Getting found locally: Google, Bing and Apple Maps

Set up your Google Business Profile

1. Go to business.google.com/add, or find your business in Google Maps and choose "Claim this business".
2. Verify it. Google may ask for a phone call or text, an email, a short video, a live video call or a postcard. Reviews of new profiles can take up to five business days.
3. No shopfront? If you go to your customers, hide your address and list the areas you serve instead.
4. Fill in everything: the right category, hours, services, photos, your website and your booking link.

What Google says moves you up

• Relevance: how well your profile matches what someone searched for. A complete, accurate profile helps.
• Distance: how far you are from the person searching, or the place they searched for.
• Prominence: how well known you are, including your reviews and rating.

In Google's own words: "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking." Anyone promising a guaranteed top spot is selling something else.

Reviews, without breaking the rules

• Ask every customer, not just the happy ones. A link or a QR code on your invoice makes it easy.
• Reply to every review, good and bad, calmly and briefly.
• Never offer a discount or gift for a review. Google prohibits it, and in Australia the ACCC says fake reviews, rewarding only positive reviews, and hiding genuine negative ones all break consumer law.

Don't forget Bing and Apple

• Bing Places is free and was relaunched in October 2025 with a quick import from your Google profile. It feeds Bing search and Bing Maps.
• Apple Business (it replaced Apple Business Connect in April 2026) is free in Australia, the US and the UK, and controls how you appear in Apple Maps, Safari and Spotlight on every iPhone.

Your website's part

• Use exactly the same business name, phone number and area everywhere.
• Give each main service its own page or section, in the words your customers use.
• Link your website to your profiles, and your profiles to your website.