New Zealand · October 2026
“Not showing on Maps” can mean three different things, and each has a different cause. Work out which one you have first. Most of the fixes are free.
Check this on your phone, in Google Maps, with your exact business name and the town. Then check again signed in to the Google account you think owns the profile. The two can give different answers, and that difference is often the whole problem.
This is the cheapest to fix, so start here. There are four usual causes.
Google builds rough listings on its own from public records, but a new or small business often has none. Creating one is free. Our walkthrough is how to claim your Google Business Profile.
Verification is the step most people abandon. Depending on the business, Google offers a video, a phone call or text, an email, or a postcard to the address. Until it is done, the profile can be hard to find. Nobody should charge you for this step.
Google suspends profiles that break its rules. Typical reasons for a trade are an address that is not a real place of business (a shared office, a PO box, a friend’s house), a business name stuffed with keywords such as “Best Cheap Plumber Auckland”, or details that do not match the business. If your profile says it is suspended, fix what broke the rules first, then ask Google to review it from the profile itself. Asking again without fixing anything usually fails.
An old profile from a previous owner or an earlier attempt can sit beside a new one, and Google may show one and hide the other. Claim the old one rather than making a third.
Google says local results are based mainly on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. A profile can match your name perfectly and still lose to a competitor on all three.
Work from home, or travel to jobs? You do not have to show your address. Google lets a business that goes to its customers hide the address and list the areas it serves instead, in the profile’s settings under service area. Your pin then stops pointing at your house.
Be wary of anybody who tells you exactly how these three are weighted, or who promises a position in the map block. Nobody outside Google knows, and we cannot get anyone to the top of Google either.
Customers and Google can both suggest changes to a profile, and an unclaimed one accepts them without asking you. A wrong phone number, a pin dragged to the next street or a “permanently closed” label usually comes from that. Claim the profile, check its suggested edits, correct the details and mark the business as open. After that the changes come to you before they go live.
Then make your name, address and phone number read the same everywhere you can log in. Our page on why your business does not show up on Google explains why that matters.
A website adds to a good profile and does not replace one. If you want to know whether you need one yet, read do I need a website for my business?
Usually one of three things: there is no verified profile for it, the profile has been suspended or duplicated, or it exists but Google does not rank it for what people are searching. Search your exact business name first. If that finds nothing, the fix is a verified profile, which is free.
Claim or create your Google Business Profile, verify it, choose the most specific main category, and fill in hours, phone, services and service area. Add photos of real work and ask recent customers for reviews. All of that is free.
The steps are in how to claim your Google Business Profile.
Google ranks local results by relevance, distance and prominence. You cannot change distance, but you can make the category and services more specific, collect genuine reviews, and build up mentions of the business around the web.
You can pay Google for adverts, which are labelled as adverts. The ordinary map ranking cannot be bought, and anybody who guarantees you a position in it is promising something nobody outside Google controls.
Related, if it is useful: how to claim your Google Business Profile, why your business does not show up on Google and websites for New Zealand tradies.
Send us your business name and the town. We will tell you honestly whether we can build one, and if we can, we email you the link to look at. It costs nothing to have and nothing to keep, as long as you answer one message a year saying the details are still right.