Tell students on Google Maps which licenses your driving school trains for and where lessons start

How a future driver picks a school on the map

Nobody searching for a driving school is comparing schools in general. They need one license, want to learn in a language they follow, and have a particular corner of the city where getting into a car would be easy. The listing is read against those three things.

• The category comes first: car, motorcycle, truck. A listing that names every category from moped to bus reads like a directory entry, and the person who wants motorcycle lessons goes looking for a school that plainly has a bike and a yard to ride it in.
• The transmission is the next question for many people: whether the school has an automatic car at all, whether it is free this month, and what the school says a license earned on an automatic lets its holder drive.
• Language decides a lot of first calls, especially for newcomers to a city. People read whether theory and driving happen in a language they can follow, and they notice quickly when that promise turns out to rest on one instructor.
• The meeting point often weighs more than the office. A student picked up near home, work or a station can fit lessons around a job; an office across town is only where the contract gets signed.
• Then timing: when the next group begins, which evenings or weekend mornings theory runs, whether it is taught in a classroom or online, and whether practice can be booked outside office hours.
• Reviews are read for instructor patience and for how the school behaved after somebody failed the exam, which is a different thing from what the examiner decided on the day.
• Photos are read as proof that the fleet exists: the training cars with the school's roof sign, the classroom, the motorcycle yard, the car with automatic transmission somebody was hoping to find.

Where a license class, a transmission and a lesson language are written

A license category, a transmission, a language of instruction and a meeting point are each stated through the services, the description and the posts, which carry those facts between them, and they have to agree with one another.

• A primary category that says driving school, with further categories only for training the school really runs at this address, and nothing that makes the listing read as the place where the exam is taken.
• One service per category and transmission as you confirm them: car with manual transmission, car with automatic, motorcycle, truck, and refresher lessons for people who already hold a license, each with the vehicle it is taught in.
• Theory as its own service, saying whether it runs in a classroom or online, on which days of the week, and in which language.
• A line on languages that ties each language to its part of the course: lectures, driving, or the materials students study at home.
• A description that gives the office its real job, enrollment and contracts, and explains how a student learns where their instructor will be waiting.
• Hours that mean when the office receives people. The window for practical lessons, early mornings and evenings included, is written into the driving services, because Google's guidelines treat a schedule of classes as varied hours that do not belong in regular opening hours.
• An enrollment link and a phone number that reach whoever takes bookings, rather than an instructor's cell phone that rings while a student is at the wheel.

Driving school settings, each with the Google page behind it

Five settings that keep a school's profile on the right side of Google's rules about dates, hours and documents. The Google page behind each one is linked under it.

1. 1

   Give every intake an Event post with real start and end times

   Create each intake as an Event post and fill in the time fields with the real hours of the first theory evening. Left empty, they make Google run the event across the whole day on its dates, which reads oddly for a two-hour lecture. Keep the enrollment phone number out of the post body, where it risks rejection, and let the button carry the sign-up.

   Google's help on this: Create & manage posts on your Business Profile

2. 2

   If the office keeps no steady counter timetable, show no main hours

   Instructors spend most of the day in cars, and an office that takes students only by appointment has no weekly timetable a stranger could rely on. The hours editor has an option, Open with no main hours, for a profile that should not show one, and it sends fewer students to a locked door than an invented timetable does. Where the office does keep a counter shift, that shift is what the field shows.

   Google's help on this: Edit your business hours

3. 3

   Keep identity documents out of replies and posts, in both directions

   Google does not allow content, or the solicitation of content, containing government-issued IDs or sensitive records. A graduate photographed with a readable license card breaks that rule, and so does a reply that asks a student to send a passport scan or a medical certificate. Replies and posts point to the office's own form or desk, and the profile never becomes the place where documents change hands.

   Google's help on this: Guidelines for representing your business on Google

4. 4

   Settle an instructor's own listing before it splits the reviews

   A second profile at the school's address can be flagged as a duplicate, and Google keeps a flagged duplicate off Search and Maps. A request to merge them is reviewed, and it can succeed only for two profiles of one and the same school, with matching details. Once merged, the reviews are combined, but replies to reviews may be lost. Copy the school's replies out of the profile before sending the request, so the wording can be posted again.

   Google's help on this: Resolve duplicate profiles & ownership issues

5. 5

   Keep prices and phone numbers out of lesson service names

   Custom service names carrying someone's personal details, a figure for the cost or a phone number are refused automatically, so a lesson called after its fee or an instructor's cell number never goes live. Name each service by license class and transmission, put the vehicle and the language of instruction in its description, and group the services under their license category.

   Google's help on this: Manage your services on your Business Profile

Intakes, meeting points and first-lesson notes: what a school posts

Posts here are mostly about dates and places: when the next group begins, where the car waits this season, and what a student should know before the first lesson.

• Each intake as an event post, with the first and last lecture dates, the days theory runs, the format and the language, and nothing about when the exam will be.
• Where practical lessons start this season: the usual meeting points, the motorcycle yard with its gate and somewhere to leave a car, and how the school tells each student the exact place.
• What to bring and arrange before the first lesson, in the list the school keeps, with any office that issues a document named the way the school names it.
• Photos of the fleet as it is now, both transmissions, the classroom and the yard, and people only where the school has a recorded yes from everyone recognizable.
• How the school handles the step between its course and the state exam: its own internal test, what it covers, and that the date of the state exam comes from the examining authority.
• What is never published: a pass rate, a promise about the first attempt, a copy of an exam route, or a graduate holding a new license card with a readable name and number.

What the school decides and the manager keeps in line