Notes

How to actually show up on Google Maps

James Prior, Foothold Web · September 2026

When somebody searches for what you do, two different things appear. There is the map near the top, with a few businesses, their star ratings and a call button, and there is the list of websites underneath. They are ranked in different ways. Most local businesses win or lose on the map, so that is where to start.

The map runs on your Google Business Profile

The map results come from Google Business Profile, the free listing that shows your hours, photos and reviews. If you have never claimed yours, that is step one, and it is free: search your business name, find the listing, and go through Google's verification. If you have claimed it, the difference between a listing that shows up and one that does not is usually how completely it is filled in.

Finish the profile the way Google wants it

Pick the most specific primary category that fits (a "landscaper" is not a "lawn care service" to Google, and the wrong one costs you searches). Add every secondary category that honestly applies. List your actual services. Set real hours, including holidays. Define your service area by the towns you cover. Add photos of your work and your truck, and keep adding them; a listing that gets new photos looks alive. Write the description in plain words a customer would use.

Make your name, address and phone match everywhere

Google checks whether the rest of the internet agrees with your listing. If your Facebook page says "J&R Grading LLC" and your listing says "J and R Grading" with a different phone number, that disagreement quietly holds you back. Pick one spelling and one number, and use them on Facebook, Yelp, the Yellow Pages listing you forgot about, and your website.

Reviews, and how you answer them

Ask happy customers for a review, at the moment they are happy. Send them the direct link. Reply to every review, including the bad ones, briefly and politely, because future customers read the replies. Never buy reviews and never write your own; it is against the rules and it shows.

Where the website comes in

The listing gets you on the map. The website does three things the listing cannot. It gives Google something solid to check the listing against, which helps the map ranking. It competes in the list of results underneath the map, where the listing cannot go, with a page for each service and each town you cover. And it is what people read after the click, when they are comparing three businesses with the same stars and deciding which one to call. That same groundwork is what Google's AI overview and tools like ChatGPT read when someone asks who does this work near them.

If you would rather have it done

Setting up the Google Business Profile properly and linking it to the site is part of every site I build, and keeping the two in agreement is part of the $90 a month. Here is what else that covers.

Also in Notes: What a small business website costs in North Carolina · You have a Facebook page. Do you still need a website? · What the $90 a month actually covers