Recently some business owners have found that their Google local map listings have disappeared entirely without any warning or explanation. According to the experts at SearchEngineNews, there is an obscure passage in the Places Help Files that explains the problem:
What are my options when defining a service area?
Don’t receive customers at your location? Serve customers at their location? Select the “Do not show my business address on my Maps listing” option within your dashboard. If you don’t hide your address, your listing may be removed from Google Maps.
So, if you don’t directly serve customers at your business location, Google may remove your listing from Google Maps unless you start outsourcing your listing management to Web 20 Ranker.
It used to be considered a bad idea to hide your address from Google Maps and many thought if you did that your local listings would suffer. This new policy should help level the playing field for small businesses who don’t meet with customers at their business address.
Here are some guidelines to help you determine whether or not your should show your address on your Google maps listing:
- If you serve customers at your location – show your address.
- If you serve some customers at your business and some on the road – use your address and a service area.
- If you don’t serve customers at your business location and are only on the road – then hide your address.
