Service Area or Address? GBP Setup When You Work From a Van
Your business address is a driveway. Or a lock-up behind a parade of shops, or the spare room where the invoicing gets done at nine at night. No shopfront, no counter, no sign above a door.
That is the normal shape of a British business. The Department for Business and Trade counted 5,690,265 private sector businesses at the start of 2025, and 4.3 million of them, 75%, employ nobody at all.
Google still wants an address. Type yours in and you hit a question with no official answer: show it or hide it?
The two most respected testing outfits in local SEO have looked hard at that and reached opposite conclusions. Here is what each found, what they agree on, and the UK trap no American article will warn you about.
The short version
- Google allows up to 20 service areas, but they are not a ranking lever. Distance is measured from the address you verified at.
- Sterling Sky's analysis of 8,186 businesses found hiding the address correlated with worse rankings. Whitespark's controlled tests found no effect.
- Your Companies House registered office is not your GBP address. A formation agent's address is a documented suspension trigger.
- Hiding your address in Google hides it from customers, not from Google.
What counts as a service area business?
Google draws the line by where the work happens. In its service area documentation, a service area business is "a business that visits or delivers to customers directly but doesn't serve customers at their business address". If customers also come to you, you are a hybrid and you keep your address visible.
Most van trades sit squarely in the first camp. Nobody turns up at your house wanting a boiler looked at.
Google then sets three rules, and all three matter. You can list up to 20 areas, defined by city, postcode or region. The overall boundary "shouldn't be more than about 2 hours of driving time from where your business is based". Driving time, not miles, which in London shifts depending on which side of the river you are.
And you cannot draw a circle. Google states it plainly: "You can't set your service area as a radius distance around your business."
Should you hide your address on Google Business Profile?
Google's position is narrow and says nothing about rankings. Its business address page states: "You should only choose to not show your address if your business is a service-area business." Hide it and "your Business Profile will only show your service area". Leave the areas blank and "a local area is chosen for you".
Read that last line twice. Hide the address, list nothing, and Google decides your catchment.
Google has never published anything saying that hiding an address changes rankings. If somebody claims Google confirmed a penalty, they are wrong. What exists instead is independent testing, and it disagrees with itself.
What Sterling Sky found
Joy Hawkins removed the address from a live home services listing in an October 2023 test, watched for a month, then put it back. She reported a heavy ranking decline while it was hidden, the local pack vanishing for some keywords, fewer calls, and recovery once the address returned.
Be honest about the scale. Two or three listings. A case study, not a study.
The bigger number came later. Sterling Sky's November 2025 analysis, run with Places Scout, covered 8,186 businesses across 200 cities, including plumbers, HVAC firms, locksmiths and garage door companies. Hiding the address showed a negative correlation with local pack ranking.
Correlation, though. Not proof of cause.
What Whitespark found
Darren Shaw ran controlled single-variable tests and reached the opposite view. His October 2024 write-up is blunt: "Choosing to show or hide your address has absolutely no impact on your rankings."
His explanation for the drops other people see is the interesting part. Google uses the address on the profile when there is one. Remove it and Google "can only default to the address that the Profile was originally verified at".
He showed it with a relocation. A business moved between two towns 105 minutes apart. With the address hidden, its ranking radius reverted to the original verification address within three days.
Where both camps agree
This is the part worth acting on, because nobody is arguing about it.
Distance is calculated from the real verified address behind your profile, not from the areas you drew. Sterling Sky's Colan Nielsen, in guidance updated March 2025, states that "the service area listed in Google Business Profiles (GBP) does not currently impact rankings. Rankings are based on the address used to verify the listing." Whitespark's controlled test agrees.
Sterling Sky's own profile is the standing demonstration. Verified in Uxbridge, lists Toronto as a service area, does not rank in Toronto.
Do more service areas get you more work?
No. Adding areas neither boosts nor dilutes local pack ranking, on both camps' evidence. Whitespark ran two single-variable tests on one profile between 13 May and 2 June 2024, tracked with Local Falcon, and found adding service areas had no measurable ranking impact.
Filling all 20 slots is free. It is also close to worthless for the map pack. Listing Manchester will not get you into the Manchester pack from a Leeds driveway, because the distance sum still starts at the driveway.
So where should the effort go? BrightLocal's Local Search Ranking Factors 2026, a survey of around 50 experts released in November 2025, weights the local pack at 32% Google Business Profile signals, 20% reviews, 15% on-page, 9% behavioural, 8% links, 6% citations and 5% social.
Reviews are climbing, from 16% in the 2023 edition to 20% now, while on-page fell from 19% to 15%.
Twenty ticked boxes on a map are not on that list.
Which address should a UK limited company put in GBP?
The one the van actually lives at, not your registered office if those differ. UK trades get caught here because the two addresses solve unrelated problems, and a formation agent's address in the Google box is a documented suspension trigger.
A registered office is not a GBP address
Since the first Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act measures took effect on 4 March 2024, your registered office must be an "appropriate address" in your jurisdiction of incorporation. GOV.UK confirms you can no longer use a Royal Mail PO Box, that the address "will be publicly available on the online register", and that your company "could be struck off the Companies House register" if it does not comply.
