How to Verify Your Business on Apple Maps

Do this in the next twenty minutes

Open Maps on your iPhone and search your business name. Whatever comes up is your place card. It may already exist, because Apple builds place cards from its own data and licensed third-party sources whether or not you ever asked it to.

Scroll to the bottom of that card. If you see Claim This Place, nobody has claimed it yet and you are in the easy case. Tap it.

Then go to business.apple.com and sign up properly. The in-Maps tap starts the process. The web portal is where you actually control the listing. Claiming and managing your place card costs nothing.

Budget about twenty minutes for the forms and up to five business days for Apple to review you.

Apple Business Connect is now Apple Business

Start here, because this rename is easy to miss. Apple announced Apple Business on 24 March 2026 and launched it on 14 April 2026 in more than 200 countries and regions. It merged three separate products into one platform: Apple Business Manager, Apple Business Essentials, and Apple Business Connect. In Apple's own wording, Business Connect will no longer be available once Apple Business launches.

If you claimed a place card before April 2026, your work came with you. Claimed locations, place card content, photos, organisation details, and account settings migrated across. You do not need to redo anything. You do need to sign in at the new address.

If you are starting now, ignore the name Business Connect entirely except as a search term. The product you want is called Apple Business, and inside it the section you want is Brands, then Locations.

• Old address: businessconnect.apple.com (redirects)
• Current address: business.apple.com
• Current documentation: support.apple.com/guide/business/
• The place card management area sits under Brands, then Locations

Claiming the place card from inside Apple Maps

This is the shortest route, and it is easy to miss, because it is buried at the bottom of a scroll.

On iPhone, open Maps, search your business by name, and tap the correct result. Swipe up on the information card to expand it, then scroll all the way to the bottom. You will see Claim This Place and, separately, Report an Issue.

Those two buttons do different jobs and picking the wrong one costs you time. Claim This Place starts an ownership process and hands you control. Report an Issue submits a correction to Apple as a member of the public, with no ownership attached. If your hours are wrong and you own the business, you do not want Report an Issue. You want to claim the place and then fix the hours yourself, permanently.

If the business does not appear in Maps at all, there is nothing to claim. Skip to adding it as a new location in the portal.

Setting it up at business.apple.com

Go to business.apple.com and select Sign up now. Apple will ask for your organisation name, website URL, and address, then personal details for the individual enrolling on behalf of the organisation. You set a password, confirm a phone number and an email address with separate codes, complete a CAPTCHA, and accept the terms.

Once you are inside, go to Brands, then Locations, then Add. Enter the location name and address. Apple drops a map marker and you can drag it to the exact door, which matters more than people think, because the marker is what Maps navigates a customer to.

Then fill in the details: language, display name, category, status, phone number, website, and hours of operation. Assign the location to a brand, or create one.

If Apple already knows the place, search for it and select the existing location instead of adding a new one, so you do not create a duplicate.

How Apple actually verifies you

This is where Apple differs sharply from Google, and it is the step that takes the most preparation.

Apple verifies the organisation, not just the address. You have 60 days to verify your organisation, it requires two methods of verification, and review can take up to five business days. During periods of high volume, Apple says additional time may be necessary.

Two methods means two. Pick the two you can evidence cleanly rather than the two that sound most official.

• Business ID: your D-U-N-S Number or Employer Identification Number (EIN). A D-U-N-S Number is a free nine-digit business identifier issued by Dun and Bradstreet.
• Domain validation: you add a TXT record, a plain text entry, to your domain's DNS zone file. This is usually the fastest method if you control your DNS.
• App Store Connect: available to organisations that publish an app, and not available to third-party partners or agencies.
• Official documents: business licence, sales tax permit, health, food or alcohol permit, lease or property agreement, utility bill, or other documentation showing the company name and address.

Verifying the location itself

Organisation verification proves the company exists and is yours. Location verification proves you are at that address.

For existing locations already on Maps, Apple may offer phone verification. Apple calls the phone number it already has on file for that location and you enter the four-digit verification code you receive.

That detail is worth reading twice. The call goes to the number Apple already holds, not a number you supply during sign-up. If Apple's record shows an old landline you disconnected two years ago, this method will fail and you will not know why. Check what number the place card currently shows in Maps before you start, and if it is wrong, expect to go the documentation route instead.

