Your home-based local business will often appear in Google My Business listings with a Street View image of your house if you don’t hide your address.
An accurate, well-optimized Google My Business listing plays a very important role in Local SEO, but it may look strange to have an image of your house pop up associated with your business in search results.
How to Remove House Picture from Google Business Listing & Hide Your Address
Set Up a Service Area for Your Business and Hide Your Pinpointed Address
Most home-based consulting businesses, mobile businesses, or any business where you serve your customers at their location fall into the category of ‘Service Area Business‘.
When you set up your business on Google My Business as a Service Area Business, you have the option to hide your address. This will prevent the street view photo of your house from appearing in association with your business in Google search results.
Before you can hide your address and street view house photo, you need to designate your business as a Service Area Business (SAB).
How to Change your business to a ‘Service Area’ business.
- Login to manage your Google My Business listing and click on the ‘Edit’ Button.
- On the edit screen for your business, click on the ‘Edit’ button in the ‘Address’ section.
- Check the box next to “I deliver goods and services to my customers at their location” and define your service area. By checking this box, you are informing Google that your business is a Service Area Business.
- Hide Your Address & Street View House Photo: If you want to hide your address and street view photo of your house, UNCHECK the box next to “I also serve customers at my business address”.
Note: This will also remove the map marker for your business from the Google Local 3-pack map results.
But Wait….There are Reasons You Might Keep Your Business Address Published on Google
It sounds like a no-brainer at first….why would I want a picture of my house showing associated with my Google Business profile? However, there is an important ‘pro’ for local businesses to consider.
When you leave your business address published, your business has a pinpoint on the Google 3-Pack map results.
For searchers who are looking for the business that is geographically closest to them, having a marker for your business on the map may provide an advantage….a bright red dot on the map on which searchers can click.
By removing the marker from the map, this could lead to less clicks on your business profile (because no bright red dot!).
Since Google may have accidentally confirmed that clicks on a business listing are a ranking factor for local search results, I might think twice about doing anything that could negatively affect the number of clicks.
Choose What Works for Your Business
Some other things to consider when deciding whether to hide your home business address from your Google Business listing are:
- When your business address is hidden, your business is still eligible to appear in the Local 3-Pack…just no map marker.
- According to Google guidelines, a Local Business on Google should only display a pinpointed address if the business serves customers at that address at least some of the time.
- Many, many businesses are home-based, so there isn’t necessarily a stigma attached to seeing the street view of the house in association with a business.
- An unattractive or very old Google Street View image may be more harmful than helpful depending on what type of business you have.
- If the Street View image is incorrect, or Google doesn’t have the map marker quite right, you can report incorrect Street View imagery and move the map marker.
- Add Local Business photos to your business profile to help searchers find and understand your business. This can help draw attention away from a less than ideal street view image of your business.
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