A home-based business owner kept their actual address on Google Maps for 20 years and got only two unannounced walk-in visits. Using a real address instead of just a service area boosts visibility, but you can mark yourself as virtual-only or by-appointment to reduce foot traffic.
The question that's top of my mind: I work from home, I don't want to put my home address in there. I know.
I've had— you have two options. Option number one is to call yourself a service area business, and then it'll just put your city in there, city and state, I believe.
Okay.
However, if you really want to be found in Maps, it really needs an address. Otherwise, you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot by becoming a service area. I can tell you I have my home address on there. I've had it on there for 20 years, probably. Whenever they came out, I— it wasn't an option back then. We had to use our home address. And over that span of time, I've had 2 people show up unannounced at my door. Both of them were potential clients, so it wasn't like a huge deal, but it's also— I don't think people really do that anymore, you know. And you can now put on there that you are— take virtual appointments only or by appointment only. You can actually state that on your profiles, which I have. Yeah, it, it's really not an issue.
So it's funny you said people don't just drive to the location first. Men do that instead of calling.
I don't know why. Ironically, both of those two people were men.
I know, it's what they do. I know I could say that. I'm like, why didn't you just call first? You spent 3 hours driving to find that they're not open. Why would you do
