Google Business Profile for a business without a storefront.

Who can have a profile without a storefront

Google gives a Business Profile to businesses that meet customers face to face. That can happen at your premises or at theirs, so a business with no shop or office still qualifies if it travels to its customers. Google sorts businesses into three kinds:

• Storefront: customers come to you, at an address with permanent signage, during your opening hours.
• Service-area business: you visit or deliver to customers and do not serve them at your address. A cleaning company, a mobile dog groomer and a plumber who works from home all belong here.
• Hybrid: you do both. Google's own example is a garage that also offers roadside assistance. You show the address and add a service area.

Two cases catch people out. If you meet clients only online, by video or phone, Google says the business is not eligible, however real it is. A coach or consultant who works only on video calls falls on that side. And if clients come to your home but there is no permanent sign with your business name, Google's help says you are not eligible as a storefront and should set up as a service-area business.

Hide the address, but give Google the real one

Google needs an address it can find before it verifies a business, even if customers never see it. For most home-based businesses that is the home address. When you set up the profile, or at any time after, switch off the option that shows the address to customers. It sits with the business location in the profile editor. Then add your service areas, and the profile shows those instead of a street.

Google says the address on a profile is public unless you hide it, so look at the profile on a phone after any edit to the location.

Google does not accept these as a business address:

• A PO box, or a mailbox at a remote location.
• A virtual office: a mailing address you rent but do not work from.
• A desk in a co-working space, unless it has permanent signage, receives customers during your hours and is staffed by your own people.

If you hide the address on Google, keep it off your website's contact page too, and list the areas you cover there instead. A home address printed on the website undoes the point of hiding it on the map.

Choose service areas you really cover

Google lets you add up to 20 service areas, by town, city, postcode or a similar area. It does not accept a radius around your base, and its help says the whole area should be no more than about two hours' drive from where the business is based.

List the places your customers live, not every town in the county. A two-person cleaning company in Bristol might list the districts it cleans in every week, plus the two nearby towns where it has regular clients. A Leeds plumber who adds every city within two hours to look bigger ends up with a profile that promises jobs he will turn down.

Listing a town tells customers you work there. It does not make Google show you to everyone in it. Google's ranking help names distance from the person searching as one of the main factors, and a service area does not change that.

When to show the address after all

Some businesses without a shopfront still see customers at the door now and then. Google's line is whether you serve customers at the address during your stated hours, and whether the place has permanent signage with your name and is staffed in those hours. Some examples:

• A locksmith with a small workshop and a counter where people collect keys, open on weekday mornings, with a sign above the door. That is a hybrid: show the address, set the counter's hours and add the service area.
• A cleaning company with an office where staff work but customers never call in. That is a service-area business: hide the address.
• A dog groomer who works from a van and now and then lets a regular drop a dog at the house, which has no sign. Still a service-area business, because a home without permanent signage does not count as a storefront.

If that changes, for example when you take a unit with your name on the door and set hours for customers, edit the location to show the address. Google may review the edit before it appears, so make the change before the opening, not on the day.

Use the name on your van

Google's rule is that the profile name should be the business's real-world name: the one on your signage, website and stationery, and the one customers know. Its guidelines list what does not belong in the name, including marketing taglines, phone numbers, web addresses, opening hours, service descriptions and location details. Breaking this rule can get the profile suspended.

• Right: Hughes Plumbing & Heating.
• Wrong: Hughes Plumbing, Emergency Plumber Leeds, Open 24 Hours.
• Wrong: Sparkle Cleaning | Best End of Tenancy Cleaners Bristol.

If a competitor stuffs keywords into its name, you can suggest an edit to its profile on Google Maps. Do not copy it.

The same care goes for the rest of the basics:

• Category: the fewest that describe the core business. Google's test is that the category completes "this business is a", not "this business has a".
• Phone: a number the business controls, ideally the one on your van and website.
• Website: the page that represents this business, usually your home page or the page for your main service.
• Hours: the hours you answer the phone and take jobs, plus holiday hours whenever they change.

Verification, and the video Google may ask for

Google chooses the verification methods for each profile, and you cannot change them. You may be offered a phone call or text, an email, a postcard, a live video call or a recorded video, and Google recommends the recorded video whenever it is on the list.

