This is the question I get asked more than any other, and the first thing worth knowing is that Google Maps and your website are two different systems.
Your website is your website. What appears on Maps comes from your Google Business Profile, which is a separate free thing Google runs. You can have a beautiful website and be invisible on Maps. You can have no website at all and sit at the top of Maps. They help each other, but they are not the same lever.
So when you say "I am not showing up on Google Maps", the fix is almost always on the profile, not the site. Here is how to work out which one you have got.
1. The profile is not verified
Google is explicit about this one. Verification is how Google knows you are authorised to represent the business, and Google states that a verified profile is "more likely to show up in search results".
Check: sign in to the Google account the profile was created with and look for a verification prompt or a "verify now" banner.
Fix: finish the verification. It is usually a postcard, a phone call, a video or a live video call these days depending on the business type. Nothing else on this list matters until this is done.
Source: Google Business Profile Help, how local ranking works.
2. You are checking it wrong
Googling your own business name from the ute parked outside your own house is the least reliable test there is. Google personalises what you see based on where you are, what you have searched before, and whether you are signed in. You will often see yourself when nobody else does, and occasionally the reverse.
Check properly: open a private or incognito window, sign out of Google, and search the way a customer would. Not your business name. The thing they would type, like "blocked drain Coburg" or "roof restoration Frankston".
Better still, look at the profile's own performance data inside Google Business Profile. That tells you what people actually searched to find you, which is worth more than any amount of guessing.
3. Distance, and it is not negotiable
Google names distance as one of the three things that decide local ranking. It is how far your business is from the person searching.
That means you cannot expect to appear at the top of Maps in a suburb an hour away just because you have written it on your website. Being willing to drive there is not the same as being near there, and Google only cares about the second one.
What to do about it: be realistic about the ring you can genuinely dominate, and use your website for the outer suburbs instead. The website is not distance-limited the way Maps is. That is exactly why a trade website with real service pages does a different job to your Maps listing rather than a duplicate one.
4. Your category is wrong or too vague
The primary category on the profile is one of the strongest signals you control. "Contractor" is not a category that helps a roof plumber. Neither is picking eleven categories in the hope that one sticks.
Check: open the profile and read your primary category out loud. Does it match the words a customer would use for the main thing you do?
Fix: set the primary category to your main trade, precisely. Add a small number of genuinely relevant secondary categories. Not a list.
5. The service area is empty, or is the whole state
Most tradies are service-area businesses. You go to them, they do not come to you. Google supports that properly, and if you do not set it up you are relying on Google guessing.
Setting your service area to all of Victoria does not make you appear across all of Victoria. It just tells Google nothing useful.
Fix: set the suburbs or regions you actually work in. If you never take a job past a certain point, do not list past that point.
6. Your name, address and phone number do not match your website
If the profile says one number and the website says another, or the profile has a suffix in the business name that appears nowhere else, you have handed Google a reason to be unsure it is the same business. Uncertain is not a good place to be.
Fix: make the business name, phone number and address identical on the profile, on the website, and anywhere else you are listed. Identical. Not close.
This is one of the first things I check on any build, because it costs nothing and it is wrong more often than not.
7. The profile is basically empty
No photos, no hours, no services listed, no description, no products. An empty profile gives Google nothing to match against a search, and it gives a customer nothing to choose you over the business above you.
Google's own guidance is that businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up in local search results.
Fix, in order of effort:
- Hours, including public holidays
- Every service you offer, listed as services, in the words customers use
- A description that says what you do and where
- Photos of real jobs, added regularly rather than twenty in one go and never again
8. No reviews, or none for a long time
Google calls the third ranking factor prominence, which is how well known a business is. Reviews are part of that, and they are also the single biggest thing a customer looks at before ringing.
Fix: ask. At the end of a job, while they are happy, with a direct link. Not a QR code on an invoice they will never open. There is no trick to it and there is no way to buy your way out of it that will not eventually cost you the listing.
9. You have duplicate or old listings
Business moved, name changed, a previous marketing contractor made a second profile, or an aggregator created one automatically. Two listings for one business split your signals and can suppress both.
Check: search your business name, your old business name and your old address on Maps and see what comes back.
Fix: claim the duplicates and mark them as duplicates through Google, do not just abandon them.
10. The profile has been suspended
It happens, sometimes for a reason as small as a keyword stuffed business name or an address that does not check out. If your profile has vanished entirely rather than ranking badly, this is the first thing to rule out.
Check: sign in. A suspended profile says so.
What actually decides it, in Google's words
Google publishes the three factors. They are:
| Factor | What Google says |
|---|---|
| Relevance | "How well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for" |
| Distance | "How far each business is from the customer who's searching" |
| Prominence | "How well-known a business is" |
You can influence relevance and prominence a great deal. You cannot influence distance at all. Any advice that ignores that third one is selling you something.
What nobody can promise you
Not a spot in the map pack, not a position, not a number of calls. Anybody who guarantees you the top of Google Maps is either guessing with your money or planning to show you a screenshot from their own phone in their own suburb, which as covered above proves nothing.
What can be done is honest and unglamorous. Verify the profile, get the categories and service area right, make the details match everywhere, fill it in properly, keep it alive, and ask for reviews. Then measure it, with dates, so you know whether it moved.
If you want to see what measured looks like rather than promised, the proof sheet has dated Google figures from a named client on it.
And if you would rather someone just did all of this for you, that is what I do. Send me your business name and suburb and I will run the checks and send you what I find, no sales call.
Hi, I'm Pete. I build fixed-price websites for Australian small businesses. Fixed $990, live in seven days, and you see it before you pay a cent.