## **🗺️ What Is a Service-Area Business?**

A **service-area business (SAB)** is any business that travels to customers rather than receiving them at a fixed location — think plumbers, cleaners, mobile pet groomers, or consultants. Google and Search Atlas both support this model, so you do **not** need a storefront or a publicly visible address to use location-based features.

## **🏠 Do You Need to Enter a Physical Address?**

No — a permanent, customer-facing address is **not required**. You have two options depending on your situation:

- **Hide your address:** If you operate from a home office or a location you don't want to share publicly, you can enter that address for internal use only and keep it hidden from any public-facing outputs.
- **Skip a fixed address entirely:** Define your business purely by the areas you serve, without tying it to a single street address.

What matters most is accurately defining **where you serve customers**, not where you are based.

## **⚙️ How to Configure Your SAB Location Settings**

Follow these steps to set up or update your service-area business profile inside Search Atlas:

1. Open your project and navigate to the **GBP (Google Business Profile)** section from the left sidebar.
2. Locate your business profile and open the **Service Area** or location settings panel.
3. When prompted for an address, enter your internal or operational address if you have one. This is used for accuracy in local SEO calculations — it is **not** automatically displayed to end users.
4. Toggle the **Hide Address** option (if available for your plan) to prevent the address from appearing in any public or client-facing outputs generated by the platform.
5. In the **Service Areas** field, add all the cities, regions, postcodes, or geographic areas your business covers. You can add multiple locations.
6. Select your correct **business type** — make sure it is set to **Service-Area Business** so the platform applies the right SEO logic.
7. Click **Save** to confirm your settings.

**Important:** If you re-open the location edit modal after saving, double-check that your business type and service areas are still populated correctly. If any fields appear blank, re-enter and save again.

## **📊 How Service Areas Affect Your SEO**

The service areas you configure directly influence how the platform generates and optimises your content:

- **AI-generated content** will reference the cities and regions you listed, helping you rank in those target areas.
- **Local keyword suggestions** are filtered to match your defined geography.
- **GBP Agent recommendations** are tailored to service-area businesses, covering best practices like writing service-area-specific posts and selecting the right primary category.

## **💡 Best Practices for SABs**

- Be as specific as possible with your service areas — adding individual cities or postcodes performs better than broad region names alone.
- Keep your service areas realistic. Listing areas you genuinely serve helps Google trust your profile and improves local pack visibility.
- Even without a public address, fill in as many profile fields as possible (business description, categories, phone number) to strengthen your overall GBP health score.
- Review your service-area settings any time you expand or reduce your coverage zone.

## **🛠️ Troubleshooting Common Issues**

- **Business type resets after saving:** This is a known issue that has been resolved. If you still see it, re-select your business type, re-add your service areas, and save again.
- **No address field visible:** Some views only show address fields after you confirm your business type. Make sure **Service-Area Business** is selected first.
- **Service area not saving:** Ensure you click the final **Save** or **Confirm** button inside the modal — closing the modal without saving will discard changes.

If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type **human teammate** to be connected with a member of our team.