Plenty of trades solve that by renting a smart address in EC1. Fine for Companies House. Poison for Google.
Google's guidelines on representing your business are explicit: "If your business rents a physical mailing address but doesn't operate out of that location, also known as a virtual office, that location isn't eligible for a Business Profile." Co-working desks qualify only with clear signage, customer reception during business hours and staff on site, all three at once.
Work from a van in Croydon with a registered office in EC1? The EC1 address does not go into Google.
Hiding your address is two separate jobs
Hiding your address in Google hides it from customers. It does not hide it from Google, and it does nothing whatsoever about the Companies House public register.
Those are separate applications. Companies House charges £34 per document to suppress a home address, per its published guidance. Since 27 January 2025 you can also apply to suppress a home address used as a former registered office, though an active company must change its registered office first.
Two systems, two fees. One toggle in Google covers neither.
What gets a van-based profile suspended?
Editing behaviour, mostly, followed by address problems. Sterling Sky's Ultimate Playbook for GBP Suspensions, published March 2026, ranks excessive or simultaneous edits to name, address and category as the most common cause, with no physical presence at the listed address second.
| Trigger | Rank | Why it bites van trades |
|---|---|---|
| Excessive or simultaneous edits to name, address, category | Most common | Tempting to tidy everything in one sitting |
| No physical presence at the listed address | 2nd | The formation agent problem |
| Owner's Google account already suspended | 3rd | Old accounts from a previous business |
| Duplicate listings or overlapping service areas | 4th | Two profiles left over from a rebrand |
| Spam-heavy vertical gets extra scrutiny | 5th | Locksmiths and garage door firms especially |
| PO box, mailing service or virtual office | Explicit disqualifier | Registered office used as the GBP address |
| Co-working desk without signage, staff and reception | Explicit disqualifier | All three conditions required at once |
The lesson from the top row: change one thing, wait, then change the next.
What does Google's video verification want to see?
Proof you exist, on camera, in one take. Google's video verification guidance asks for your location, evidence the business is real through "professional tools, equipment, or products", and proof you manage it. The recording must be "an unedited, unique, and complete recording with no breaks", filmed live.
Then comes the line that tells you exactly who this was designed for. Among Google's own examples of acceptable proof of management: "unlocking a van that has your business branding".
Google is picturing you. Signwritten van, keys in hand, standing in the street.
So the prep is simple. Livery on, tools in, film the street, the van, the equipment and yourself unlocking it, in one continuous shot.
How much should a UK trade trust this evidence?
Less than most articles imply. Every ranking study cited here is North America weighted. Sterling Sky's 8,186 businesses sat across 200 cities, none of them British, and Whitespark's relocation test ran between two American towns.
No UK-specific study of service area business rankings exists that we could find. Not one.
Britain has denser postcodes, slower urban driving and a different company registration regime entirely. The mechanism, distance measured from a verified address, is Google's global behaviour and travels fine. The size of any effect may not.
Google's documented rules are Google's rules everywhere, so those you can rely on. And they have not changed meaningfully on address hiding. Anyone selling you an urgent 2026 rule change here is selling you something.
Frequently asked questions
If I hide my address, will I lose rankings?
The evidence is genuinely split. Sterling Sky's November 2025 analysis of 8,186 businesses found hiding the address correlated with worse local pack rankings. Whitespark's controlled 2024 tests found no impact, arguing that observed drops are the radius reverting to the original verification address after a move.
Does listing 20 service areas help me rank in all of them?
No. Whitespark's controlled tests in May and June 2024 found no measurable ranking impact from adding areas, and Sterling Sky agrees rankings come from the verification address. Their own profile is verified in Uxbridge, lists Toronto, and does not rank there.
Can I use my formation agent's address on Google?
No. Google's guidelines state that a rented mailing address you do not operate from is a virtual office and is not eligible for a Business Profile. It is also a documented suspension trigger. Use the address the van is genuinely based at.
How far can my service area stretch?
Google says the boundary "shouldn't be more than about 2 hours of driving time from where your business is based", with a maximum of 20 areas set by city, postcode or region. You cannot set a radius. That option does not exist.
What to do this week
Six jobs, in order, none of them long.
- Check which address your profile is verified at. If you have moved since verifying and your address is hidden, start there. On Whitespark's evidence your radius may still sit at the old place.
- Look at your registered office. If it is a formation agent, PO box or virtual office, it must not be your GBP address. Use the home or yard the van is based at.
- Set your service areas properly. Real places you travel to, inside roughly two hours' driving. Leave nothing blank, or Google picks for you.
- Stop expecting areas to rank you. Put that energy into reviews, weighted at 20% of the local pack in BrightLocal's 2026 survey.
- If you change your address, change nothing else that week. Simultaneous edits are the most common suspension cause on record.
- Get the van ready for video verification. Livery on, tools in, one continuous take.
The show-or-hide choice is smaller than the internet makes it sound. Getting the underlying address right is much bigger, and in the UK that means keeping Companies House and Google in separate boxes. That separation is the first thing we check on a trades profile at Business Opt, because a suspended listing outranks nothing at all.
Google needs to know where you park. Everything else follows.