Your business is not showing up on Google: the four faults, and which one you have

You searched for your own business and it wasn’t there. That can be fixed, and finding out why costs nothing.

Google’s own autocomplete suggestion for Australia, read 29 August 2026, finishes “why is my business not showing up on google” with “on google maps”, “after verification”, “on google search” and “anymore”.1 Those endings point at the four faults below. Each fault comes with a check you can run on your phone and a fix you can make this afternoon.

Search the way a customer does first

Your own phone, logged into your own Google account, sitting at your own desk, will flatter you. Google knows who you are and where you are, and that is not what your customer sees.

So open a private window before every check below (in Chrome on a phone, tap the three dots, then New Incognito tab). If you can, run the searches from a few suburbs away, or from home if you work out of a shop.

Fault one: you are not on the map at all

There is no listing for your business, or there is one and nobody has claimed it. The listing in question is Google’s free business listing, the one that puts you on Google Maps (Google calls it a Business Profile).

How to tell. Search your business name and your suburb. If no panel with your name, a map and your reviews appears, or the panel offers to let you claim the business, this fault is yours.

The fix.

1. Go to business.google.com and sign in with a Google account the business controls, not a staff member’s personal one.
2. Search for your business. Claim it if it is there; create it if it is not.
3. Prove you run it, using the method Google offers you.
4. If you work at customers’ places rather than from a shopfront, set the suburbs you cover and hide your street address. Google’s guidelines say “you should hide your business address from customers” when you travel to them.2

Fault two: you are verified and still invisible

Verification makes you eligible, not visible. Google’s policy overview names rules that can hide or suspend a listing that has already been verified.3

How to tell. Sign in at business.google.com and read any notice on your profile. Then check yourself against three of the rules on that page:

• Do you meet customers in person during the hours you list? Google says “a business must make in-person contact with customers during its stated hours.” An online-only business does not qualify.
• Is your address a post office box? Google says “Merchants that set their business address at a P.O. Box will have their profile suspended.”
• When did you last sign in? Owners who stay away for long stretches “may have their access revoked and content removed after adequate warning.”

The fix. Correct whichever rule you have broken. If the profile has been suspended, appeal from inside your account, and Google says “Do not create a new Business Profile for the same business while your appeal is under review”.4 A second listing would turn this fault into fault four.

Fault three: you are there, but others show up first

You come up when someone types your name, and not when they type what you do. A customer who has never heard of you searches for the job, not your name.

How to tell. In a private window, away from your premises, search what you sell plus your suburb: “plumber Penrith”, “cafe Blaxland”, “mechanic Springwood”. If your business is missing from the map results, this fault is yours.

What Google says decides it. Google’s page on local ranking says “Local results are mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity”.5 The same page sets out three headings, Relevance, Distance and Prominence, and says prominence “means how well-known a business is”, which is what its summary calls popularity.

Relevance: say what you do in the customer’s words

Google says “Relevance is how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for”.5 So choose the category that names your trade, and list every job you take in the words a customer types. Write “blocked drains” and “hot water repairs”, not “plumbing solutions”.

Distance: tell Google where you work

Distance is how far your business is from the person searching. You can’t change where your premises are, but you can make sure your listing covers the suburbs you really work in.

Prominence: ask for reviews, the way Google allows

Google says “More reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking”.5 So ask every customer, the same way, and offer nothing in return. Google’s rules do not allow a business to “Discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers”.6

The map places are not for sale

Google puts it plainly: “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google”.5 It sells adverts that sit above the map, and that is a different thing. So anyone ringing to sell you a paid place on the map is selling something Google says cannot be bought.

Fault four: your details disagree with themselves, or there are two of you

Google’s guidelines say “There should only be one profile per business, as this can cause problems with how your information displays on Google Maps and Search”.2 A second listing, an old address or a phone number you stopped using all pull in different directions.

How to tell. Search your business name on its own. Look for two of you, or one of you marked permanently closed. Then put your Google listing, your website and your Facebook page side by side, and compare the name, phone number and address letter for letter.

The fix. If you control both listings, remove the extra one from inside your account; if you don’t, report it as a duplicate from the listing on Google Maps. Then make every copy of your name, number and address match the listing exactly.

The four checks, from your phone

Run these in a private window, in this order:

1. Search your name and suburb. No panel, or an offer to claim the business: fault one.
2. Sign in at business.google.com. A notice on the profile, hours you don’t keep, a post office box, or a long gap since you last signed in: fault two.
3. Search the job and your suburb, away from your premises. Missing from the map: fault three.
4. Search your name on its own. Two of you, a closed copy, or details that differ from your website and Facebook page: fault four.

If you would rather hand it over

Show up on the map is a card on our Get Found menu: we set up your Google profile properly, so you don’t have to work through the list above yourself. Start with one thing, or a bundle. If yours is different, we scope it.

Book a free hour. We’ll look at your listing together while you’re on the call, and I’ll tell you which fault I think is yours.