Search for “Something Near Me”

Many people ask if their website will show up when people do a search for “[Your Service] near me”, For example “Roadside service near me”. This is something that most users don’t quite understand. We do address this issue when we set up your Google Business page and we will set up the page after the design of your website is complete.

The way it works when you type that phrase into Google or another search engine is that Google looks at where they think you are located. However, for example, even though we are in Lebanon, MO the first hop of our Internet provider sometimes is in Rolla, MO and other times it is Jefferson City, MO so Google will show results of businesses in those areas. On a phone, Google may think you are near the tower where your phone is first connecting to. Obviously the results are often wrong but people doing the search don’t realize it.

On the other hand if you are doing a search from your phone and are using Google Maps, which uses GPS to locate your exact location, then Google knows exactly where you are and can give you more accurate results. Unfortunately, most people don’t usually do a search from Google Maps.

So here is how we handle this. When we set up your Google Business page there is a good possibility it will show up close to the top of a Google search, especially if people know what town they are near and they use that in their search. The Google Business page has a link to your Website but it is also automatically connected to Google Maps, (plus we also tell Google this when we embed the map on the contact page of your website). So if people have their phones enabled to allow Google to track them, it will give a different result than if they have it turned off (we keep ours turned off unless we are actually using the Google Maps app). On the other hand if our phone is using a tower right next to us Google would still know where we are even if we have tracking turned off.

So as you can see it is not as simple or straightforward as most people think. But setting up and managing your Google Business page does help bridge the gap between your website and Google maps. This is why we offer this service at no additional cost.

I hope this answers any question you may have about this and that I did not give you more information than you wanted.