Map pins in the ocean for service area businesses

If you run a business that goes out to customers — a mobile mechanic, a mobile groomer, a plumber, a home-visit physiotherapist — it is worth opening Google Maps and looking at where your pin sits today.

Search Engine Roundtable reports that a bug is placing some Google Business Profile map pins in the middle of the ocean. This is not an official Google announcement, and Google has not confirmed the problem. It is a trade publication reporting what people in the local search community are seeing.

What is being reported

According to Search Engine Roundtable, the issue appears to affect service area businesses — those that serve customers at their location rather than their own, and that do not show a street address publicly on their listing.

The bug was first reported by Dipa Gandhi on LinkedIn. She wrote: "Seems like there's new GBP bug! For service area businesses, Google Maps is showing the correct service area served, however, the profile is showing a PIN marker in the middle of the ocean." She posted screenshots comparing how it should look with how it is behaving, and added that it is "definitely not a 'one-off' situation. Seeing this on many profiles!"

A few other people confirmed seeing the same thing in the comments on that post. Search Engine Roundtable notes that the service area itself is still showing correctly — it is the pin marker that is landing in the wrong place. The publication's executive editor, Barry Schwartz, writes that he assumes Google will address it, but that it is not clear whether Google is even aware of it yet.

That is the full extent of what has been reported. Nobody has said how many profiles are affected, how long it has been happening, or when it might be fixed.

What to do about it

Check your own listing. Search for your business name on Google Maps on a phone and on a desktop. If the shaded service area looks right and the pin is somewhere sensible, you have nothing to do.

If your pin is out at sea, do not start editing your address in a panic. Adding a street address to a profile that is set up as a service area business changes how your listing works and can trigger a re-verification. If the cause is a bug on Google's side, editing your profile will not fix it and may create a second problem. Bugs like this are usually resolved by Google without the business doing anything. If you do end up in trouble with your listing, our guide on what to do when a profile is suspended covers the recovery process.

Take a screenshot. If you later need to raise it with Google support, dated evidence of what your listing looked like is useful.

Tell customers where you actually work. This is the quiet lesson in stories like this one. A service area business has no shopfront, so the map is doing a lot of explaining on your behalf — and when the map gets it wrong, people draw the wrong conclusion. A page on your own website that lists the towns and postcodes you cover is not affected by anything happening inside Google Maps, and you control it. That is one of the reasons a website still matters even when you have a Google profile.

The short version

A trade publication is reporting an unconfirmed bug affecting some service area profiles. Check yours, screenshot it if it is wrong, and leave your settings alone. If your pin is fine, this one does not need any of your time.