How to hide your home address on Google Business Profile

If you searched for how to hide address on Google Business Profile, you probably saw your own street show up on a public map. This post walks through the fix and what to check afterward.

Why your home address is public

Google states that the address on a Business Profile is public. When you set up the profile and typed your home address, Google showed it to everyone who opened your listing.

Google's guidelines give an example of a plumber who runs the business from a home address. Google says a service-area business should hide its address from customers. The profile then shows only your service area.

Check that you qualify to hide it

Google's help page says a business without customers at its address can choose not to show the address and list a service area instead. That describes most trade businesses. Customers call you, and your crew drives to them.

Hiding is wrong for a business with a counter, a showroom or a shop where customers walk in. Google lets a business that does both show its address and set a service area. A shop with posted hours and staff on site fits that description.

How to hide your address step by step

These steps come from Google's Business Profile help page on managing your address. Menu labels change now and then, so match the closest wording on your screen.

1. 1Go to business.google.com and open your Business Profile.
2. 2Select Edit profile, then Location.
3. 3Find Business location and select Edit.
4. 4Turn off Show business address to customers.
5. 5Select Save.

Google says changes usually appear in about 10 minutes. It adds that in some cases a change can take up to 30 days.

How to set the service area that replaces it

If you hide your address and enter no service area, Google picks a local area for you. You can change it later, but you will want to set your own right away.

1. 1Go back to Edit profile, then Location.
2. 2Next to Service area, select Edit.
3. 3Choose a suggested area or type in your own cities or postal codes.
4. 4Remove any town your crew does not drive to.
5. 5Select Save.

Google's service area page lists the limits. You can add up to 20 service areas. You cannot define an area as a radius around your business. Google also says your areas should not reach more than about 2 hours of driving time from your business. Approved service area edits can take up to 48 hours to show.

A wording check before you save

Your business description is also public. A home street name or a "visit us at" line in it undoes the work you just did. Read your description and your Google posts for an address, and take it out.

Use this wording in your description if you want a plain way to say where you work:

Replace the brackets with your real towns and your real number. Keep the towns in line with the service area you just saved.

What to check if your address still shows

Open your listing in a private browser window, since that shows what a customer sees. Search your business name on Google Maps on your phone as well.

• Look at the address line on your listing and on Maps.
• Check any other directory that copied your old address. Google does not control those sites.
• Wait the stated 10 minutes, and up to 30 days in some cases, before you edit again.
• Check your website footer and contact page for a home address.

Editing the same setting again and again can slow the review. Make the change once and give it time.

What this will not fix

These are the limits of hiding an address.

• ×It does not remove your address from other websites that copied it before.
• ×It does not change who Google lets verify the profile. Google asks for a business address it can find when you verify.
• ×It does not move you up in map results. It only changes what customers see.
• ×It does not make a profile eligible if the business is a mailbox or a rented virtual office. Google's guidelines say those locations are not eligible.

Common questions

Root's free check looks at this on your own business.