Your law firm’s address on Google Maps: show, hide or change it

You can hide your law firm’s address on Google Maps if the firm qualifies as a service-area business. If you have moved offices, update the address on your existing profile.

Your Business Profile is your firm’s listing on Google Search and Maps. The address choice starts with where you meet clients: at your office, at their premises or only by phone and video.

Where do you actually meet clients?

Google’s guidelines for representing your business tie a Business Profile to a place customers can visit or a business that travels to them. A service-area business visits customers at their locations and should hide its base address.

For your firm, that means going to clients. Taking cases across a state does not, by itself, describe that arrangement.

Write one sentence about your meetings before looking at the profile. For example: “Clients come to our office,” or “We work from home and visit clients at their premises.”

A firm that receives clients at its office and also visits them can show its office and a service area. Google calls that a hybrid business.

Settle that before discussing where you want more cases. Taking a case from another city does not tell anyone where a meeting will happen.

If clients come to your office, check the office

For an address you show, Google requires permanent signs bearing the business name. A rented mailing address where your firm does no work is ineligible. Paying for that address does not make it an office.

A coworking office needs clear signs, must receive customers during business hours and must have your own staff there during those hours.

I start with who answers the door. A lawyer’s day already has enough interruptions without having to explain why nobody from the firm is at the listed office. For a shared space, ask which member of your team will be there to receive clients.

Before paying for a new space, discuss how you will use it with the person who runs it. Ask to see the room where clients will meet you, not just the address on the brochure.

Put your staff schedule beside the hours proposed for the profile. Check where your firm’s sign will go. Settle both details before spending money on the space.

Ask your firm’s ethics counsel to check what its address and advertising duties require.

If you visit clients, hide the home base

If you visit clients and receive none at your home base, hide that address on your eligible profile. Google’s help page on managing your business address reserves that choice for service-area businesses. The profile then shows a service area in place of the street address.

The decision you approve is simple: keep the firm’s eligible profile, hide the home address and check the area people can see. The person making the edit can follow Google’s current instructions on that page.

I also check what the task covers. If you saw your address on your website as well, put that page on the work list. Treat it as a separate edit to approve and check.

For a privacy concern, save the link to the exact page that worried you. After the change, open that page again and check what it shows. Include that check in the job, so you can see whether the address is still there.

If you work only by phone or video, skip the workaround

For a firm with no in-person client contact, put the work into your website rather than a new service-area profile. Google’s eligibility test above calls for visits to your business or visits to customers. A phone or video call meets neither condition.

Showing an office address for a phone-only firm can send clients to a place where nobody is there to meet them. Hiding it still does not make the firm eligible. Make your website clear about how to arrange a phone or video meeting.

If you already have a profile, give Google support the actual facts and ask how to resolve it. The address help page has a contact route. Describe the phone-only work plainly, including that clients do not visit and you do not travel to them.

If you later begin meeting clients in person, review the arrangement then. Write down where those meetings will happen before asking someone to create a profile.

If you have moved, update the existing profile

I treat a move as an address correction. Google’s guidance on editing your Business Profile says you can update the address. It also says a business that moves after verification must verify again. Google reviews edits before they go live.

That last step belongs in your move plan. Name the person at the firm who will respond when verification needs their attention.

Give whoever manages the profile the old address, the new address and the suite number. Say whether you still meet anyone at the old office.

Put the contact page and appointment messages on the move list too. Read the next meeting confirmation your office will send. It should give that client the address where you will actually meet.

If both offices stay open during the move, list which meetings happen at each. Give that list to your office team and the person handling the profile. Include the date when appointments at the old office end.

If the street address is correct but the map pin is misplaced, Google’s address help page offers a pin adjustment. I choose that smaller correction when the address itself needs no change.

Read “remove” carefully before approving it

Removing the profile from your Google account is a different action. Google’s explanation of account removal says the business can still appear on Search and Maps afterward.

Removing profile content and managers permanently deletes their posts, photos, videos and review replies. User reviews remain.

Before approving removal, ask which address needs to change and what the proposed action will do to it. An address fix is a poor reason to lose the firm’s photos and replies.

If a separate old listing still shows, open both records and compare the firm’s name, street and suite. Send Google support both links, identify the wrong record and explain which address is current. For example, say that one listing shows an office you have left. That is clearer than a request to remove the firm from Maps.

For questions about who controls the profile, see before you give an agency Google access. First settle access, then give one person the job of making and checking the agreed change.

Questions law-firm owners ask