Why isn't my business showing up on Google Maps?

Someone searches "[your service] [your suburb]", three businesses and a map appear above everything else, and yours isn't one of them. It's a common question, and the answer is rarely one thing. It's usually two or three small gaps stacking up.

The three things Google is actually weighing

Google has said for years that the map pack comes down to three factors, and nothing in how local search behaves contradicts that.

• Relevance. Does your Google Business Profile category, your website and your reviews actually describe the service someone searched for? A profile listed under the wrong category, or a website whose only mention of a service is one line in a list, is telling Google you don't specialise in it.
• Distance. How close is your listed address or service area to the person searching. You can't out-content your way past someone three streets closer, but you can make sure your service area is set correctly so you're not excluded from searches you should be winning.
• Prominence. How well-known Google thinks you are, based on review count and rating, how complete your profile is, how many places online mention you consistently, and ordinary backlinks and citations. This is the one most businesses under-invest in.

The checklist, in order of what actually moves the needle

1. Claim and fully complete your Google Business Profile. Category (primary and secondary), service area, hours, phone number, and real photos. An unverified or half-filled profile won't compete with a complete one, no matter how good the business behind it is.
2. Match your name, address/service area and phone number everywhere. Your website, your Business Profile and every directory you appear on need to agree exactly. A mismatch, such as a different phone number on an old listing or a slightly different business name, is a signal Google weighs against you. It's one of the easiest things to let slip, and one of the easiest to fix.
3. Get reviews, consistently, not in one burst. Count and recency matter more than any other prominence signal. Asking every happy customer, every time, beats asking ten people the week you remembered to care about it.
4. Have a page that actually answers the search. If someone searches "[service] [suburb]" and lands on a home page that mentions the suburb once in passing, Google has nothing specific to rank. A page genuinely about that service in that place, covering what it costs, who it's for and the questions people ask, gives Google (and the person reading it) something real.
5. Make sure your website has basic structured data. LocalBusiness and Service schema tell Google unambiguously who you are, where you work and what you offer, rather than leaving it to infer from the text.

What doesn't help

Keyword-stuffing a suburb name into a page that isn't really about that suburb. Buying reviews, which Google actively polices and which erodes the trust of real customers who spot them. Creating multiple Business Profiles for one location, which usually gets a listing suspended rather than ranked. None of these are shortcuts; they're ways to lose the prominence you already have.

How long it takes

There's no fixed timeline, and anyone promising one is guessing. Fixing a mismatched phone number or finishing a Business Profile can show up within days. Building the content and review history that make you look genuinely prominent compared to an established competitor is a matter of months, not a weekend project. The order above is roughly the order of fastest to slowest payoff, which is why it's worth doing step one and two before spending on anything else.

The short version

Map pack ranking is relevance, distance and prominence, in that order of controllability. The usual gaps are an incomplete profile, inconsistent details across the web, or no page that's actually about the search someone typed, rather than some deeper technical problem. Our page on what a website needs to rank locally goes through the rest of it, or tell us what's live today and we'll say which of the gaps above is costing you the most.