How to add your business to Google Maps in India
Getting on Google Maps takes about twenty minutes. Getting verified is where most people get stuck - here is what actually happens at each step.
Team Sunaam · 5 August 2026 · 3 min read
Most customers looking for a shop, clinic or restaurant near them never visit a website. They open Google Maps, type what they want, and pick from the three businesses that appear. If you are not one of them, you are not in the running.
Here is how to get listed, and what tends to go wrong.
Before you start
Have these ready. Google will ask, and stopping halfway to find them is how half-finished listings happen.
- The exact name on your signboard
- Your full address with PIN code
- A phone number you actually answer
- Your opening hours, including the weekly off
- A few photos of the front, the inside, and what you sell
Step 1: check whether you are already there
Search your business name and locality on Google Maps. A surprising number of Indian businesses are already listed - created by a customer, a delivery platform, or Google itself from public data.
If you find yourself, do not create a second listing. Claim the one that exists. Two listings for one business splits your reviews between them and confuses everyone, including Google.
Step 2: create or claim
On the listing, tap Claim this business. If nothing exists, use business.google.com and add it.
You will pick a category here. Take it seriously - it is the single field that most affects which searches you are considered for. "Restaurant" is not the same as "Bengali restaurant", and the more specific one is usually right if it is accurate.
Step 3: verification
This is where it stalls. Google will offer one or more of:
Postcard - a card with a PIN arrives at your address in one to two weeks. Still common in India. The address must be exactly as a postman would read it.
Phone or SMS - instant, but only offered to some categories.
Video - increasingly common. You record a continuous walk showing the signboard, the street, the inside, and some proof you run the place - a bill book, keys to the till, supplier paperwork. Do not stop the recording midway; it has to be one take.
Email - rare, usually for businesses with a matching domain.
What goes wrong
The address does not match reality. A shop known as "beside the temple" is not an address Google can post to. Use the municipal address.
The name has extra words. "Sharma Sweets - Best Sweets in Jaipur" will be rejected or edited. Use the name on the board and nothing else.
The video misses the proof. A walkthrough with no signboard and no evidence you operate the place is the most common re-do.
A duplicate already exists. Verification fails oddly when Google can see two records. Find and report the duplicate first.
After you are verified
Verification is the beginning. A verified profile with no photos, no hours and no replies to reviews does very little. Fill in everything, add photos regularly, and answer reviews.
If you would rather not do this manually every week, Sunaam handles the profile for you - and always asks before anything is published.
The honest bit
Nobody can promise you a position on Google Maps. Google decides using relevance, distance and prominence, and no tool can see that formula. What you can control is whether your details are correct, complete and consistent everywhere - and that is worth doing regardless.