Maximum of 20 Service Areas on a GMB Listing

[Cordell Crowley]

So, logged in this morning to something I'd never seen before. When inputting a client's service areas, I got an error message that "you can only add up to 20 areas". Definitely something new for us and never had it pop up before.

Did some testing and it doesn't seem to matter if it is 20 cities/towns, 20 zip codes, or 20 mixture of both- it's a flat 20 total that you can list. Tried it on multiple listings in different geographical areas and they are all getting the same thing now. All of our existing listings with 20+ areas are unaffected so it seems to be grandfathered in at least.

I'm wondering if this is a new change to the SAs that is permanent, a one-off glitch, or what.

 

[Henry LocalClarity]

This was announced by Google late yesterday:
Launch: Add up to 20 service area businesses - Google My Business Help

Service area businesses are now limited to having a maximum of 20 service areas per business. If more are needed, we recommend expanding the existing ones to cover larger areas. You can set your service area based on a combination of entire cities, districts, postal codes, or other areas that you serve.

Businesses with more than 20 service areas will receive suggested updates to their service areas to cover the same geographic area while only using 20 areas.

 

[Cordell Crowley]

Thanks for that- I looked around to see if there was any announcement earlier this morning and couldn't find anything so I guess I just missed it. Seems like another unnecessary change on Google's part; they've really been playing around with the service areas feature the last year or so.

 

[Simon Cox]

Had a site drop out of the map pack for the majority of the terms over the weekend and I was checking the GMB info tonight to see if anything had got out of sync (clients team sometimes unhelpfully change stuff) and realised the SAB listing area was highlighted in red. I had 26 local locations listed so reduced this down to 20 and am hoping to get the map listings back.

 

[AshleyB]

We are getting this message inside a few GMB accounts today.

It just seems a bit more ominous than the usual updates message you get in GMB. Does anyone think that is related to the service area limit change (this listing has more than 20)? Or is it related to something else? The fact that Google makes you scroll through the entire listing and tells you this can "improve your presence on Google" is different.

 

[Annika Neudecker]

@AshleyB I've seen that on a few of our listings but none are SABs. The wording is stronger but the effect seems to be ultimately the same as the usual user edit messagin, just a reminder to review any highlighted edits and accept them. When I edited the highlighted field and put in my own information, the message vanished.

 

[j_holtslander]

I experienced an issue once with an SAB that had service areas defined of 1. "United States" and 2. "Canada" and was told by GMB support staff via proxy that it was too wide of a service area and that one had to be removed.
Hmm.