How to Get Your Business Recommended by Siri

In short

Siri's local answers come from Apple Maps. You manage your Apple Maps place card through Apple Business Connect.
Claiming takes an Apple Account, a search for your location, and a verification step, usually a call to the listed number or uploaded documents.
Hours, special hours, category and phone are the fields Siri reads or acts on. Get those right before you touch photos.
Apple shows ratings from its own users and has long displayed partner reviews such as Yelp's, so your reputation lives in more than one place.
Test from a borrowed iPhone and from CarPlay, inside your service area, and log every word Siri says.

Where Siri looks when someone asks for a business

A woman in Stone Oak lifts her iPhone and says, "Siri, find a dentist that takes walk-ins." Siri does not go searching the web, at least not first. It asks Apple Maps which dental offices are nearby, what they are called, whether they are open, and how to reach them. Then it reads one or a few aloud and offers to call or give directions.

Apple Maps assembles that information from several places. Some comes from data providers Apple licenses. Some comes from Maps users who report a closed store or a misplaced pin. And some comes from business owners through Apple Business Connect, the free dashboard Apple opened to businesses of every size in 2023. Of those three, only the last one is yours to control.

Plenty of businesses, including many that keep their Google profile spotless, have never claimed their Apple listing. For them, the place card is a best guess assembled by someone else, and Siri reads that guess to customers as though it were fact. Claiming it is the single most valuable thing an owner can do for Siri visibility, and it costs nothing but an hour.

Our post on the Google setting that decides whether Siri recommends you explains how a Google-only routine leaves exactly this gap. The voice search guide puts Apple in context with the other three sources.

Siri reads your Apple listing to customers whether or not you have ever seen it.

Claiming Apple Business Connect, step by step

Apple adjusts the screens as it adds features, but the shape of the process has held steady. Set aside an hour and keep a business document within reach, such as your license or a recent utility bill in the business name.

1
Go to business.apple.com and sign in.
Use an Apple Account. Apple has supported both personal accounts and company-managed ones. If several people will manage the listing, or staff turn over, choose the setup that will still work after the person who created it leaves.
2
Describe the company.
Apple asks for company details first: the business name, website and a contact. This is the parent record. Each location hangs off it.
3
Search for your location.
Type the name and address. If Apple Maps already has a place for you, select it to claim it. If nothing turns up, you can add a new location from the same screen.
4
Verify that you run it.
Apple typically offers a phone call to the number on the listing, with a code to enter, or a document upload for review. If the listed number is wrong or forwards somewhere you cannot answer, take the document route.
5
Wait for review.
Some claims verify on the spot. Others sit in review for days. Apple does not promise a timeline, so do not plan a launch that depends on it.
6
Edit the place card.
Once verified, the fields described below become editable. Edits are reviewed before they publish, which is usually quick but not instant.

The place card fields Siri reads, and the ones it skips

The place card is what an iPhone user sees after tapping your name in Maps. Siri works from the same record but uses it differently. A person can admire your photos. Siri reads short facts and acts on a few of them.

Field	What Siri does with it	The usual mistake
Name	Says it aloud, and matches it to "call [name]" requests	Keywords stuffed into the name, which Apple may reject
Category	Decides whether you count as a "dentist" or "plumber" at all	A vague category, or the wrong trade
Hours	Answers "are they open" and filters "open now" requests	Hours that were right two years ago
Special hours	Overrides regular hours for holidays and closures	Never set, so Siri reads normal hours on Thanksgiving
Phone	Dialed when the customer says yes	A fax line, an old cell, or a lapsed tracking number
Address and pin	Sets distance and the destination for directions	Pin on the back lot, or the suite number missing
Website	Opened when the customer asks to see more	The home page when a location page exists
Action links	Can offer to book, order or reserve through a partner	A link to a booking system you stopped using
Payments and amenities	Answers follow-ups like "do they take Apple Pay?"	Left blank, so Siri has nothing to say

Apple does not publish exactly which fields Siri uses or how. Treat this as a field guide drawn from how Siri behaves, not a specification.

Fill the plain fields before the pretty ones. A gorgeous cover photo does nothing for a request spoken from a car on Loop 410. Correct special hours for the Fourth of July do a great deal. If Siri is already reading the wrong hours, fixing wrong hours on Siri walks through the repair in order.

