Google has just sent out a notice notifying Google Places users that if they have a home office and do not have a physical storefront, that the box to hide their address must be checked off or their listing could be removed. Below is the actual notification:
“Dear Google Places user,
We’d like to tell you about a recent update to our quality guidelines. This new addition, which affects service area businesses based at a residential location, states:
If you don’t conduct face-to-face business at your location, you must select the “Do not show my business address on my Maps listing” option within your dashboard. If you don’t hide your address, your listing may be removed from Google Maps.
Why the addition? We want to ensure that Google users do not attempt to visit your business at the location listed publicly on Maps — it’s a bad experience for you, it’s a bad experience for them.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll begin strictly enforcing this guideline, more so than we have been since the policy change. This means that if you don’t have a storefront, and you haven’t hidden your address, your listing is not in compliance with our updated quality guidelines and subject to takedown. We wanted to give you a heads up both to give you enough time to be in compliance and to ensure your listing remains live on Google Maps going forward.
To hide your address:
- Go to your Google Places dashboard
- Click “Edit” on the listing to view its details
- Select “Yes, this business serves customers at their locations”
- Select “Do not show my business address on my Maps listing”
- Hit Submit
You can also read a step-by-step guide to hiding your address in our Help Center. Note that it will take a few days for the address to be removed completely from the live listing.
Please update your Google Places listing to ensure it remains active on Google.
Sincerely,
The Google Team”
