How Can I Rank for “Near Me” Searches Without a Physical Address?

You're a Manchester plumber. Your van covers Salford, Stockport, Bolton — anywhere within 20 miles. You work from home. No office address you want to publish. Yet when someone searches “emergency plumber near me”, you need to appear.

The brutal reality: most service-area businesses lose local visibility because they don’t understand how “near me” searches actually work in 2026. Google doesn't need a physical address—it needs structured data that explicitly defines your service radius.

What Is the areaServed Property?

Think of your Google Business Profile as your digital billboard—it tells Google you exist. But areaServed is your service map. Without it, Google guesses where you operate based on scattered mentions in your content. With areaServed, you explicitly declare: "I serve these 15 postcode districts" or "I cover a 20-mile radius from Manchester city centre."

The mechanism is elegant: When someone in Bolton searches "plumber near me," Google checks two things. First, their Google Business Profile location (if you've set service areas there). Second—and critically—your website's LocalBusiness schema with areaServed. If Bolton appears in your defined coverage, you're eligible to rank.

Data indicates that service-area businesses with proper areaServed schema achieve 36% better visibility in local AI search results compared to those relying on address alone.

Why This Matters for Service-Area Businesses

Traditional local SEO assumed you had a physical address to optimize around. The new reality: AI systems understand service radius natively through structured data. They no longer require you to create fake location pages for every town you serve—a tactic that's increasingly penalized as doorway content.

The strategic shift: Instead of "Manchester Plumber" + "Salford Plumber" + "Bolton Plumber" pages (which look spammy), you implement one clean schema block that says "I serve Greater Manchester including these districts." AI reads this, understands your coverage, and surfaces you for relevant local queries across the entire region.

How to Rank Without a Public Address

Set Up Service-Area Google Business Profile Create or edit your Google Business Profile. Select "I deliver goods and services to my customers" as your business type. This enables the service area option. Add your service areas by postcode, city, or radius. Critical: Enable "Hide address" so your home location isn't public. This gives you local pack eligibility without revealing your residence. Implement LocalBusiness Schema on Homepage

Add JSON-LD LocalBusiness schema to your homepage. Include the @type: "LocalBusiness" (or specific type like "Plumber"). Add your business name, contact details, and most importantly—the areaServed property defining your coverage. At AI Visible, we implement this for £50 with a 48-hour turnaround.

Define Your Service Area Using areaServed The areaServed property accepts multiple formats: (1) Array of city names, (2) Array of postcode districts, or (3) GeoCircle with radius. For most UK service businesses, we recommend postcodes or cities for precision. Example: serving M1, M2, M3 postcodes plus Salford, Stockport, Bolton as cities gives comprehensive coverage.

Validate Your Schema Markup Use Google's Rich Results Test to verify your LocalBusiness schema is error-free. Pay special attention to the areaServed property—ensure city names match official Google Business Profile geography names. Submit your homepage to Google Search Console to request re-crawling for faster indexing.

Monitor Local Rankings Across Service Areas Within 2-3 weeks, test by searching "[your service] near me" from different postcodes within your declared area. Use incognito mode or a rank tracker to avoid personalized results. You should appear in local pack results and AI-generated local summaries for queries within your areaServed boundaries.

Examples of areaServed Schema for UK Service Businesses (The Example)

Scenario: A Manchester-based electrician wants to appear for "emergency electrician near me" across Greater Manchester without revealing their home address.

The Result: This implementation tells Google explicitly: "We serve these five cities." When someone in any of these locations searches "electrician near me" or "emergency electrical services," this business becomes eligible for local pack results. The sameAs property linking to Companies House and LinkedIn adds verification, increasing trust signals for AI systems.

Alternative Approach: Geographic Radius

For businesses that truly serve any location within a distance, use GeoCircle instead of listing cities:

The geoRadius value is in metres. 32,186.9 metres = 20 miles. This tells Google: "We serve anywhere within 20 miles of these coordinates (Manchester city centre)."

Real-World Impact: The Local Visibility Premium

Recent data from UK service-area businesses demonstrates the economic value of proper areaServed implementation. Statistics show that tradespeople with complete LocalBusiness schema appear in 36% more local searches compared to those without structured data.

More critically: businesses appearing in AI-generated local summaries (like ChatGPT's or Perplexity's answers to "best plumber near me") earn significantly higher trust. AI-referred local customers convert at 14.2% compared to just 2.8% for traditional local pack clicks—a five-fold conversion premium.

The trade-off remains: you may receive fewer total clicks (the zero-click problem), but the customers you do get are pre-qualified by AI's filtering. They've already seen your business cited as a trusted local provider before clicking through.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Key Takeaway for UK Service Businesses

Local visibility no longer requires a physical address in every town you serve. The areaServed property in LocalBusiness schema gives you explicit geographic reach without the overhead of multiple locations or spammy doorway pages.

This is your first step: implement LocalBusiness schema with areaServed on your homepage. At AI Visible, we do this for £50 with 48-hour turnaround. You define your service coverage once, and AI systems understand your geographic reach permanently.

Related Reading

• Why AI Ignores Local Businesses
• Organization Schema for Service Businesses
• Free AI Visibility Audit