Have you claimed your Apple Maps listing?

If you’re a business that serves customers face-to-face, you need to claim and optimize the Apple Maps listing for your business.

Why worry about Apple Maps instead of just Google Maps? On iPhones and iPads, Apple Maps is the default mapping app, not Google. This is important because three out of four users of iOS devices actually use Apple Maps, not Google Maps. These are important customers.

When someone does a web search for a local business on an iPhone or iPad, the top result is typically from Apple Maps. When you use Siri to find a local business, the results come from Apple Maps. And, of course, there is the Apple Maps app itself, which is used more often on iOS devices than Google Maps.

To claim your Apple Maps listing, go to https://mapsconnect.apple.com. This is similar to Google My Business, but specifically for Apple. Even if you don’t claim your listing, it’s likely that Apple Maps already has one for your business. They get their data from other sources, so it’s even more important to claim your own listing to ensure their information is correct.

You’re going to need an Apple ID, so if you don’t have one already, you’ll need to create one. You can then follow the steps on-screen to claim or add your business, which typically includes a phone verification to ensure that you legitimately represent the business.

Once you’ve claimed your business and signed in, you’ll see all the listings you have associated with your Apple ID account. The Apple Maps interface isn’t as developed as Google, and you can’t have multiple administrators for each business. But you can have multiple locations associated with a single Apple ID.

Once you’ve claimed your listing, there are only a few options. You can edit your basic business information including business name, address, phone number, business categories, hours of operation, website URL and social media URLs.

And while you can set your business hours, there is no way to set special or holiday business hours like you can on Google, Yelp or Bing.

You’ll notice that you cannot manage any photos and there are no customer reviews. Apple gets those from other sources like Yelp and TripAdvisor, so to fully optimize your Apple listing, you’ll need to make sure you’ve also optimized those listings as well.

Apple is in the process of completely rebuilding its maps product from the ground up. It will use first-party data collected from iPhones and its own fleet of cars equipped with sensors and cameras. Its goal is to be the most useful and visually rich mapping app on the market.

It’s likely that Apple will also significantly upgrade Maps Connect and help businesses to better manage their listings. But in the meantime, it’s still important for every local business to claim and optimize their local listing using the existing Apple Maps Connect tool.

Do you have any questions about Apple Maps, local SEO or other digital marketing strategies for local businesses? Feel free to contact me.

Eric Shanfelt is the founder and CEO of Local Marketing Institute. He has 25 years of experience in digital marketing and has been the chief digital officer for several large companies. ericshanfelt@localmarketinginstitute.com