What to do if you work at home?

[ogletree]

Right now if you run a work at home business you have to register your home address as your business address for Google lcoal. Another option is to register an office address of somebody you know or to get an address from a local executive suite. Is there another option?

Google needs to offer something for the work at home people. We should be able to register for an area.

[Brett_Tabke]

Get a post office box at a near by place. Pakmail, Postnet, and UPS stores often have mail boxes. Get one close to your house and use it for biz purposes. It goes a long way to keeping your life sane.

[ogletree]

I still think Google should offer an option so you don't have to do that.

[tangor]

Local area is just that. Get a postal mailbox (snail) if you wish to keep exact coordinates secret. That way you are geo-located, and silent at the same time.

[Silvery]

The best option is a mail store which provides you with an actual street address.

Yes, I and others have been strongly recommending to Google Maps engineers that they come up with an option for contractors and other street-address-less businesses. Google Maps encourages users to go to them for what were traditional yellow pages or internet yellow pages style searches. But broad categories of electricians, plumbers, roofing contractors, painters and more need an equitable provision for the companies/individuals who do not have actual street addresses.

The introduction of PlaceRank in the influencing of rankings just further emphasizes the disparity.

Map really needs a method for displaying some sort of graphic indicator for businesses which do not offer a physical location.

This is one area where internet yellow pages - IYPs - (which developed out of printed directory companies which have been providing business listings for nearly 100 years) have been superior to Maps.

Since some of Google Maps' data partners (such as IYPs) have addressless listings in their databases, you could also just register your business with one of them and wait for that listing to become reflected in Google Maps. It could take a while before the update were to go through, though.

[Silvery]

Oh, and, when Google Maps has absorbed a street-address-less listing from one of their data partners, they're displaying it as a sort of "floating" marker, placed on the zipcode or city centroid. Since it's not apparent to endusers that the place marker is approximate, this is not an ideal option.