Google Business Profile: Service Area Location Count. Does it matter?

[Leigh Trask]

Hi Team,

Quick question - Can you over-optimize the service area section of a Google Business Profile?

Client currently has 20 service areas selected.

Would love to hear your thoughts, if any!

 

[keyserholiday]

Service areas has zero impact on rankings.

 

[Tony Wang]

According to the guidelines, you can have "up to 20 service areas". Whether you'll get penalized is another matter. But as mentioned above, there's no advantage to listing more anyway.

 

[JS Girard]

I'm fairly sure that you can get hit, but that has nothing to do with the number of defined service ares. Rather it requires a stupidly oversized area, (even beyond the "2 hours/within the same metro area" metric that google mentions).

Unless they're trying to reach like, a significant portion of the state they're in, it's probably not a concern.