If you run a roofing crew or a plumbing van out of your house, Google's rule is plain: hide your address. The worry is just as plain. Local SEO forums have thread after thread asking whether hiding your address kills your rankings, and a well-known local SEO agency has published data that points that way.
So we checked the Okanagan. On October 7, 2026 we ran 64 Google searches, 16 trades in Vernon, Kelowna, West Kelowna and Penticton, through Google's own Places API, and we ran all of them three times. For every result we recorded whether Google flags the business as one that hides its address.
The short version: about 3 in 10 businesses in those results hide their address, and they held about a quarter of the top 3 spots. Matched on review count, they reached the top 3 about as often as businesses that show an address, with one exception we will show you. Reviews moved the odds far more than the address did. And we found something more useful than a yes or no: Google's own developer tool leaves hidden-address businesses out entirely unless you switch a setting on, so any ranking report built on that default cannot see them.
What We Measured, and What We Did Not
Each search was a trade plus a town, the way people type it: "plumber Kelowna BC", "roofing contractor Vernon BC", and so on for 16 trades in 4 towns. We asked Google's Places API for the top 20 results with service-area businesses included. Google marks each one that "visits or delivers to customers directly but does not serve customers at their business address", which is Google's own definition of a hidden-address profile. We ran the full set three times within a few minutes, for 192 search runs, 3,630 result slots and 961 different businesses.
Three limits, stated before the findings so you can weigh them:
- This is Google's order for a typed search, not a phone screenshot. It is the ranking Google's official API returns for "trade plus town". It is not the map 3-pack on a homeowner's phone, and it is not a "near me" search, where the searcher's location does more of the work.
- It is a correlation, not a test. We did not hide anyone's address. Businesses that hide may differ in other ways: age, size, category, or how far out of town they are based.
- Distance is the one big factor we could not control. Google returns no location at all for a hidden-address business, so we cannot say how far any of them sit from the town they ranked in.
One more thing belongs here, not in a footnote. Our earlier Okanagan studies of reviews, websites, site speed and cross-town rankings pulled businesses using the API's default setting. That default leaves hidden-address businesses out, so those studies describe businesses that show an address. We found that while doing this research, and we have flagged them for a re-check.
Three in Ten Okanagan Contractors on Google Hide Their Address
Across all 3,630 result slots, 30.9 percent belonged to a business with a hidden address, and the share barely moved between runs (30.5, 30.6 and 31.5 percent). Counted by business instead of by slot, 280 of the 961 businesses we saw hide their address. If you run your company from home and keep your address off Google, you are not an outlier. In Penticton you are close to 4 in 10.
| Town | Share of all results with a hidden address | Share of top 3 spots with a hidden address |
|---|---|---|
| Penticton | 38.4% | 35.4% (51 of 144) |
| Kelowna | 31.3% | 29.9% (43 of 144) |
| West Kelowna | 29.4% | 16.7% (24 of 144) |
| Vernon | 24.5% | 20.1% (29 of 144) |
The split by trade is the pattern Google's rules predict. Trades where the customer never visits you, like pest control, fencing, painting and tree work, run between 42 and 46 percent hidden. Trades that tend to have a showroom or a shop, like flooring, windows and heating and air conditioning, sit far lower. Find your trade in the table: the second column tells you how many of the top 3 spots a hidden-address business actually took, out of 36 (3 spots, 4 towns, 3 runs).
