Google My Business for Service Areas

Service areas are a great way to set up a business profile if you don’t want to display your physical address, or if your business operates outside of where your business is located. An example of this might be a service based business that does on-site or remote consulting, a plumber who works in specific geographical area, or a mail order business that sends packages to other areas.

Your Goal:

By the end of this lesson, you will understand how service areas work for Google My Business, and if it’s applicable you will have set up a service area for your business.

Your Mission:

• Understand what a service area is
• Figure out if a service area is right for your business
• Create or edit a service area
• Remove a service area

What is a Service Area

Service areas are intended to show areas that you do business in. This is particularly helpful if you choose not to show your company’s address (for example you have a work-from-home business, or a warehouse that’s not open to the public), but it’s also great for sales people who work in areas outside the main office area, and businesses that do work in different cities that they don’t have a physical location in.

The main benefit of this is that you get to harness the power of Google Local search in your search engine results pages. As you’ll learn in our SEO lesson, search intent is one of the key drivers behind Google’s algorithm. Typing “Plumber” into a search will bring up local plumbers first since the chances are you don’t want to just understand the concept of a plumber.

Who Should use Service Areas?

• Any business that operates outside of their main address
• A business that does not want to display their main address

Who Should Not use Service Areas?

• A business that has multiple locations (create multiple physical locations in My Business instead)
• A business that wants to get map results from Google Maps (you need a physical address to end up on a map)

Because of the way Google’s algorithms work, businesses with physical locations and map pins in an area will have a slight advantage over a business who operates in the same place as a service area. This is because the map pins, and current ads will display before others. If your business has less local competition, say “Scrapbooking Supplies” vs “Plumber”, you’ll have a greater chance of showing up higher.

Your search engine ranking is dependent on more than 200 factors, of which Google My Business is just one of them. However, having a service area will help a business show up in a search for your specific business name.

Creating and Editing Your Service Area in Google My Business

• Log in to your Google My Business Account.
• In the left hand menu, navigate to “Manage Locations”, and find the location you want to set a service area for.
• In the left hand menu, click “info”, click the pencil icon in the services area section. You can now provide cities, counties, states, provinces, or countries where you provide your services.
• Click “Apply”

Remove a Service Area in Google My Business

• Log in to your Google My Business Account.
• In the left hand menu, navigate to “Manage Locations”, and find the location you want to set a service area for.
• In the left hand menu, click “info”, click the pencil icon in the services area section.
• Next to each service area you want to remove, click the remove “X” icon. To remove all service areas at once, click “Clear service areas”.
• Click “Apply”