Your Business on Apple Maps

The map nobody at the office uses

Most business owners have looked at their Google listing. Far fewer have looked at their listing on Apple Maps, often because nobody in the office uses it.

Your customers do. Apple Maps is the map built into every iPhone, and it opens by default when someone taps an address in Safari, Mail or Messages.

Ask Siri for a business's hours or phone number and the answer comes from Apple Maps. So does the route in a car connected to an iPhone.

If the listing there is wrong, customers are sent to the wrong place, or told you are closed, by a phone that sounds entirely sure of itself.

Where Apple's details come from

Apple does not copy your Google listing. It builds its own, largely from business directories and data companies, and from corrections sent in by people using the Maps app.

So a listing can exist, and be used every day, without anyone at the business having touched it. Changes you made on Google last year did not travel across.

What tends to be wrong

• An old address left over from before a move.
• A pin in the wrong place, often the wrong side of the building.
• Old hours, or none at all.
• An old phone number that now rings somewhere else.
• The wrong category, which hides you from the searches that matter.
• A duplicate listing under a slightly different name.

The second does the most damage, because a route is followed by somebody who has already decided to come. A pin on the wrong side of a highway loses them at the last step.

Finding your listing

Borrow an iPhone if nobody at the office has one. Open Maps and search for the business by name, then by the kind of business and your neighbourhood, the way a customer would.

Check the address, the pin, the phone number, the hours, the website and the category. Then ask Siri for your hours and your phone number, and listen to the answer.

Finally, ask for directions from where customers usually start, such as the main road or the nearest highway exit. Follow the route to its last turn and see which door it ends at.

Claiming it through Apple Maps Connect

Apple Maps Connect is Apple's free tool for business owners, and it is available in Canada. You sign in with an Apple ID, find the business, and claim the listing, or add one if none exists.

Apple confirms the claim by calling the business phone number with a code to enter. Do it during opening hours, with somebody standing by that phone.

Once the listing is yours, correct the name, address, phone number, website, hours and category. Changes can take a week or so to appear.

A pin still in the wrong place, or a duplicate at an old address, can be reported from the listing in the Maps app with Report an Issue, saying what is wrong and where.

A worked example

A home medical equipment store rents wheelchairs, walkers and hospital beds from a unit in a business park. Most customers arrive by car, often collecting equipment for a parent just home from hospital.

Its Google listing was accurate. On Apple Maps, the pin sat at the park's main entrance on a different road, a five-minute drive around the block from the store's own door.

Siri also told people the store was closed on Saturdays, which had stopped being true two years earlier.

Staff had heard the same complaint for months, from people whose phone had sent them the wrong way. Nobody connected it to the iPhone, because nobody at the store used one.

The owner claimed the listing through Apple Maps Connect, corrected the hours, and reported the pin's location from the Maps app. Within a couple of weeks, the route ended at the right door.

Why the details should match Google exactly

Customers do not stick to one map. Somebody may find you on Google at work and drive there with Apple Maps, and two addresses or two sets of hours leave them guessing which to believe.

Map services also compare what they hold with other sources. A business whose name, address and phone number appear the same way everywhere is easier to recognise as one business.

So match the details to the character: the same business name, without extra keywords; the same suite number in the same position; the same phone number, hours and website address, including whether it starts with https.

Reviews and photos come from elsewhere

The stars and photographs on an Apple Maps listing are not edited in Maps Connect. They come from review and directory sites that Apple works with, credited on the listing itself.

Check which site your listing credits, and make sure you have claimed your profile there and keep it accurate. What it shows travels onto every iPhone that looks you up.

Keeping both listings current

Most wrong listings were right once. The business changed its hours, number or address, updated the listing it knew about, and forgot the other.

Make Apple Maps part of the same routine as Google My Business: any change goes to both on the same day, along with the contact page and footer of your website.

If someone manages your listings for you, check that Apple Maps is on their list.

Keep the Apple ID used to claim the listing with the business's other accounts, not on one employee's personal phone, or the next change starts with a search for who set it up.

The counter-case

Some businesses have less riding on Apple Maps than others.

A trade that always goes to the customer loses little to a misplaced pin, and an online-only business may barely appear in map searches at all.

Even then, Siri reads out your phone number and hours from the same listing, and a wrong number on an iPhone is a missed call like any other.

So the check may be shorter for some, but it is the same check: find the listing, claim it, and make it match Google.

This week

1. Search for your business on an iPhone.
2. Ask Siri for your hours and number.
3. Follow the route to its last turn.
4. Claim the listing through Apple Maps Connect.
5. Match every detail to Google My Business.
6. Report a misplaced pin from the Maps app.
7. Add Apple Maps to your change routine.

Step three is the one most owners skip, and it finds the problem customers actually meet: a route that ends at the wrong entrance.

Claiming either listing costs nothing, which is worth remembering when an unexpected sales call suggests otherwise, as covered in calls claiming to be from Google.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.