Getting found
Why your business does not show up for your own town
The six causes of local invisibility in the order they matter, starting with the one that outranks your website entirely and costs nothing to fix.
How MarketWar handles it
For anything local the Business Profile outranks the website, and consistency beats volume: 5 identical listings beat 20 that disagree, because a contradiction makes every one of them less usable as evidence. That is also why an assistant will never name a business whose address it finds in three different forms.
This is not a list of two hundred ranking factors. For a real local business, invisibility is almost always one of six things, and the first three cost nothing.
1. The Business Profile
Missing, unclaimed or half-filled. The map pack sits above the normal results and is populated from profiles, not websites — so for local intent this outranks everything you have ever done to your site.
Claim it, verify it, fill every field, add photographs of actual work.
2. Your details disagree with themselves
A suite number in one directory and not another. Three formats of the same phone number. Search engines discount all of them, and so do assistants. Five identical listings beat twenty that contradict each other.
3. There is no page about the thing, in the place
"Services" is not a page about anything. Somebody searching for an emergency electrician in a named town will not be matched to "we offer a range of electrical solutions".
One page per service per area you actually cover, written by whoever does the work, with what it costs and how long it takes. Three of those beat thirty thin ones — and thirty thin ones now actively hurt.
4. Search engines cannot read the page
Missing title, no meta description, a page assembled entirely by scripts, no sitemap. Measurable in seconds, and invisible by looking.
5. No reviews, or none since 2023
Count and recency both feed local ranking and both feed the human decision after it. Ask every completed customer, every time. Do not gate, filter or buy them.
6. Only now, anything called SEO
Links, depth, technical work beyond the basics. These matter after the five above. Paying for them first is how a small business spends a year on the wrong problem.
Related: why AI assistants never mention you, asking for reviews properly.
What to do this week, in order
Monday. Claim and verify the Business Profile. Every field, real photographs, current hours, the service area you actually cover.
Tuesday. Search your business name and fix every listing that disagrees with your own site. One format for the phone number, one form of the address.
Wednesday. Write one page about one service in one town, priced, by whoever does the work.
Thursday. Run the audit and fix whatever it says a crawler cannot read. Most of it is under an hour.
Friday. Ask every customer from the last month for a review. Every one, not the ones you think will be kind.
That is a week, it costs nothing but the time, and it is worth more than most six-month retainers.
What not to spend money on yet
Directory submissions in bulk, paid link packages, and anybody promising a position by a date. The first two are the pattern search engines demote, and the third is a guess with an invoice attached.
What this does not do
None of this makes a business rank for a term it has no business ranking for. It removes the reasons a genuinely relevant business is being skipped.
Common questions
Why is my business not showing up on Google?
For a local business the usual order is: no Business Profile or an unclaimed one, inconsistent details across the web, no page about the actual service in the actual town, a page search engines cannot read, no reviews — and only then anything a specialist would call SEO.
How long does it take?
A claimed and verified Business Profile can appear within days. A new page is usually indexed within a week or two. Competitive positions take months, and anyone promising a rank by a date is guessing.
Do I need to pay for ads to appear?
No. Paid and unpaid results are separate and paying does not lift your unpaid position. For a local trade, a claimed profile with real recent reviews often outperforms a modest ad budget.
Related
Why AI assistants never mention your business
When somebody asks an assistant for a plumber in their town, something decides which names come back. What it reads, why most small business sites are invisible to it, and what you can actually change.
What does a website audit actually check?
The twelve things worth measuring on a page, what each one costs you when it fails, and how to tell a real audit from a lead-capture form with a progress bar.
How do you ask for reviews without annoying customers or breaking the rules?
When to ask, what to say, which platform to send them to, and why filtering out the unhappy ones is both against the rules and worse for business than the bad review would have been.