Why your business doesn't show up on Google Maps

1. First things first: missing, or just buried?

These are two different problems with different fixes, and almost everyone confuses them. Run this test: search for the exact name of your business on Google, along with your city.

• Your listing shows up with your photo, hours and reviews → you are there. Your problem is position, not existence. Skip to point 3.
• Nothing of yours shows up → your listing doesn't exist, or it exists and isn't yours. Keep reading.

The distinction matters because chasing the wrong problem costs months. If your listing exists and the issue is that you sit in 40th place, creating another listing doesn't just fail to help: duplicates get you penalised.

2. Your listing doesn't exist, or you don't control it

There are three different situations and it pays to know which one you're in, because the fix changes:

• There is no listing. You need to create it from your Google Business Profile. It's free.
• There is a listing, but Google created it. It happens more than you'd think: Google generates listings from public data. It shows up, but nobody manages it. You need to claim it.
• There is a listing and someone else manages it. A former partner, the agency that built your website, an employee's son. You need to recover access.

In all three cases Google will ask you to verify the business is yours: by phone, by postcard to the address, or by video showing the premises. It takes from a few days to a couple of weeks and there's no way around it.

Until you complete verification you can't change anything on the listing. Start there, before anything else in this guide.

3. How Google decides who to show first

Google publishes this, and it comes down to three things. None of them is a trick, and none can be bought:

Of the three, the one most people get wrong and that costs least to fix is the first. Let's go there.

4. The wrong category: the costliest and easiest mistake

Your listing has a primary category, and it carries the most weight in deciding which searches you appear in. If you run a rotisserie and you're listed as «Restaurant», you compete against every restaurant in town instead of against other rotisseries — and you don't show up when someone searches for roast chicken.

It's the most common mistake we see, and fixing it takes minutes:

• Sign in to your Google Business Profile with the account that manages the listing.
• Edit the business information and find the category.
• Pick the one that describes what you do, not what you'd like to do. Be as specific as you can.
• Add secondary categories for everything else you offer, but don't overdo it: too many dilute the primary one.

Google takes from a few hours to a few days to apply the change. Don't change it twice in the same week.

5. The listing is incomplete, and Google notices

A half-filled listing reads as neglect, and Google would rather show businesses that look alive. Go through this:

• Opening hours, kept current. Bank holidays included. Wrong hours earn you bad reviews from people who found the door shut.
• Phone and website. If you have no website, link your social profiles rather than leaving it empty.
• Photos. Storefront, interior and what you sell. Listings with photos get considerably more views than those without.
• Description. Written for a person, not stuffed with keywords.
• Services and attributes. If you have a terrace, wheelchair access or parking, say so: those are real search filters.

6. Too few reviews, or old ones

Reviews feed prominence, which is the third leg. And it isn't only about how many you have: it's about them still arriving. A business with 200 reviews from three years ago reads worse than one with 40 from this month.

• Ask for them. Most happy customers don't leave a review simply because nobody asked.
• Make it easy. A QR code on the table or by the till that goes straight to the review form removes 90% of the friction.
• Reply to all of them, bad ones included. Answering criticism well is more convincing than ten compliments.
• Never buy them. Google detects them, and the penalty is far worse than having none.

7. What to do this week

In order, without skipping steps:

• Search for your business by its exact name and decide whether the problem is showing up or climbing.
• Claim the listing if you don't control it. Everything else depends on this.
• Review the primary category. It's the change with the most effect for the least effort.
• Fill in what's missing: hours, photos, services.
• Ask this week's customers for reviews. Not last year's.
• Wait two weeks and look again. Google isn't instant, and changing things daily makes it impossible to know what worked.

Frequently asked questions