What is the most common reason a business is missing from the map?
An unverified or half-finished Google Business Profile. Google will not show a profile prominently until it has confirmed the business is real, which now usually means a short video walk-through of your premises or van, and a surprising number of established Yorkshire firms have a profile somebody set up years ago and never completed. Log in, check for a verification prompt, and fill in every field it offers: hours, services, description, photographs, the lot.
The second most common is duplicates. Two profiles for one business, one from an old address in Bradford and one from the new unit in Shipley, split the reviews and confuse Google about which is you. Merge or remove the old one.
Does the address decide where you appear?
Largely, yes. The map pack is drawn for the person searching, so proximity to them is a heavy factor, and a business in Brighouse will show for Brighouse and Halifax searches long before it shows in Hull. If you work from home or a van, you can hide the address and set a service area instead, which is the right thing to do and is what Google asks for. The pin still sits at your postcode, so the map reach still follows it.
What does not work is a virtual office in Leeds city centre to get into the Leeds pack. Google suspends profiles at addresses it decides are not staffed premises, and the reviews go with them.
Which category and services should you choose?
The primary category is the strongest relevance signal on the profile, so choose the one a customer would use and check what the businesses already in the pack have picked. Electrician beats Electrical installation service for most trade work; Solicitor beats Legal services. Add secondary categories for the things you also do, and list the services one by one with a plain sentence each, because Google reads them.
The business name field is for the name on your van. Adding Leeds or Emergency Plumber to it works for a while and then gets the profile suspended, and it is not worth the gamble.
How do reviews affect map rankings?
They are most of what Google means by prominence, and they are the part a small business can move fastest. The count matters, the rating matters, and so do recency, the words customers use, and whether you reply. A review that says the engineer fitted our EV charger in Halifax the same week is worth more than five that say great service, because it tells Google what you do and where.
Ask at the end of every job, send the direct link, and reply to every one within a day or two, including the bad ones.
Does the website affect the map listing?
Yes, more than most people expect. Google reads the page your profile links to when deciding relevance, so linking a boiler-repair profile to a homepage that mentions boilers once is a missed chance. Link it to the page that matches the profile’s primary category, make sure that page names the town, and keep the name, address and phone number on the site identical to the profile.
The reverse is true too: a strong website with a weak profile still sits outside the pack. The two need to agree.
What should you check this week?
Run this list against your own profile before you pay anybody:
- Verified, and logged into by someone at the business
- One profile, with no duplicates at old addresses
- Primary category matches what the businesses in the pack use
- Address hidden and service area set if you work from home
- Services listed one by one, with a sentence each
- Photographs of real jobs, uploaded in the last few months
- Reviews arriving steadily, every one replied to
- Profile linked to the matching service page, with the town on it
What if the profile is clean and you are still missing?
Give Google two or three weeks after the fixes, then assume the problem is prominence. That is the slower work: reviews building month by month, mentions on the sites your trade actually uses, and a website that plainly deserves the ranking. The local SEO guide on this site covers it, and it is the same work that eventually lifts the ordinary results as well.
