By The short answer: Build a page for an area only when you have something true and specific to say about it: work you do there, how service works there, who covers it, what it costs to get there. A set of near-identical pages with the town name swapped is what Google's spam policies describe as doorway abuse, and it is more likely to cost you than help. For most service businesses, one strong page per service, a clearly stated service area, a correctly set up Google Business Profile and a few genuinely distinct area pages will do more than forty thin ones.
Why city pages became a habit
The logic was simple. People search "furnace repair St. Albert", so a page titled "Furnace Repair in St. Albert" should rank for it. Templates and page builders made it cheap to produce one for every town within driving distance, and AI writing tools made it cheaper still.
The problem is that the pages usually say the same thing. Same services, same paragraphs, same photos, one word changed. That is exactly the pattern Google has written policy against.
What Google says about near-identical location pages
Google's spam policies, last updated in August 2026, define doorway abuse as pages "created to rank for specific, similar search queries" that lead people to something less useful than the real destination. Pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel visitors to one place are one of the listed examples.
The same page covers scaled content abuse: large numbers of pages made mainly to manipulate rankings rather than help people, no matter how they are produced. Using generative AI to create many pages without adding value is named directly.
Google's guidance on helpful content puts the same idea as a self-check. It asks whether content is primarily made to attract visits from search engines, and whether it provides original information rather than rewriting what already exists.
None of this bans location pages. It bans pages whose only reason to exist is the town name.
The test: remove the town name
Read the page with the town name deleted. If nothing is left that is specific to that place, treat it as a warning sign. A page like that is probably there to catch a search, not to help the person who lands on it.
A location page earns its place when it carries at least a few of these:
- Work you have done there, with photos and details the client has agreed you can share.
- How service actually works there: which days you schedule it, typical response time, whether a travel charge applies.
- Who covers it, and where they are based.
- Local conditions that change the job, such as which municipality issues the permit or what housing stock is common.
- Questions people in that area actually ask your team.
Take a heating and cooling company based in Edmonton that also takes jobs in St. Albert, Sherwood Park and Leduc. If St. Albert is a third of its work, a page with recent installs there, the scheduling days and the permit route is useful to a St. Albert homeowner. A Leduc page with nothing but the town name is not, and those jobs are better served by the main service page and a clear service area statement.
Your Google Business Profile does a different job
Area pages on your website and your Business Profile service area are separate tools, and they follow separate rules.
Google's Business Profile guidelines say a service-area business should have one profile for its central office with a designated service area. A separate profile is only allowed for a location with its own staff and its own service area. A rented mailing address you do not operate from, a virtual office, is not eligible.
The service area settings allow up to 20 areas. The overall boundary should not be more than about two hours of driving time from where the business is based, and you cannot set it as a radius. If you do not serve customers at your address, Google says to remove it and list only the service area.
So a profile per town is only an option where each one is a real location with its own staff and service area. Otherwise, your website is where area detail belongs.
Why this matters for AI answers too
AI search tools quote specific, checkable facts. "We serve Leduc" gives them nothing to use. "Same-week furnace installs in Leduc, booked Tuesdays and Thursdays" is something an answer can quote. We covered how those tools choose sources in How AI Search Decides Which Businesses to Recommend. The same distinct content that satisfies Google's policies gives AI answers something to cite.
If you want reach in towns you cannot write about yet
Paid search can cover an area before you have anything specific to publish about it. Google Ads location options default to reaching people in, regularly in, or who have shown interest in your targeted locations. The alternative, Presence, limits ads to people in or regularly in those locations. If you can only serve people who are physically in the area, confirm which option each campaign uses.
A checklist for this week
- List every town or neighbourhood page on your site.
- Run the remove-the-town-name test on each one.
- For pages that fail, add real local detail. If a page still gives visitors nothing the main service page does not, merge it into that page and redirect the old address.
- For the areas that matter most, add at least three facts that are true only of that area.
- Check your Business Profile: one profile per staffed location, no virtual office, up to 20 service areas within about two hours' drive, address hidden if customers do not visit you.
- Make sure the service area on your website, Business Profile and ads says the same thing.
- If you run Google Ads, check the location option on each campaign.
Where Lumin fits
- An AI assistant can answer "do you come to my area?" from an approved guide and hand the enquiry to a person. The questions it collects show which areas need their own page.
- Connected workflows can route enquiries from each area to the right person on your team.
- Paid advertising support can be planned around the areas you actually serve and measured by enquiries, not clicks.
If your site has a stack of town pages and you are not sure which to keep, book a discovery call and bring the list.