Hiding Your Business Address Is A Guaranteed Way To Lose Ranking

I have been playing around with the “service area” option in the Google Local Business Center today and found something interesting. I decided I would test with my own listing because…

• -I live in Burley, Idaho and it’s a small enough town that I’m not too concerned about ranking.
• -Google Local hates internet marketers and web designers anyways and we don’t get a search box unless you type insanely long tail phrase.

This makes my listing the perfect guinea pig for potential dangerous tests. Anyways, I had heard through @davidkyle that rankings were dropping when he enabled the “service area” option and I decided I would start to test things out this afternoon. Here is what I have seen…

I was able to target a 200 mile radius area, and while keeping my address displayed I didn’t see any changes in rankings in my local market. I also didn’t notice a change in nearby towns though my service area had been widened.

This above shot was taken after my listing was showing a 200 mile radius. As you can see, I am ranking exactly where I should be…

But, upon changing the option to not show my address…

All of a sudden a map no longer appeared on the search term (luckily I shop organic products) …

And I dropped 7 places in Google map rankings…

I tested this with multiple keywords and found the same results. Upon allowing my address to be seen again, I quickly moved back into my top spot. For now, I wouldn’t be hiding your address just yet. Unless you are above me in a phrase I am trying to rank for, then definitely hide your address.