A service area business (SAB) is a business that travels to or serves customers at their location rather than operating from a storefront that customers visit in person — examples include plumbers, electricians, mobile pet groomers, and cleaning companies. Google Business Profile allows SABs to define a service area by city, region, or radius and to hide their physical address from the public listing. This distinction matters for local SEO because SABs cannot use a home address as a ranking signal in a specific target city if they are located outside it; Google’s local ranking algorithms weight proximity to the searcher heavily, which can disadvantage SABs attempting to rank across wide geographic areas. Best practices for SABs include creating city-specific landing pages on their website, accumulating reviews mentioning relevant service locations, and ensuring the GBP service area is accurately configured rather than overly broad.