How to Get Your Business on Google, and What to Check If It Is Not Showing

There are three different problems that feel identical from the outside. Your business has no listing on Google. Your website is not in Google's search results. Or both exist and your business is still not showing, because you sit below three competitors. The checks are different and so are the fixes.

This is the order to work through them. All of it is free, and you can do the whole thing yourself in an afternoon.

The short answer

To get your business on Google, create and verify a free Google Business Profile at business.google.com, fill in every field, and make sure your website is in Google's index. To make it show up on Google, collect real reviews, keep your name, address and phone number identical everywhere, and give it time. The rest of this page is the order to check things in, so you do not waste effort on the wrong one.

First, find out what Google actually has

Open Google and search your exact business name plus your city. Then search the same thing on Google Maps. You are looking for one of four situations:

1. Nothing at all. Google has no record of your business. You need to create a profile.
2. A listing exists that you never created. This is more common than people expect. Google generates profiles from other data sources, and customers can add businesses. It is yours to claim.
3. Your listing is there but looks wrong or thin. Old hours, old number, no categories, two photos.
4. Your listing is complete and you still do not appear when somebody searches for what you do. That is a ranking problem, not a listing problem, and a later section covers it.

If you also want to know whether your website is in Google, that is a separate check, and it has its own section below.

If there is nothing: create the profile

Go to business.google.com and create a Google Business Profile. It is free and it always has been, despite what anyone who rings you out of the blue says.

The one decision that matters is the first one. Google asks whether customers visit your location.

• If you have a shop, clinic or office customers walk into, say yes and your address shows publicly.
• If you go to customers, or work remotely, choose the service area option. Your address stays hidden and you set the areas you cover instead.

Choosing the wrong one here causes problems later, particularly if you ever move, so take the extra thirty seconds.

Then verify. Google will offer a postcard, a phone call, an email or a video. Video verification is common now, and it usually wants your premises, any signage and your equipment on camera in one unbroken take. This part takes days, sometimes a couple of weeks. Start it before you do anything else, because nothing else works until it is done.

If a listing exists but is not yours: claim it

Find the listing, then look for "Own this business?" or "Claim this business". You will go through the same verification.

If somebody else has already claimed it, Google has a process for requesting access. It is slow and it does work. This happens with businesses that used an agency once and never got the login back, which is worth remembering before handing your profile to anybody.

If it is there but thin: fill in everything

This is where most businesses lose without realising. A verified but half empty profile is a very common situation.

Google gives you a long list of fields. Almost nobody completes them. Do all of these:

• Categories. Your primary category matters more than any other single field. Pick the most specific accurate one, not the broadest.
• Services, each with its own description
• Hours, including special hours for holidays
• Description, written for a person, using the words your customers would actually use
• Photos, real ones, and keep adding them rather than uploading ten once
• Attributes, such as languages spoken, payment methods, accessibility
• Your website link, and make sure the phone number on your site matches the profile exactly

That last point is worth more than it looks. Google checks your name, address and phone number against everywhere else it finds them. If your website says one number and your listing says another, Google trusts both of them slightly less.

Mistakes that can hide or suspend your profile

Some problems are not about ranking at all. They are about doing something Google's guidelines do not allow, and the profile pays for it.

• Adding keywords to your business name. Use the name on your signboard. "Sharma Dental Clinic" is fine. "Best Dentist in Chennai, Sharma Dental" is the kind of thing that gets profiles suspended.
• Using a PO box, or a virtual office nobody works from. Google does not accept PO boxes, and it is wary of addresses where nobody from your business is actually present.
• Having two listings for the same place. Duplicates split your reviews and confuse Google about which one is real. Ask for the extra one to be removed or merged.
• Choosing a category that does not fit. A vague or wrong primary category means Google shows you for the wrong searches, or none.

If your profile has disappeared or been suspended, the fix starts with making it match reality exactly, then asking Google to review it.

If everything is complete and you still do not show up on Google

Now it is a ranking question. Four things drive it, in roughly this order:

How close you are to the person searching. This is one of the biggest factors and it is the one nobody can change. If you are eight kilometres away and a competitor is two, they will often show and you will not, no matter what either of you does. Any provider who promises you the top of the map box is promising something they do not control.

Reviews, and how recent they are. Both count. A business with forty reviews from three years ago looks worse than one with fifteen from this quarter. Ask your customers, consistently, and reply to every review including the unflattering ones. Never buy reviews. It breaks Google's rules, risks your profile, and is usually obvious to anyone reading them.

Whether your details agree with each other across the web. The listings you have on other sites, your own website and your Google profile should carry identical information. Contradictions make Google less certain about you. If you have not set these up yet, here is a list of the free business listing sites in India that are actually worth your time.

Your website. It still matters, just less than people assume for map results. It should be fast, work properly on a phone, and describe plainly who you are, what you do and where.

If you mean your website, not your map listing

Getting on the map and getting your website into Google's search results are two separate jobs. To check the second one, type site: followed by your web address into Google, for example site:yourbusiness.in. If pages appear, Google has them. If nothing appears, Google has not added your site yet.

Work through these in order:

1. Make sure your site is not telling Google to stay away. A setting left over from when the site was built, such as a "noindex" tag or a robots.txt file that blocks everything, does exactly that. It is more common than it should be, especially on sites that started life as a private draft.
2. Add your site to Google Search Console. It is free. Then submit your sitemap, which is a list of your pages that most website builders create for you.
3. Ask Google to look at your key pages. Paste your homepage address into the box at the top of Search Console, then press Request Indexing. Do it for a handful of your most important pages rather than all of them, because there is a daily limit.
4. Link your pages together, and to your homepage. A page that nothing links to is hard for Google to find, however good it is.

Then wait. A new site can take a few days to a few weeks to appear, and being added is not the same as ranking well. It only means Google knows the page exists. If you do not have a website at all yet, a simple one is enough to start with, and our website design services put the price on the page.

The things that are not the problem

Worth ruling out, because they absorb a lot of worry:

• Your website being new. It affects ordinary search results, not really the map box.
• Not posting often enough. Profile posts help a little. They are not why you are invisible.
• Not paying Google. Ads and map rankings are separate systems. Paying for one does not move the other.

How long this takes

If the problem was an unverified or half empty profile, you can see a change within weeks, because you went from giving Google almost nothing to giving it everything.

If the profile was already fine and this is genuinely a ranking question, expect three to six months of steady work, and longer in a crowded category in a big city. That is the honest answer. The faster answers you will be offered are not truer, just faster to say.

A checklist you can finish in an afternoon

1. Search your business name and city on Google and on Google Maps.
2. Create or claim your Google Business Profile, and start verification straight away.
3. Fill in every field, starting with your primary category.
4. Make your name, address and phone number identical on your profile, your website and every listing.
5. Ask three recent customers for a review, and reply to the ones you already have.
6. Type site: and your web address into Google. If nothing appears, set up Search Console.
7. Check back in a few weeks, not a few days.

If you would rather not do it yourself, Google Business Profile management, listings and review requests are part of the Grow plan. And if you work through the list above and find your profile was simply never verified, fix that and you may not need anybody.