If it says "This location is already managed"

Sometimes a former marketing agency, a franchisor, a previous owner, or a listings vendor claimed your location and nobody remembers the login.

Apple's flow handles this, but not in the order you would expect. Add the location anyway. You will see a note reading This location is already managed. Continue through and add it regardless.

Then find the location in your Locations list, select Request Transfer under Status, explain why the transfer should happen, and attach supporting documentation such as a business licence or utility bill. Apple reviews it, and that review takes up to five business days.

Be straight with yourself about this one. A transfer request is a decision Apple makes, not a form that automatically succeeds. A strong request has documentation in the exact legal name and at the exact address on the listing. A weak request is a paragraph of frustration with nothing attached. Nobody, including us, can promise Apple will approve it.

What you control once you are verified

A verified place card is a genuinely deep piece of real estate, and far more configurable than most owners realise.

You control the logo and cover photo, the display name including alternate language versions, an About description, photos, the address and its coordinates, normal hours plus service-specific and temporary hours, phone number, website, one required primary category and up to 19 optional secondary categories, Good to Know attributes covering amenities, a link to your app, and open or closed status.

Two features go beyond a static listing. Showcases let you highlight deals, special offers, new products, or seasonal items directly on the place card. Actions are tappable buttons for things like ordering, booking, or viewing a menu.

You also get Insights. Apple reports place card views and taps broken out by Directions, Website, Call, Share, brand Actions, and Showcase. It tells you whether the listing is producing anything.

Why the iPhone map is worth the effort

Your place card is not confined to the Maps app. Apple describes it as an extension of a physical location that appears in many Apple apps, from Maps to Siri to Calendar, Messages, and Spotlight searches.

In practice that means when someone asks Siri to find a sandwich shop near them, the answer is drawn from this data. When someone types your business into the iPhone search bar, this data answers. When a booking confirmation lands in Mail and a Calendar event picks up the venue, this data fills it in. Maps is preinstalled on every iPhone and sits on the CarPlay dashboard, so a driver looking for you is very often looking at Apple's record of you, not Google's.

If that record has your old hours, your old phone number, or a marker on the wrong side of the building, you are paying for it in trips people never complete.

Doing Google does not mean you have done Apple

There is no sync between them. None. A perfect, fully verified, review-rich Google Business Profile transmits nothing to Apple Maps. They are separate registrations, separate verification systems, separate content, and separate support paths.

The processes differ in ways that catch people out.

• Google decides your verification method for you. Apple lets you choose, but requires two.
• Google leans on live video verification for many business types. Apple leans on business identifiers, DNS records, and documents.
• Google verifies the location. Apple verifies the organisation, then the location.
• Google's postcard method involves waiting up to 14 days for mail. Apple has no postcard step.
• Apple's 60-day verification deadline deletes the account. Google has no equivalent deletion clock.
• Apple's Brand and Location Management is not available in every country, so check availability before you plan around it.

When you should not pay anyone for this

We will say the obvious thing. If you run one location, you have your EIN or D-U-N-S Number to hand, you control your DNS, and nobody else has claimed your listing, this is a job you can finish yourself in an afternoon. Apple charges nothing for it. Hiring anyone, us included, would be spending money to avoid twenty minutes of typing.

Paying for help starts making sense in narrower situations. A transfer request against an agency or former owner who will not respond. Dozens or hundreds of locations where consistency and bulk handling matter. A verification that has already been rejected once and you cannot work out which of the two methods failed. A business type where the documentation is genuinely awkward, such as a service-area business with no public storefront.

Even then, ask what is actually being done before you pay. If the answer amounts to filling in a free form on your behalf, that is not worth paying for.

Working with us

Verified Everywhere is run by JWC Apps in San Diego. We ran this stack on our own business first, a hockey apparel store called Bench Clearers, before offering it to anyone: DMARC at enforcement, a Verified Mark Certificate through GlobalSign, BIMI showing in Gmail, and Meta Verified on a 52,000-follower Instagram account. We work only through official channels, we never ask for your passwords, government ID documents, or card numbers, and if we do not think a case can succeed we say so and decline rather than take the fee. If you want a hand with an Apple Maps claim or a stuck transfer request, tell us what you are seeing on screen and we will tell you honestly whether it needs us.