Search "plumber near me" on your phone and look at what comes up. Before you get to a single website, there's a map with three businesses under it. Their stars, their reviews and a button to ring them.
That little box gets a lot of the calls. If you're a trade and you're not in it, plenty of people will never scroll far enough to find you.
Fortunately it's not a mystery. Google tells you how it picks those three, and most of what moves it is stuff you can do yourself.. once you know where to look.
How Google picks the three
Google says its local results are based mainly on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. In plain English:
- Relevance. Does Google understand that you do the job someone's searching for? If they search "boiler repair" and nothing on your profile or website mentions boiler repairs, you're hard to match.
- Distance. How far you are from the person searching. You can't change this one, and it's why nobody shows up everywhere. Anyone who promises you'll be top in every town is telling porkies.
- Prominence. How well known and trusted you look. Your reviews, mentions of your business around the web and your website all feed into it.
Think of it like a customer asking a mate to recommend someone. The mate needs to know you do that kind of work, that you're local enough, and that you're good at it. Google's doing the same thing, just with a lot more data.
The seven things I'd do, in order
Claim your Google Business Profile
This is the listing that shows on the map, and it's free. Search your business name on Google first. There's a decent chance a listing already exists that you never claimed. If it does, claim that one rather than making a new one.
Google will want proof the business is yours before it goes live, and how it does that varies. Sometimes it's a short video of your van, your tools or your premises. It's a bit of a faff, but you only do it once.
Pick the right main category
In my opinion this is the most underrated box on the whole profile. Your main category tells Google what you are, and "Plumber" and "Heating contractor" get matched to different searches.
Pick the one that matches the work you want most, then add a few extra categories for the rest. Don't go mad with them though. Tick everything and you're not really telling Google anything.
Set your service area properly
If you go to your customers, set a service area instead of showing an address. Google lets you hide your address, which is handy if you work from home. List the towns and areas you genuinely cover.
Be honest here. Listing every town in the county won't get you shown in all of them, because distance still counts.
Fill it in like it's your shop window
A lot of the profiles I look at are half empty, and it shows. Add every service you offer, in the words your customers actually use. Keep your hours up to date. Add photos of real jobs, because before and afters are gold and stock photos just look like stock photos. And write a short description that says what you do and where, the way you'd say it on the phone.
A full profile helps Google, and it's also the first thing a customer judges you on, often before they've even looked at your website.
Get reviews, steadily
Reviews are a big part of prominence, and they're what customers look at first. The trick is to make asking a habit. A few every month beats fifty in one week and then nothing.
Ask happy customers while you're still there and they're pleased. Make it easy, because your profile gives you a link you can text straight to them. And reply to every review, good or bad. A calm, polite reply to a bad review can win you more work than the review loses you.
Keep your details the same everywhere
Your business name, address and phone number should match everywhere they appear: your website, your Google profile, Facebook, directories, the lot. If one says "Smith Plumbing Ltd" and another says "Smiths Plumbing & Heating" with an old number, it muddies the picture.
It's boring. It's also one of the basics loads of businesses get wrong.
Make your website back it up
Your profile and your website work as a pair. A proper page for each service, and a clear list of the areas you cover, gives Google more reason to trust you're the right match. It gives the customer more reason to ring you too.
How long does it take?
Honestly? It depends on your area and how many others are after the same spot. In a quiet area, a well set up profile can start showing up fairly quickly. In a busy city, it's a longer game.
What I'd watch in the first few months is movement. More people viewing your profile, more calls and more requests for directions. Google shows you all of this in your profile's performance section, so you're not left guessing.
When I was testing things on my own websites, the biggest wins rarely came from tricks. They came from working out what Google was actually looking for, and giving it exactly that. The map is no different.