A luxury spa owner in Thong Lo recently asked me, “If I offer mobile services, should I hide my physical address on Google Maps to rank wider?” It’s a common question among Bangkok businesses trying to expand, but also a dangerous trap that can make you invisible to your most valuable local customers. This guide unpacks why your fixed address is your most powerful asset.
The Golden Rule: If You Have a Door, Show Your Pin
I get this question all the time from smart business owners here in Bangkok. From a dental clinic in Asoke that also does home visits to a luxury spa in Sukhumvit considering a mobile massage service, they all wonder: “Should I hide my address on my Google Maps listing to rank better in other areas?” My answer is almost always a firm, respectful “No.”
For any business with a physical location where customers can walk in, a clinic, a restaurant, a law office, a boutique hotel, your address is your single most powerful asset on Google. It’s a rock-solid signal of trust and legitimacy. When a potential customer searches for “dental implant clinic near me,” Google’s job is to show them a real clinic they can get directions to. By showing your address, you give Google exactly what it needs to trust you and show you to that valuable nearby customer. Hiding it removes that anchor and puts you in a much tougher, more competitive category.
The Reality of ‘Service Areas’ Today
Some business owners believe that by hiding their physical address and setting up a large “service area,” they can trick Google into showing them to more people across the city. This strategy is becoming less effective. In fact, earlier in 2025, Google updated its official guidelines to prevent businesses from claiming overly broad service areas. They want specific, verifiable locations, not a wide, vague net.
This tells us that Google is rewarding businesses that are transparent and precise about where they are and who they serve. Defining a service area is still important, it tells Google you’re willing to travel to customers in Watthana or Khlong Toei. But your physical address is what tells Google where your center of gravity is. For local map rankings, the algorithm will always give more weight to your verified pin on the map than to the shaded service area you’ve drawn around it.
The Trap: Trying to Be Everywhere and Ending Up Nowhere
The most common mistake I see is a business trying to be two things at once. They have a primary, customer-facing location but get tempted by the idea of ranking for searches happening far away. So, they hide their address, hoping to appear as a city-wide service. This is a trap. When you hide your address, you are effectively telling Google to stop treating you like a physical storefront and to start treating you like a mobile-only business (what’s called a Service-Area Business).
I recently spoke with the owner of a beautiful wellness spa in Thong Lo. They began offering premium at-home massage services and decided to hide their main address to try and attract clients in Ari. Within weeks, their highly profitable walk-in bookings from local Thong Lo residents dropped, because their Google Business Profile had lost its powerful location anchor and was no longer dominating the local map searches it once owned.
The Smart Strategy: Own Your Zone, Then Expand Methodically
The real struggle isn’t about showing or hiding your address. It’s about not knowing how far your ranking power actually extends. Are you visible to customers searching just two kilometers away? Or are you invisible just a few streets over? Manually checking this is impossible; you can’t drive around the city searching for yourself all day, and the results change based on your location anyway.
This is why seeing your actual ranking footprint is critical. We use a tool called OnEveryMap to generate a “heat map” of a client’s visibility across Bangkok. It shows us, block by block, exactly where they appear in the top 3 on Google Maps. This data-driven view lets us see the real-world impact of every marketing decision. We can focus on strengthening your authority in your core area first, and then make strategic decisions, like whether it’s time to open a second branch, based on clear data, not guesswork.
