A cleaning company, a pest controller or a mobile dog groomer goes to its customers, and Google's guidelines say what follows from that: if customers aren't served at your address, hide it and list the areas you cover instead. What the list can't do is put you in front of customers in every town on it. SearchOps scans Google from any town you serve, checks your profile against Google's service-area rules, tracks who ChatGPT and Gemini suggest in your towns, and keeps your address out of every report you share.
The problem
Google's guidelines are specific about a business that travels to its customers. If customers aren't served at your address, hide it. Run one profile from your base, not one for each town. List up to 20 service areas, and keep the overall area within about 2 hours' drive of where the business is based. Following the rules doesn't put you in front of customers in every town on the list, though. Google names distance as one of the three things behind its local results, alongside relevance and prominence, and hiding an address doesn't change where the business is based. The town next to your base and the town an hour away can be two very different contests.
Recurring work, such as a fortnightly clean or a window round, repeats once it's won. One-off jobs, such as an end-of-tenancy clean, a wasp nest or a pre-sale valet, have to be won each time, and each can bring a different set of rivals on the map.
With no premises to photograph, the profile has to show the business through its work: finished jobs, the team and the van.
Trade platforms and directories carry listings of their own, and AI answers can cite them when someone asks who to book.
When the base is a home address, every report and map you share has to leave it out.
Questions SearchOps answers
Each question points to a different next move: push into a town, fix the profile, add a listing or write a page. All five are answered from the towns you serve, not from an address your customers never see.
01Reach
Centre a geo-grid scan on any town you serve, or run one grid over the whole service area to see where your reach fades. Your towns come from your Google profile or you type them in, and SearchOps places them on the map for you. Each town is its own scan and uses credits like any other, and the location's overview lists every town with your strongest and weakest keyword there.
The towns you win, and the ones you only drive to
02Rules
The GBP audit checks what Google's guidelines ask of a business that travels: an address on show where customers aren't served, and service areas that are missing, too broad (a whole state or country), or more than about 2 hours' drive from where Google places you. It asks for photos of finished jobs and the team rather than premises, and reads your opening hours as the hours you take calls and bookings.
A profile set up the way Google expects for a business with no premises
Used in this step
03Jobs
Keyword setup offers each main service in each town you serve, such as 'oven cleaning Harrogate' or 'wasp nest removal Leeds'. Track the one-off jobs you want more of beside your core service. Scheduled scans, daily to monthly, show whether your visibility holds through the year, which matters if your work is seasonal.
Visibility for every job you want more of, in every town you cover
Used in this step
04AI answers
LLM Visibility puts the questions customers ask to ChatGPT and Gemini on a schedule, and a prompt names one of your towns when the keyword it comes from does. You see how often you're named, who is named instead, and the sites the answers cite, including trade platforms and directories.
Your share of AI recommendations in the towns you cover
Used in this step
05Listings
Citations & Links checks your listings on the directories for your country and trade, trade platforms included, and recognises your own listings by your phone, website and towns rather than a postcode. It marks the sites that always show a street address and reminds you to hide yours where a site allows it. Tasks ask you to list your towns if none are set, and the agent's plan can suggest a page for a town your website doesn't cover yet.
Listings that match, an address that stays private, and the next job to do
Used in this step
The toolkit
Scans centred on any town you serve, a profile audit that follows Google's service-area rules, ChatGPT and Gemini prompts for your towns, and listings recognised without a postcode. Profile performance leads with calls and website clicks and leaves out direction requests, because nobody asks for directions to a business with no public address. A business that serves many towns is still one location on your plan.
Also working for you
Before and after
Use cases
Illustrative examples, not real customers: the kind of question a cleaning or mobile service business asks, and the kind of answer the data gives. Your own scans will tell your own story.
Domestic cleaning company, three teamsLeeds, UK
Scans centred on each town for 'house cleaner' and 'end of tenancy cleaning' show the company in the top three in the two towns nearest its base and outside the top ten in the three furthest out. Distance counts from where the business is based, so the owner can choose between building reviews and a page for each far town or putting the effort where the teams already win.
Pest control firmPerth, Australia
Weekly scans for 'termite inspection' and 'pest control', centred on the suburbs the firm serves, show where it sits through the year. Where it slips behind a rival, Geo-Grid Insights compares the two profiles on categories, reviews and listing details, so the firm can see what the rival has that it doesn't.
Mobile dog groomerAuckland, New Zealand
Prompts that name the suburbs the groomer serves show the business named in some answers and a salon-based groomer named in most. The answers cite a pet services directory where the groomer has no listing, which gives the owner a specific place to start.
Window cleaning roundCork, Ireland
The GBP audit flags an address on show for a business that doesn't serve customers there, which Google's guidelines ask you to hide, and checks the service areas listed in its place. Once the address is hidden, the owner can share reports with no address in them.
Mobile car detailing businessCalgary, Canada
A one-off scan over the whole service area for 'mobile car detailing' shows the business strong in the south of the city and absent in the north, where two rivals with more recent reviews hold the map. Scans centred on the northern suburbs then show whether new reviews and photos of finished cars close the gap.
Commercial cleaning contractorDenver, US
AI Citations shows which sites ChatGPT and Gemini cite when asked about office cleaning in the city, and Citations & Links checks the contractor's listings on the directories and trade platforms for its country. A site the answers cite often, where the contractor has no listing, is the next one to add.
Choosing a plan
Every plan includes every tracking tool. A business that serves many towns is still one location on your plan. What grows with the number of towns is the scans you run, because each town is its own scan and uses scan credits.
For an owner-operator or a single team
For a firm with several teams covering many towns
For franchise networks and the agencies that market them
FAQ
The same platform, set up for a different kind of business.
