Google maps has been testing out adding the capability for home based businesses to no longer have to list their home as their address and to let service based businesses show up for a service area rather than only showing up for the location of their business office. When these changes go live it will be great news for service businesses and home based businesses.

Specifically, what does this mean for your business? Currently, if your business address is your home address, you have no choice but to enter that as your location, which means your home address shows up when anyone searches for your business. Clearly, this is less than ideal. If this update goes live, then you will have the choice to not show the business address and, instead, list areas served or the number of miles from your location that you serve.

This will also be helpful for service businesses who go to a customers’ location, instead of having customers come to them. For example, if you are a plumber, then you will now be able to say that you serve Tomball, Cypress, Spring and The Woodlands, instead of just showing up for your location in Tomball. This is an issue that comes up regularly when signing up clients for local search.

You can learn more about the potential changes, including viewing screenshots of what the new interface will look like, by clicking here.

We are really excited about what this could mean for our clients, and we will be sure to let you know when Google goes live with the feature.