Google Maps have, for quite some time, presented challenges for many small businesses, especially home based, or service based businesses.  Requiring a business address, this is often not ideal and can in fact be very problematic for home based business owners and/or service based business owners.  People such as real estate agents, and even in businesses such as my own, Search Engine Optimization, and Local Search Engine Optimization and consulting, it presents quite a few challenges.  Also, it’s been very frustrating for many of my clients in that they have a hard time getting visibility on maps, especially in situations such as home inspectors, plumbers, pest control, and real estate agents, where they would just get visibility on maps for their exact location…  Not ideal when you have a home inspector who has an office in North Richland Hills, but services Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, and 50 other odd small towns around the metroplex and surrounding areas.  When you log into the Google Business Center, you should now see a new tab entitled “Service Areas and Location Settings” which will give you the ability to identify whether customers come to your location, or whether you service customers as their location.  And when you identify that you service customers at their location, you can identify your service area in one of two ways – either list a distance from a central location, or you can input a list of service areas for your business. 

This provides some much needed improvements, but also presents some new, additional challenges as well.  I do think it is a positive step in addressing one of the fundamental problems with the Google Business Center for many home based and service based businesses though, and provides some welcomed relief.

Log into your Google Business Center listing today and see if this new functionality can lend some relief or new exposure for your business, and also contact me for help in dominating the search results, local or otherwise…