A well-signed van is genuinely good marketing - it's free, mobile, and puts your name in front of every driver stuck behind it in traffic. It is also completely invisible to the one place most customers actually start looking these days: a phone, at 9pm, typing "electrician near me."
Two very different jobs
Physical visibility and online visibility don't transfer to each other automatically. Being known in your town doesn't mean Google associates your business with the searches that matter, and a beautifully signed van tells search engines precisely nothing about who you are or where you work.
What actually moves local search rankings
- A complete, accurate Google Business Profile - hours, service area, photos, and genuine reviews
- Consistent name, address and phone details everywhere your business is listed online (directories, your website, socials)
- A website that clearly names the areas you cover, in plain language, not buried in an image
Google's own guidance on local business profiles is a genuinely useful, jargon-light starting point if you've never touched yours.
The reviews problem nobody enjoys
Most trade businesses do great work and get almost no reviews to show for it, because asking feels awkward. A short, low-friction ask - a text with a direct link, sent right after a job goes well - massively outperforms a vague "leave us a review sometime" mentioned in passing. It's a small habit with a disproportionately large payoff for local search.
If you want a sense of how map-pack rankings actually work for trade and service businesses specifically, our areas we cover page is built exactly around that logic - naming places plainly rather than assuming Google will infer it.
The verdict
Keep the van signage - it's doing a job the internet can't. Just don't mistake it for the whole marketing plan.