The rules for the video, from Google's help page:

• It is recorded live through the Business Profile on a phone or tablet, in one continuous take with no edits, and lasts at least 30 seconds.
• It shows where the business is based: street signs, landmarks or other markers at your business address.
• It shows the tools, equipment or products you use for the work.
• It shows that you manage the business, for example by opening up a branded van, or by showing a permit, an invoice or a utility bill in the business's name.
• It does not show bank, tax or ID numbers, private information or other people's faces.

A shot list for a home-based cleaner or tradesperson, worked out before you press record:

• Start at the street sign at the end of your road, then walk to your house number.
• Go to the van, film the name on its side, open it with your keys and show the inside.
• Show the kit: the vacuum and steam cleaner, or the pipe tools and boiler parts, and a uniform or bag with the logo.
• Hold up an invoice or utility bill with the business name and address, with the account numbers covered.
• Keep family, neighbours and customers out of shot.

Google says review takes up to five business days. If the video is rejected, open Review issues in the profile to see what was missing, then record a new one with everything from the first plus the missing part. If you are sent a postcard instead, do not edit the name, address or category until the code arrives, or the code stops working.

What gets these profiles suspended

Google can suspend a profile that breaks its guidelines, and a suspended profile can disappear from public view. With service-area businesses the causes repeat:

• Keywords, towns or slogans added to the business name.
• A virtual office, mailbox or co-working desk given as the address.
• More than one profile for the same business, such as one per town. Google says a service-area business can have only one profile for the whole area it serves.
• A new profile created after the first was suspended. Google says not to create a second profile for the same business.
• A profile set up by an agency in its own account, with nobody at the business able to prove ownership. Google lets authorised representatives manage profiles, but they must hand ownership to the owner on request.

A real business can still be caught by mistake, so keep the evidence ready before you need it. Google lists official business registration, a business licence, tax certificates and utility bills, with a name and address that match the profile.

If your profile is suspended

Do not create a new profile. Read the reason in Google's appeals tool, fix whatever breaks the guidelines, then appeal. Google says an appeal can be submitted only once, so fix everything first and attach your documents in the same go. Google reviews the appeal and emails its decision.

Say a cleaning company added "End of Tenancy Specialists" to its name and was suspended. The fix: change the name back to the one on its invoices and van, upload its company registration and a recent invoice in that name, and explain in two plain sentences that the profile now uses the business's real name. Then leave the name alone.

If someone else already controls the profile

A profile may already exist, started by a former employee, an old agency or Google itself from public information. When you try to add the business and Google says it is already managed, you can ask the current owner for access from that screen.

Google's rules say only owners and authorised representatives may manage a profile, and that a representative, such as an SEO company, must transfer ownership to the business when asked. Put the request in writing, and ask for the owner role rather than manager. If the same supplier also holds your domain or website, getting your accounts back from a web designer sets out the order to ask in.

Once you have it, remove anyone who no longer works for you or with you, and look at the list of people with access whenever someone leaves.

Fill in the rest, so the profile earns calls

With no address on show, the rest of the profile carries more weight. Some people decide from the profile alone whether to call.

• Services, each with a line on what it covers.
• Photos of real jobs, the van and the team, added through the year. Before and after photos suit cleaners and trades.
• A description that says what you do and where, in plain words.
• A booking link, if Google offers one for your category and you take bookings online.
• Reviews, asked of every customer the same way. How to ask for Google reviews without breaking the rules covers what is allowed.
• Replies to those reviews, written for the next customer who reads them. See how to reply to Google reviews.

Match the profile to your website

Use the same business name, phone number and list of areas on the profile and on the website, so customers and Google see one business. Give each main service a page on the site that names the areas you cover, and link the profile to the most useful one.

We set up or tidy the Google Business Profile with every website we build, as the prices page lists. Whoever does it, the owner role should sit on the business's own Google account, with any agency, us included, added as a manager. Then the profile stays yours if you change supplier.

A check before you call it done

• The business name is exactly as on the van and the invoices.
• The address is entered for verification and hidden from customers.
• Up to 20 areas you really serve, all within about two hours' drive.
• One primary category that completes "this business is a".
• A phone number the business controls.
• The owner role on the business's own Google account.
• Photos of real work, and the website linked.

Then search for your business in Google Maps on a phone, signed out of your account, and look at what a customer sees: no street address, the right areas and the right number.