| Trade | Share of all results with a hidden address | Top 3 spots taken by a hidden-address business |
|---|---|---|
| Pest control | 45.5% | 17 of 36 |
| Fencing | 45.4% | 15 of 36 |
| Painters | 44.2% | 13 of 36 |
| Tree service | 42.3% | 25 of 36 |
| Garage doors | 38.1% | 11 of 36 |
| Roofing | 35.0% | 9 of 36 |
| Concrete | 32.5% | 8 of 36 |
| Excavating | 32.5% | 9 of 36 |
| Gutters | 32.5% | 15 of 36 |
| Plumbers | 32.5% | 6 of 36 |
| Landscaping | 30.8% | 3 of 36 |
| General contractors | 26.2% | 4 of 36 |
| Electricians | 22.9% | 8 of 36 |
| Windows | 15.4% | 2 of 36 |
| Heating and air conditioning | 14.2% | 2 of 36 |
| Flooring | 3.3% | 0 of 36 |
Tree service is the standout: hidden-address businesses took 25 of the 36 top 3 spots. Landscaping is the opposite, at 3 of 36, even though nearly a third of its results hide their address. Trade by trade, the numbers are small, so read a single row as a hint, not a rule.
Hidden-Address Businesses Held a Quarter of the Top 3. Reviews Mattered More.
Pooled across the three runs, hidden-address businesses held 25.5 percent of the top 3 spots (147 of 576), against 31.9 percent of spots 4 to 20. They took the No. 1 spot in 13, 13 and 14 of the 64 searches, about 1 in 5. So at first glance there is a gap of a few points.
But hidden-address businesses also tend to have fewer reviews. Among every business that reached a top 3 in any run, the median hidden-address business had 37 reviews and the median one showing an address had 50. To separate the two, we grouped every result by review count and asked how often each kind of business made the top 3.
| Google reviews | Hidden address: reached the top 3 | Address shown: reached the top 3 |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 9 | 5.5% (13 of 236) | 5.5% (33 of 597) |
| 10 to 49 | 10.2% (63 of 620) | 15.9% (162 of 1,020) |
| 50 to 199 | 26.4% (56 of 212) | 25.1% (152 of 605) |
| 200 or more | 28.8% (15 of 52) | 28.5% (82 of 288) |
Read the rows top to bottom first. For both kinds of business, the chance of a top 3 spot climbs from about 5 percent with under 10 reviews to about 28 percent with 200 or more. That is the biggest effect in the whole data set, and it has nothing to do with the address.
Now read across. In three of the four bands the two columns are close. Under 10 reviews they match to one decimal. From 50 to 199 the direction even flipped between runs: hidden-address businesses did worse in the first run and better in the next two. The exception is the 10 to 49 band, where hidden-address businesses reached the top 3 about two thirds as often (10.2 percent against 15.9 percent), and that gap held in all three runs. It matters, because 45 percent of all the results we saw fall in that band. It is where a lot of small contractors sit.
So the honest read is this. In town-name searches we could not find a consistent penalty for hiding your address at the low end or the high end of the review range. There is a real-looking gap in the middle, and it closed once businesses passed 50 reviews. And it is not a wall: 12 different hidden-address businesses reached a top 3 with fewer than 20 reviews.
Not sure whether your profile should show or hide its address? Book a free 20-minute call. We will check how your Google Business Profile is set up against Google's rules, run your trade and towns with service-area businesses included, and tell you where you actually rank.
Book a Free Profile Check →A Well-Known Study Found a Penalty. Here Is Why Both Can Be True.
Sterling Sky, a local SEO agency led by Joy Hawkins, analyzed 8,186 businesses in 200 cities for "near me" searches and reported "a negative correlation between hiding your address and ranking well in the local pack." They also tested it on a home-services client: rankings and calls dropped for the month the address was hidden and came back when it was restored, and a second listing improved when its address was added back. That is one client and two listings, but it is a month of real calls, which is better evidence than any snapshot.
We do not think our data contradicts theirs. The searches are different. Google's help page on local ranking says local results are "mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity," and that "distance refers to how far each business is from the customer who's searching." A "near me" search leans on that distance, and a hidden-address profile shows no pin. A search with the town name in it tells Google the place outright. When we pulled Google's keyword data for what Google Ads cost in Kelowna and Vernon, two thirds of Okanagan trade searches included the town name. Those are the searches we tested here.
There is a second reason to be careful with any single test, including ours. The same 64 searches, run three times within about five minutes, kept the same No. 1 result in only 41 of 64 and the same top 3 in only 29 of 64. If you change your address setting on Monday and check your ranking on Tuesday, you are reading noise. Judge any change on weeks of calls, not on one rank check.
