This is the question I get asked more than any other, usually phrased as “I searched for my own business and I’m not there.” There are five common causes. Two of them you can check yourself in about five minutes, and one of them nobody can fix.
1. The listing was never claimed
Google often creates a listing for a business from other data — a phone directory, a delivery app, a customer who added you. The business “exists” on Maps, but nobody controls it, so the hours are wrong and no one can correct them.
Search your business name on Google. If you see “Own this business?” next to the listing, that’s your answer and also your fix. Claiming it is free.
2. It’s claimed but not verified
Claimed and verified are two different steps, and a lot of owners stop after the first one. Unverified profiles get heavily suppressed — Google won’t put a business in front of people until it has some proof the business is real and you’re connected to it.
Verification is usually a postcard to your address, a phone call, or a short video walkthrough these days. It’s tedious. Do it anyway; nothing else on this list matters until it’s done.
3. Your primary category is wrong
This is the one that quietly costs people the most. Your primary category is the single biggest lever in the local results, and it’s the field most owners set once, during setup, and never look at again.
A nail salon filed under the generic “Beauty Salon” is competing in a different, bigger race than it needs to. A shop that does mostly brake work but is filed as “Auto Body Shop” is being shown for the wrong searches. Pick the most specific category that genuinely describes what you actually do most of, then add the others as secondary.
4. Your details don’t match across the web
An old suite number on one directory. A disconnected phone number on a listing from 2019. “Street” on one site and “St.” on another. Each mismatch makes Google slightly less confident that it knows who and where you are — and confidence is a large part of what it’s ranking.
You don’t need to fix every directory on the internet. Start with the ones people actually use: Google, Apple Maps, Bing Places, Facebook, Yelp, and whatever is specific to your trade.
5. You’re simply too far away
Here’s the one nobody sells you a solution for, because there isn’t one. Local results are heavily distance-based. If three competitors sit closer to the centre of town than you do, there are searches you will not appear in, no matter how good your profile is or how much anyone charges you.
This is also why your listing often looks fine to you and invisible to customers: results differ depending on where the person searching is standing, and the one search guaranteed to flatter you is the one you run from inside your own shop. Try it from a few miles away.
The one that isn’t on this list
Paying for Google Ads. Ads buy a different slot on the page. They can be worth running for other reasons, but they do not move your position in the local results, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.
Where to start
Check 1 and 2 first. They’re binary, they’re free, you can do both in five minutes without telling anybody, and between them they explain most of the cases I see. If both are fine, go and look at your primary category with fresh eyes.
If you’d rather someone just looked at it for you, that’s what the free check is — we’ll tell you which of these five it is before you spend a dollar, including when the answer is “distance, and there’s nothing to buy.”