Service-area businesses in SearchOps

A service-area business goes out to its customers instead of having them come in: a roofer, a plumber, a cleaner or a mobile mechanic. On Google it hides its street address and lists the towns it serves. SearchOps treats these businesses differently wherever an address would matter, so you are never asked to publish the address you chose to keep private.

Add one without a street address

1. In the dashboard, go to Locations and select Add Location.
2. Pick the business from the Google Places suggestions as usual. If Google shows it as a business that hides its address, the type switches to Service area for you.
3. If it does not, choose Service area beside the address field yourself.
4. The address field becomes Areas you serve. Add up to 20 towns or areas. The first one is your main town. No street address or postcode is needed.
5. Select Save location.

To add many at once, use Import CSV on the Locations page. The optional type column takes storefront, service area or hybrid, and servedAreas takes up to 20 towns separated by ; or |.

A business that serves many towns is still one location on your plan.

The towns you serve

To change the business type or the towns, open the location's Keywords page and select Edit business on the Manage tab.

When the location is connected to its Google Business Profile, SearchOps reads the business type and the areas served from Google, when you connect it and each time it checks the profile again. To change the areas of a connected location, change them on Google, or in the profile editor in SearchOps, and the new list comes through. If connecting replaces towns you typed by hand with Google's list, the connect screen says so.

After you save your towns, SearchOps puts them on the map for you, so they can be scanned. A town more than about two hours' drive from where Google places your listing is not placed, and a whole region, such as a county or a state, stays on your list but is never used as the centre of a scan.

If a service-area location lists no towns at all, Tasks shows a card asking you to add them.

Keywords and prompts for each town

When you set up keywords, the group In the towns you serve offers each main service in each of your towns, such as "roofer harrogate". Each one you tick is one more keyword on every scan. A town is always treated as a place, never as a service. AI visibility prompts name one of your towns only when a search you ticked does.

Scan any town you serve

On New scan, a service-area location offers Centre the grid on:

• Your listing's position, where Google places your listing (or Your main town if the location has no Google listing).
• Any town you serve. A town still waiting to be placed shows Place on map.
• Whole service area, one grid over all your placed towns, for a one-off scan.

Each town is its own scan and uses credits like any other scan. Scheduled campaigns can be centred on one of your towns too. If you stop serving a town, a campaign centred on it is skipped rather than charged, and we email you: add the town back or move the campaign to a town you serve.

Google ranks a service-area business from where it is based, even with the address hidden, so towns further away usually rank lower. New scan says so, and it is normal, not a problem with your profile.

See where you show up across your areas

• The location's overview has a card called Where you show up across the areas you serve: one row per town, with your strongest and weakest keyword from the latest Google Maps scan centred there, or Not scanned yet. Scan this area opens New scan with that town chosen.
• Geo-Grid Insights reads the latest scan for each town. When you have scanned more than one, pick Every area or a single town.
• Results for different towns are kept apart: a keyword's history, the weekly email and the profile timeline never compare one town's scan with another's.
• Competitors compares a rival with you over the same scans, so a rival strong in one town is not counted as ahead of you everywhere.

Tasks and the agent

• The weekly plan names the towns you serve under the business name, never the address.
• Task steps fit the way you work: photos of finished jobs, work in progress, your team and your van rather than premises, and review requests that suggest customers mention the job and their town in their own words.
• When the agent writes a review or a 90-day plan, it knows the business travels to customers and which towns it serves. It never suggests anything about premises, signage or directions, and it can suggest a page on your website for a town you serve when the site has none.

What changes in audits and reports

• No street or postcode checks. Audits never mark a missing street address or postcode as a problem, and never suggest adding one to your website or listing. They look for the towns you serve instead.
• Profile audit. The Google Business Profile audit asks for photos of finished jobs and your team rather than your premises, reads your opening hours as the hours you take calls, and checks your service areas: no more than 20, and none more than about two hours' drive from where Google places your listing.
• No directions. Profile performance, the profile timeline and the Leads Report lead with calls and website clicks. Direction requests are left out, because nobody can ask for directions to a business with no public address.
• Your address stays private. Reports you share never show a service-area business's address.
• Posts and customers. When the agent drafts a post, it knows the business comes to its customers, so it never invites anyone to visit. In LLM Visibility, the customers suggested for you are ones who need someone to come out, cover their area or give a fixed quote, never ones who need parking or step-free access.

Next steps

• Connect the listing so its type and areas stay in line with Google: Connect your Google Business Profile.
• Run a scan centred on one of your towns: Run your first geo-grid scan.