9 Reasons Why Your Business is Not Showing in Google Maps [With Solutions]

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Google Maps directly caters to a significant number of local queries. It gives local businesses good exposure to create awareness and even attract customers. 

Businesses work their way through Google Maps rankings by optimizing their GMB information. This enables them to win better visibility on Google Maps and local-intent searches on Google. 

But, often, businesses are annoyed to see their businesses not showing up on Google Maps. 

So, here are:

Reasons Why Your Business is Not Showing in Google Maps

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1. Your GMB Listing is Still Due Verification

Incomplete verification is common for your business not appearing on Google Maps. 

• Either you haven’t yet opted for the verification process on your GMB listing,
• Or, your verification has failed

Moreover, if you have added multiple locations, you need to verify your business for each of these locations.

Further, the postcard verification process requires approximately 14 days. So, your business might not appear in Google Maps during this verification period. 

How to Solve:

Google My Business offers phone, Email, and postcard verification options. However, the phone and email verification options appear only for a few businesses. 

And you might have to settle down for the postcard verification process. 

You must add your business’s postal address and verify the same. Google might take up to 14 days to send you the verification postcard. 

Moreover, you need to verify each new location you add to GMB. Unless this isn’t the case, you might fail to appear against your competitors in Google Maps. 

Read: Step-by-step Setup Guide for Google My Business Set up

2. Google Has Suspended Your GMB Listing

Due to your profile suspension, you might fail to find your business on Google Maps or search results. 

This will completely wipe off your existence on Google Search or Maps. 

How to Solve:

In this case, you need to locate why Google might have suspended your listing. 

Google doesn’t directly offer you the reason for suspension. And it offers a minimal message like: 

“Your account has been suspended for violation of Google policy or due to quality issues.”

So, you must do the hard work locating the right reason. Here are some most common reasons: 

• Variations in your official business name across different platforms
• Multiple listings were created for the same business (Often a false practice tried to deceive Google) 
• Failing to verify the listing after making edits to the business name, address, website link, phone number, etc.
• When you share your business address with another claimed business on GMB listings
• Your website link is a forwarded URL
• You have over-stuffed your Google My Business listing with keywords

Scrutinize your profile for these reasons and request reinstatement for your profile. 

Here is how you can request a reinstatement: 

• Sign in your GMB profile and start making edits

• Use the above list of reasons to scrutinize your profile. Also, recheck Google’s Business Profile guidelines to assure you aren’t missing something. 

• Once you have examined and made edits to your profile, request a reinstatement. 

3. You Have Failed to Inform Google about Your Relocation or Rebranding

You might have made big changes to your business without updating your GMB. These can include – relocation, rebranding, change in the business category, business hours, etc. 

So, if a local visits your store based on the GMB location but fails to find it there, he can be annoyed. He can report your business as ‘No longer exists.’ In this case, Google will pull down your business listing. 

How to Solve:

To avoid any such issue, you must inform GMB about the changes you make in your business. 

You must sign in to your GMB account and opt for the edit option to make required updates. 

These edits can include: 

• Adding your new relocated address;
• Changing your business name (in case of rebranding); 
• Editing the new business hours; or
• Changing the business category, etc. 

Next, you must again apply for the verification process for these edits. 

4. You Have Removed Your Address from Your GMB Profile

A business might wish to hide its address from GMB to avoid customers on the physical address. 

They may do this by removing the address field from GMB. However, this violates GMB guidelines, and Google may suspend your account. 

How to Solve:

You may want to hide your business address from GMB for certain reasons like:

• You offer your services at the customer’s address 
• You are selling online services

In this case, you cannot simply remove your GMB address. Instead, you must represent your business service areas. This enables Google to understand that you are a ‘service area business’ and hide your address.

Here is the right way to do it: 

• Open the GMB Dashboard - https://business.google.com/locations

• Next, click on the “Info” option in the navigation bar. You must click on the edit symbol next to the address field. 

• You can remove the address by using the “Clear address” symbol.

• Here you can choose the service areas (town, state) where you serve.

After submitting the service areas, verify the changes by viewing your listings on Google Maps.

5. You Create Multiple Listings for the Same Business

In some cases, businesses wish to grow their chances of appearing in Google Maps and Search. 

And they might try to deceive Google by adding multiple listings with name variations. 

This may seem to work for a few weeks, but eventually, Google will recognize your trickery. 

As a result, Google will pull down all the listings of your business (including the primary listing). And you would be unable to find your listing in Google Maps or Google Search. 

How to Solve:

In this case, you must keep your business profile limited to one GMB listing. If you have created multiple locations by mistake, you can request Google to remove them by following the options shown in the screenshot. 

If you find that Google has penalized your GMB profile, you get two options:

You can request reinstatement for the primary profile. You may even have to talk in Google My Business Support.

Or, if you fail to find your primary listing, you might have to create a new profile altogether.

Read: Common Google My Business Mistakes People Make

6. You Share Your GMB Address with an Another Listed Business

In many cases, businesses have a shared office or a shared store. This setup often helps them save on infrastructure and real estate costs. 