The Blind Spot: Google's Own Developer Tool Leaves Hidden-Address Businesses Out by Default
Google's Places API is the official way for software to ask Google for business listings. Its search has a setting called includePureServiceAreaBusinesses, and Google's documentation says it will "include pure service area businesses if the field is set to true." Leave it off, and they are not included.
We ran the same 64 searches with the default setting. It returned zero hidden-address businesses in all 64. It returned fewer results in 53 of them, 956 result slots against 1,211, and 286 businesses we saw with the setting on never appeared with it off.
Why should a contractor care about an API setting? Because some ranking reports and competitor audits are built on data like this, and the report rarely tells you which setting was used. If a report says your business "does not show up" for roofer plus your town, or hands you a competitor list, ask one question before you act on it: does your tool include service-area businesses? Ask any agency, ours included. If the answer is no, a hidden-address business is invisible to that report no matter where it ranks, and about 3 in 10 of your real competitors may be missing from the list.
What Google's Rules Actually Say About Showing or Hiding Your Address
The choice is less free than most forum threads suggest. Google's guidelines for representing your business are direct: "If you're a service-area business, you should hide your business address from customers. For example, if you're a plumber and run your business from your residential address, clear the address from your Business Profile."
Showing an address comes with conditions:
- Signage. "Businesses showing their address on Google should maintain permanent fixed signage of their business name at the address." Google's service area help page adds: "If your business doesn't have permanent on-site signage, it's not eligible as a storefront and should be listed as a service-area business."
- Staff during your hours. "If you serve customers at your address and want to set a service area, your business location should be staffed by your team and able to receive customers during its stated hours."
- No virtual offices. A rented mailing address you do not operate from "isn't eligible for a Business Profile." That is how contractors end up reading our guide to getting a suspended profile reinstated.
A business that does serve customers at a real, signed, staffed location can show the address and still list up to 20 service areas. Google calls that a hybrid business. And whichever way you go, an address change is one of the common triggers for a video verification request, so plan the change for a week when you can film.
Show or Hide: A Decision Guide for Okanagan Contractors
- Customers come to a shop or yard with your sign on it, and someone is there during the hours you list: show the address and add your service areas. You meet the rule, and you get the map pin that "near me" searches lean on.
- You work from home or from the truck: hide it. That is Google's rule, and our data says it does not lock you out. Hidden-address businesses took the No. 1 spot in about 1 in 5 Okanagan searches.
- Never rent a virtual office or mailbox to get a pin. It is not eligible, and a suspension costs far more than any ranking it could buy.
- Push past 50 reviews. In our data, the gap between hidden and shown addresses sat in the 10 to 49 review band and closed above it. Review count moved the top 3 odds about five times over; the address moved them by a few points at most.
- Say where you work, everywhere a pin cannot. With no address on the map, your profile's service areas, your categories, your services and your website's town names carry the location signal. Put the towns you serve in plain words on your site.
- Check rankings with service-area businesses included, over weeks. One-off checks swing, and a tool on the default setting cannot see your hidden-address competitors at all.
We help contractors in Vernon, Kelowna and across the Okanagan with exactly this, through local SEO and Google Business Profile management. We sell those services, so weigh our advice accordingly. The rules quoted here are Google's, and the data is in the tables above.
How we did this: on October 7, 2026 we sent 64 text searches (16 trades by 4 towns, "trade plus town BC") to Google's Places API Text Search, asking for up to 20 results in English with includePureServiceAreaBusinesses switched on, and recorded Google's pureServiceAreaBusiness flag, review count and position for each result. We ran the full set three times in about five minutes, finishing at 15:39 UTC, and ran it once more with the API's default setting for comparison. Review bands pool all three runs. We recorded no business names in this post. Keyword volumes for the topic are small (Google's Keyword Planner shows about 260 searches a month for "service area business" in the US and 20 in Canada).