How do I check if my business shows up on Google?

Use your phone on mobile data, somewhere other than your own premises, and search for the service you sell plus your town, for example 'plumber Lakeland'. Do not search your business name. If you are in the box of three businesses with a map near the top, you are in the map pack. If you are not in the first two pages, customers making that search will not find you.

Why does my business not show up on Google Maps?

Usually one of four things: your Google Business Profile is missing, unverified or thin; its category or service list does not match what people search for; the profile looks abandoned, with old photos, no posts and unanswered questions; or your address and phone number differ between your profile, your website and other directories. Fixing the profile is free and is the fastest change you can make.

Do I need to pay for ads to be found on Google?

Not to be found for your own services in your own area. A complete, active Google Business Profile and a website that works on a phone do most of that work for free. Advertising makes sense once those are fixed, because ads send people to whatever is there, and if what is there is broken you pay to lose them.

How long does it take to fix a Google Business Profile?

Correcting hours, phone number, category, photos and answering open questions takes an afternoon. Google typically shows the changes within a few days. Building up reviews and regular posts takes longer, but the listing starts working as soon as the basics are right.

What is the map pack?

The box of three local businesses with a map that Google shows near the top of results for searches with local intent, such as 'dentist near me'. It is the most valuable spot on the page for a local business, and it is chosen from Google Business Profiles, not from websites.

Can Google Find Your Business? The Five-Minute Check

4Google searches

5minutes, roughly

0tools or logins

That is the whole check, start to finish. Four searches on your phone, about five minutes, nothing to install and nothing to sign into.

This five-minute check tells you whether Google can find your business, and it starts from an uncomfortable fact. Most local businesses that think they have a marketing problem actually have a plumbing problem. The customers are already searching. The business is already good. Something in between is switched off, and nobody has checked.

Here is how to check. It takes about five minutes, costs nothing, and you need no tools beyond the phone in your pocket.

Your computer knows you. It has been to your website a hundred times, you are signed into your own Google account, and Google is standing very close to your business. All of that makes your results flattering and wrong. A stranger three towns over sees something different, and the stranger is the customer.

A phone showing a search bar and a map with three pins, magnifying glasses around it

Step 1 of 4

Search for what you do, not who you are

Type the thing a customer would type. Not your business name — they do not know your business name yet. That is the whole problem.

So not “Delgado’s Auto Repair”, but “brake repair near me” or “mechanic [your town]”.

Now look at where you land. There are only three places you can be:

In the map packThe box of three businesses with a map, near the top. That is the most valuable real estate on the page.

Further down the pageSomewhere below the map. Workable.

Nowhere in the first two pagesFor practical purposes you do not exist for that search. Nobody scrolls to page three to find a mechanic.

Do this for the three or four things you actually make money on. Businesses are often visible for one and invisible for the rest, which is usually a listing that names one service and forgets the others.

Step 2 of 4

Look at your Google listing like a stranger would

Search your business by name and look hard at the panel that appears on the right, or at the top on a phone. That panel is your Google Business Profile, and for a local business it is usually seen more often than the website is.

Check it honestly. Tick each one that is true:

The hours are right, including holidays. A listing that says you are open when you are shut turns a customer into a bad review.The phone number is the one that actually rings.The photos are yours, not a picture somebody uploaded in 2019.The category describes the business you run today.You have posted recently. Google notices whether a listing looks alive.There are no questions left unanswered. Anyone can answer those. Including your competitors.

If that panel is thin, out of date, or wrong, fix it before you spend a single dollar on advertising. You are paying to send people to a shop window you have not cleaned.

Wi-Fi crossed out, a phone still loading, and a stopwatch

Step 3 of 4

Tap your own website. On mobile data.

Turn Wi-Fi off first. This matters more than it sounds: your website loads instantly on your own connection and on a device that already has it cached, and that is not the test. (If you do not have a website yet, that is the first thing we build.)

3secondsPast about three seconds, a meaningful share of people have already gone. Count, out loud.

You can read something within three seconds of tapping.You can tap the phone number and it dials. If it is typed as plain text instead of a link, every customer has to memorise it, swap apps and type it in. Most will not.Nothing needs pinching or sideways scrolling. That is the universal signal that a site was built for a desktop and never checked on anything else.What you actually do is visible without scrolling.

A trail of coins past three phone screens to an open shop door, one coin rolling away

Step 4 of 4

Follow your own money

Last one, and it is the one people skip.

Pretend to be a customer who wants to buy. Do the whole thing. Find the business, tap through to the website, and try to book, buy or enquire.

The answer is usually a form that asks for more than it needs, a “contact us” page with no phone number, or a booking link that opens something that wants an account. Every one of those is a place where a customer who wanted to give you money changed their mind.

What to do with what you found

Write down what failed. That list, in that order, is your marketing plan.

Not a plan you buy. A plan you already own. Every line on it is a place where a customer looked for you and did not find you, or found you and gave up, and every one of them can be fixed this week: a listing corrected in an afternoon, a phone number turned into a link in five minutes, a form cut down to the three questions it actually needs.

Work top to bottom. The first item is the one leaking the most, so fixing it first buys you the most for the least. Cross each one off as it goes, and run the check again in a month.

Your result

You passed 0 of 0.

Genuinely well done: you are ahead of most of your street, and now is the time to think about advertising, because you would be sending people somewhere that works.

Start with the Google listing. It is free, it is the fastest to fix, and it is seen by more people than anything else you own.

Tick the boxes above as you go. Your score lands here.

The five-minute check that tells you if Google can find your business