The three places Google can show you
When someone types 'plumber in Reading', Google shows three different things on one screen, and each one has its own rules. Knowing which one you're missing from is half the job.
- The map with three businesses under it (people call it the map pack). This comes from Google Business Profile listings, not from websites. Distance, reviews and how complete the listing is decide who's in it.
- The ordinary results underneath. These are web pages: your site, a Checkatrade page, a directory. If you have no website, you can't appear here at all.
- Your own name. When someone searches 'Dave Smith Plumbing', Google tries to show your listing and your site side by side. If it finds only a Facebook page, that's what people get.
A ten-minute check before you change anything
Google shows you different results from everyone else, because it knows it's you. So check from a phone that isn't yours, or in a private browsing window, and do these three searches.
- Your business name. Does your listing show, with the right phone number, hours and a website link that opens? If a different business or an old address shows, that's the first fix.
- Your trade and your town ('electrician Basingstoke'). Are you in the map pack? If not, scroll the list: are you there at all? Note who is above you and tap each one. What have they got that you haven't? Usually it's reviews, photos and a website.
- Your trade and your town with 'near me' from the area you cover most. Google leans heavily on where the searcher is standing. If you cover three towns but your listing says one, you'll be missing from two.
Write down what you saw. In a month you'll do the same three searches again, and the comparison is the only honest measure of whether anything worked.
The Business Profile checklist
Google Business Profile is the listing behind the map. Most trades either never claimed it, or claimed it in 2019 and haven't touched it since. Go through this list once and most of the gap closes. It's an afternoon's work plus a monthly habit; on every plan of ours we set it up with you, and on the £80 plan we keep its hours, photos and links in step with the site so the habit is ours, not yours.
Reviews: the part that takes weeks, not minutes
The businesses above you almost always have more reviews, newer reviews, or both. There's no shortcut and no trick, just a habit: ask every customer, at the moment they're happiest, with a link that opens straight onto the review box.
- Get your review link from your Business Profile (there's a 'Get more reviews' button). Save it as a text message you can send in two taps.
- Ask when the job is done and they're pleased, in person: 'If you're happy, a Google review helps me more than anything. I'll text you the link.' Then send it before you drive off.
- Reply to every review, including the bad ones, in a calm sentence or two. Google notices replies, and so does the next person reading.
- Never buy reviews or ask family to pad it out. Google removes them in batches, and it can suspend the listing with them.
Ten honest reviews over three months changes a listing more than anything else on this page. Most trades who do this consistently find the map pack opens up on its own.
What a website changes, and what it doesn't
A website won't put you in the map pack on its own; that's the Business Profile's job. What it does is give Google, and people, something of yours to show in the other two places. Without one, you can't appear in the ordinary results at all, and a search for your name lands on a directory or a Facebook page.
A page per service is where it earns its keep. 'EV charger installation Reading' or 'EICR certificate Basingstoke' are searches with few honest answers, and a page of your own about that exact job, in that exact town, is the kind of result Google likes to show. That's why our £80 plan is built around a page for each service rather than one long home page.
Things that don't work, and can hurt
- Stuffing your business name with keywords ('Dave Smith Plumbing Boiler Repair Reading Berkshire'). Google treats it as spam and competitors can report it.
- Paying someone £50 a month for 'citations' on directories nobody uses. A consistent name, address and phone number on the handful of big ones (Yell, Checkatrade if you're on it, Facebook) is plenty.
- Posting the same photo with different captions to look active. Real job photos, taken on your phone, a few a month, do the work.
- Anyone who guarantees a position. Google doesn't sell positions in the map pack, so nobody else can either.
What we'd do in your boots
- This afternoon: claim and fill the Business Profile using the table above, add ten real photos, and set the service area to every town you'd drive to. Or let us do it with you; it's part of every plan.
- This week: send the review link to the last five happy customers you can think of, and start asking at every job from now on. On the £80 plan those reviews also appear on your site.
- This month: a page of your own in the listing's website box, so the people who search your name land on you and not a directory. Our £40 plan is that page plus the profile, with nothing upfront.
- In a month: repeat the three searches from a phone that isn't yours and compare notes. Then decide what's next with evidence, not a feeling.