Google treats delivery-only cannabis businesses as service-area businesses. You hide the street address on your Business Profile, list up to 20 towns, ZIP codes, or counties you cover, and mirror those same areas on Weedmaps, Leafly, and Yelp.
How Google handles delivery-only businesses
If customers never visit your location, Google classifies you as a service-area business. That has two consequences. First, you clear the street address from your Business Profile — a visible address customers cannot shop at violates the guidelines and is a common suspension trigger. Second, the service areas you list replace the address as the signal for where you belong in results. Google caps you at 20 areas and suggests keeping them within about a two-hour drive of your base.
Set areas by place name, not radius
Google retired radius-based service areas. You pick named places: cities, ZIP codes, or counties. ZIP codes give the tightest control. Counties sound efficient but usually overreach — a county can include towns your drivers never touch. Start with the cities and ZIPs where you already complete orders and expand from there. If a ZIP straddles two towns, list both towns rather than guessing which one Google prefers.
Keep coverage inside your license
Your delivery license defines where you may legally operate, and your listing should not promise more. A profile advertising delivery into towns that prohibit it invites regulator attention and gives Google a reason to pull the listing. Match your service areas to the map in your license paperwork, then trim that down to where delivery is actually profitable to run.
Mirror the areas on every other platform
Weedmaps, Leafly, and Yelp all publish delivery-zone information. So does Apple Business Connect. When platforms disagree, customers place orders you have to cancel, and cancelled orders come back as one-star reviews. Keep one master list of zones, copy it everywhere, and when coverage changes, update every platform the same day. A quarterly reminder to re-verify all of them takes ten minutes and catches drift before customers do.
What this looks like in practice
A delivery operator based in Sacramento holds a license covering Sacramento County. Instead of listing the whole county, they set 12 service areas on their Business Profile: Sacramento plus the 11 suburbs where orders actually come from, Elk Grove and Citrus Heights and Folsom among them. Address hidden. The same 12 zones go into Weedmaps, Leafly, and Yelp. When Rancho Cordova gets added later, all four platforms are updated that afternoon.
Key takeaways
- Delivery-only listings must hide the street address; visible addresses customers cannot visit get suspended.
- Google allows up to 20 named service areas (cities, ZIPs, or counties), not a radius.
- Service areas should match your license coverage, not your ambitions.
- Keep the same zone list on Google, Weedmaps, Leafly, Yelp, and Apple Business Connect.
Frequently asked questions
How many service areas does Google Business Profile allow?
Twenty. You add them as named places: cities, ZIP codes, or counties. Google also suggests keeping all of them within roughly a two-hour drive of where you operate, which is a reasonable ceiling for a delivery fleet anyway.
Do I have to hide my address for cannabis delivery?
If customers do not visit your location, yes. Google requires service-area businesses to clear the address field, and a visible address at a warehouse or private home is one of the most common causes of listing suspensions.
Do wider service areas improve rankings?
No. Service areas define where you are eligible to appear, not how well you rank. Proximity still applies, so a customer twenty miles out sees you below closer options no matter what your listed zones say.
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