The three checks, in order
- Open a private or incognito window and search your business name plus your town. This tests whether your listing exists and is findable at all.
- In the same window, go to Google Maps, drag the map to where your customers actually are, and search your main service plus the town — “electrician Bolton”, not your business name. This is the search that brings strangers.
- Sign in at business.google.com and check that your profile shows as verified, with no notices about suspension or pending verification.
What each result means
If you appear for your business name but not for your service, your profile exists and is simply not competitive yet. That is the most common outcome and it is a ranking problem, not a technical one: usually the primary category is wrong, services are not listed individually, or reviews have gone stale.
If you do not appear even for your own business name, something structural is wrong — the profile may be unverified, suspended, or a duplicate may be outranking the one you manage. That needs fixing before anything else is worth doing.
If you appear at your own premises but not when the map is moved a few miles, nothing is broken. Proximity is a genuine ranking factor, and that pattern is normal — it tells you how far your visibility actually reaches, which is usually less far than owners assume.
Why searching for yourself is misleading
Google knows where you are, what you have clicked before, and which account you are signed into. Searching for your own business from your own premises while signed in stacks every one of those in your favour, and it is why owners are often shocked when a customer says they could not find them.
Incognito removes the account and history, but not location. That is why the second check matters: physically moving the map to a customer's area is the only way to see what someone across town gets. Doing that at four or five points around your service area gives you a far truer picture than any single search.
Checking Search and Maps are not the same thing
Your business can appear in Google Maps and not in the map block shown on a normal Google search page, or the other way round. They draw on the same profile but display differently depending on the query and the device.
It is worth checking both on a phone rather than a desktop, because that is where local searches actually happen. A profile that looks fine on a laptop can be pushed below several results on a phone screen, which is the screen your customer is holding.