with regard to listing business addresses. Business owners would now be held accountable for their listed business address – the location mentioned on their Google My Business account was required to be a genuine physical location in which the business exists.
Google Policies
Service area businesses (SAB), including those that work from home or out of a mobile unit such as a vehicle, are required to hide their addresses. Likewise, businesses with offices that are not staffed during listed business hours must also hide their location. Google requires that businesses only list an address if they are able to accept customers at that location.
There are two important guidelines set by Google for listing a business address.
- You should use a physical location as an address. Mailboxes located at remote places are not considered as a physically valid address. But you can add mailboxes located inside your business premises.
- If you use a temporary address where no staff is present during regular business hours, you should not list them.
For more details on Google’s guidelines, you can review the guidelines for representing your business on Google..
How To Hide Your Address On Google Maps
If your business does not serve customers from a commercial location, if your business operates from home or your business serves customers at their location…. you should be listed as a service-area business on Google and should choose to not show your business address on Google Maps.
To hide your business address:
- Login to your Google My Business account.
- Select “Locations” page and ensure that the card view mode is selected.
- Select “Manage Location” option. Click on the “Edit” button.
- When the new page has loaded, navigate to the address section and you will see a pencil icon.
- Click on the icon and move to the section that says “I deliver goods and services to my customers at their location” and select the option “Yes”.
- If you had not previously added any service area, now is the time to add it.
- Once that’s done, ensure that the “I serve customers at my business address” option is not selected.
- As a final step, click the “Apply” button to save the changes you have just made.
Having your business registered on Google My Business is an essential tool for search engine optimization. However, service area businesses must be careful to not display an address where they are not able to accept customers. For assistance in properly managing Google My Business accounts and getting your business properly ranked on search engines, contact 1 Source Media Group today.
Comments