However, when both businesses wish to use the same address on GMB, Google considers it a violation. 

And as a result, it will take down a business that uses the same address as any other business. 

How to Solve:

Google offers an option for businesses to suggest edits to Google, as shown in the screenshot.

Otherwise, Google hasn’t defined any mid-ways for multiple businesses to use the same address. 

So, you might have to resolve the issue offline: 

• You can either communicate with the other business to remove its GMB listing. It may agree if it doesn’t cater to the local audience on its location.

• Or, you might have no choice but to change your business’s physical location. 

7. Your Local Business Doesn’t Have a Solid Local Authority

If your business lacks a prominent location authority, it might not appear in Google Map searches. 

Lower location authority fades your presence against your competitors. And it has an impact on your overall online visibility. 

How to Solve:

The location authority of your business is a measure of several factors like: 

• Google Reviews and Ratings
• NAP Consistency on all listings and directories

• GMB Signals
• Geo Location
• Backlinks, etc. 

Some tips to optimize the location authority include: 

• Add comprehensive details to your GMB listing (NAP, services/products, description, images, etc.)
• Boost your feedback generation process by incentivizing review generation
• Build authority by earning citations from popular local listing sites 
• Attract PR Mentions and unstructured citations through blogger collaborations
• Invest your effort in producing highly relevant content and share it to earn inbound links
• Optimize site elements like Meta Tags, mobile optimization, site speed, etc. 
• You must localize your content, language, currency, etc. 

8. Your GMB Profile Lacks Optimization

Unless your GMB profile is optimized, you might fail to compete in the local search rankings. Moreover, your optimized competitors would steal your visibility in Google Maps. 

And this might be the reason why Google prefers to show your competitors over you in results. 

How to Solve: 

You must leverage the tips discussed below to make your GMB profile more comprehensive: 

NAP Consistency: Ensure you maintain your business name, address, and contact info. 

Add your primary business category and combine it with relevant secondary categories. You must check your competitor’s profile to check the secondary categories. 

Services/Products: Create your list of products and services along with their details and prices. Also, add your sub-services and specialties. 

Description: Define your business USPs, experience, objective, and specialties within 750 characters. Also, optimize the description for crucial service-specific, product-specific, and niche-specific keywords. 

Service Area Business: Define service areas if your business serves online or delivers services at the customer’s location. These can include HVAC, home care, digital marketing services, etc. Here you need to add your town, state, and service areas. 

Hours: Update the business hours on your profile. Here, if you are a ‘service area business,’ mention the service hours shown in the screenshot below. 

GMB Reviews: You must encourage customers and users to post reviews on your GMB profile. These reviews significantly influence your local SEO ranks. 

Images: Use the image feature smartly to grow engagement. Populate it with images of your product catalog, staff, ambiance, venue, etc. 

Posts: Grow engagement by leveraging the Posts feature of GMB. You can create offers with CTAs, and also create events. 

FAQs: Allow users to get answers to their most relevant queries by adding valuable FAQs to the GMB listing.

9. Your Business Is Not In the Proximity to the Searcher’s Location

Google is most likely to prioritize the businesses near the search location. 

Your business may not rank on the customer’s IP address if it is not close to its location. 

How to Solve:

You can focus on enhancing your brand’s location authority and GMB signals. 

Moreover, if you are a ‘service area business,’ you can clearly define your service locations. This can increase your chances of appearing your several locations. 

If your business has multiple layouts or operates at multiple locations, add these to GMB. Adding these locations increases the chances of appearing in several locations. 

Here is how you can claim multiple locations for your GMB profile: 

• Switch to your GMB dashboard and head over to the “Add a business” tab, as shown in the image below: 

• The tab will unveil two options - “Add a single business” and “Import businesses.” 

• If you are doing this exercise to add a single extra location, choose “Add a single business.” Here you can follow the general steps to enroll a business in GMB. Do not forget to request verification for this new location. 

• Meanwhile, if you want over ten business locations, click “Import businesses.”

Here, Google offers a sample spreadsheet to add details for all these business locations. You can then import this spreadsheet. Finally, you can request a combined location verification process.

Key Takeaways:

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• Check if your GMB listing still lacks verification. Also, check if the verification has failed to owe any reason. 

• Scrutinize the GMB guidelines if Google has suspended your listing. Locate the error, rectify it, and request reinstatement. 

• If you have failed to inform Google Business about your business relocation or rebranding, update it. Do not forget to request verification after the edits. 

• If you wish to hide your business location, you can mark your business as a service area business. 

• Google might have pulled down your listing if you have created multiple listings for the same business. You might have to make corrections, submit a reinstatement, or contact Google support. 

• Two businesses cannot create a GMB listing for the same address. So, if you have a shared office, your listing wouldn’t show on GMB. 

• Lower location authority also fades your ranking potential. So grow it by optimizing GMB listing, attracting reviews, earning backlinks and citations, etc. 

• Your business proximity to the searcher’s location also decides the visibility of your profile. So, if you have outlets at multiple locations, you can add each of these locations.