A Google Business Profile, for a business that travels
The box that shows beside a search, and the pin in Maps, come from a Business Profile. A mobile notary sets one up as what Google calls a service-area business: “A business that visits or delivers to customers directly but doesn’t serve customers at their business address.”
- Leave your home address off. Google’s own instruction: “If you don't serve customers at your business address, remove your address from your Business Profile.”
- Name the places you go. A service area is set by place, not by distance — “up to 20 service areas based on the cities, postal codes, or other areas you serve”. List the towns you will really drive to.
- Verify it. Answering customers waits for it — in Google’s words, “you need to verify your business” — though some of the profile can be filled in first. Google again: “If you haven't verified your profile, you can still edit some info like your business name, business category, address, hours, phone number, and website.”
- Fill it in as a caller would want it. The number that reaches you, and a link to the page where someone can see your fees and ask for a time.
- Hours, if any. Google’s guidelines say: “Certain types of businesses shouldn’t provide hours, including those with varied hours (like schedules for different types of activities, including showtimes, worship services, or classes) and those that operate only by appointment.” Read them before you set hours on your profile.
Reviews: ask everyone, reward no one
Reviews are what a stranger has to go on. The rules for asking are short, and Google and the Federal Trade Commission say the same thing.
- Ask every client, the same way. Google does not allow a business to “Discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers”. The FTC’s staff put it as a rule of thumb: “Don’t ask for reviews only from customers you think will leave positive ones.”
- Offer nothing for one. Google again: “Offering incentives, like free or discounted goods or services, in exchange for customers to post reviews, change reviews, or remove negative reviews is considered fake & misleading content and is strictly prohibited.” No discount on the next signing, no gift card.
- Only from people you served. Reviews “must reflect a genuine experience” (Google). The FTC’s rule on reviews, 16 CFR Part 465, forbids a review that misrepresents that its writer used the service; and of the people close to you its staff say: “Don’t ask family and friends for reviews, at least not without ensuring that they disclose their personal connection in the reviews.”
Making it easy is allowed, and it is most of the work: Google says “you can ask customers to visit a Google link or scan a QR code.” Ask at the end of the job, while the client is still pleased to have it done.
Reply — and say nothing about the signing
Google’s advice is to “reply to reviews and share your perspective”, the unhappy ones included: “A mix of positive and negative feedback often feels more trustworthy.” A reply is public. Thank the client; never say what was signed, where, or anything else you know because you were their notary.
A page of your own
A profile gets you the call. A page gets you the booking without one. It should answer what a caller would ask:
- Where you travel, by town.
- What it costs, the notarial fee and the travel apart, so the total is no surprise at the door.
- When you are free, this week, and how to ask for one of those times.
- What to have ready: the unsigned document, and identification your state accepts.
Link the profile to the page, and put the page’s address on your card.
The people who are asked for a notary every week
Much of a mobile notary’s work is passed along by someone who could not do it themselves: the front desk of a care home or a hospital’s social worker, a law office or a real estate office without a notary on staff, a shipping store, a bank branch that notarizes only for its customers. Leave a card with each, and say when you can be reached.
How Hand & Seal helps
Your page shows your fees, your hours and your free times, and takes a request for one of them; it comes with a QR card to print. Your Google review link is kept once. It goes on a person’s receipt, and on their own page for the signing once they have left a review here — the same to all of them, whatever they wrote. A review on Hand & Seal itself comes only from a signing asked for through your page and completed here. See how it works.
This guide quotes Google’s and the FTC’s published guidance as it stood when it was written; their pages have the last word. It is not legal advice.