Categories: the quiet field that decides who gets considered

Before Siri weighs distance or ratings, it has to decide which businesses are candidates at all. The category does most of that sorting. If a family dental office is filed under a general medical label, a request for "a dentist near me" may never reach it.

Apple's category list is its own. It overlaps with Google's but is not identical, so the label you chose on Google may not exist at Apple, or may mean something slightly different. Pick the closest true match for the thing customers ask for most, then add secondary categories where Apple allows and where they are honest. A taqueria that also caters can reasonably list both. A plumber who once replaced a ceiling fan should not list electrician.

Three category checks worth five minutes

Search Apple Maps for your trade in your neighborhood, the way a customer would. Note the categories shown on the businesses that come up first.
Compare them with your own place card. If the leaders say plumber and you say contractor, change it.
Repeat for your second most common request. A dental office that takes many urgent calls should see whether Apple offers a category matching that phrase in its area.

Showcases, action links, and the extras worth turning on

Business Connect has grown past the basics. The extras are mostly visual, which means they help the person who glances at the screen after Siri answers more than they shape what Siri says. They still deserve a few minutes.

Showcases are short promotions that sit on your place card for a set window: a photo, a line of text and a button. A taco shop can run one for a Lent fish taco special. A dental office can announce new Saturday hours. Apple reviews showcases before they go live, and they expire on the date you choose, which is a feature: nothing stale lingers on the card for a year.

Action links connect the place card to partners that handle booking, ordering or reservations. If your scheduling software is supported, a customer can go from "Siri, find a barber" to a booked chair without ever visiting your site. Make sure the link points to the system you actually use today.

Photos and a logo give the card a face. Lead with a clear photo of the storefront taken from the street, so a driver recognizes the building before they pass it.

Insights show how people found your place card and what they did next: calls, directions, website taps. Watch the call and direction counts over time. They are the closest thing Apple offers to a voice report.

Apple has also been adding features that carry your name and logo beyond Maps, onto calls and emails, in some regions. Availability changes, so check what your account offers when you sign in.

Ratings and reviews: what Apple shows and where it comes from

Apple's approach to reviews is less tidy than Google's, and Apple documents less of it, so hold every claim here (and elsewhere) a little loosely.

Apple Maps collects its own ratings from users, a quick thumbs up or down on things like the overall experience, plus photos. For years Apple has also displayed reviews and star ratings from partners, with Yelp the best known in the US, and the partners shown can vary by category and country. When Siri calls a place "highly rated," it is drawing on some mix of those signals. Apple does not publish the weights.

For an owner, the practical meaning is simple even if the plumbing is not. Your Yelp reputation is not a Yelp-only matter, because it can surface on an iPhone. And a steady trickle of Apple's own ratings, from customers who visited with an iPhone in their pocket, helps your card look current.

Reputation habits that help on Apple

Make rating easy without pressuring anyone. A small sign at the register that says you are on Apple Maps and Yelp is fine.
Know Yelp's rules: it discourages businesses from asking for reviews directly, so skip discounts, contests and review drives there.
Reply to Yelp reviews, especially the critical ones. The reply is public, and the next customer reads it before the reviewer does.
Fix the complaint pattern, not just the review. Three reviews about the phone ringing out describe a staffing problem with a marketing symptom.
Never buy reviews or trade anything for them. The penalties outlast any bump.

iPhone, CarPlay and HomePod: same record, different moment

The same Apple Maps record answers on every Apple device, but the person asking is in a different situation on each one, and the difference tells you which fields to fuss over.

On an iPhone, the customer can glance at the screen. Siri may show a short list with names, ratings and distances, and the customer may tap through to your place card. Photos, showcases and the description get their moment here.

In CarPlay, the customer should not be looking at all. Siri speaks, the driver answers yes or no, and the car either dials or starts navigating. Hours, phone and the map pin do all the work. A pin on the wrong side of a highway frontage road sends a hungry family past your driveway at 60 miles an hour, and they will not circle back. The car guide goes deeper on that moment.

On a HomePod or an Apple Watch, there is little or no screen to lean on. Requests tend to be quick facts and commands: what time does the pharmacy close, call the vet. Your name has to be easy to say and easy to recognize when Siri says it back.

Across all three, the request is often a command rather than a question. Call. Directions to. Is it open. That is why the factual fields matter more for Siri than anything you could write on a web page. The page still has a job, which near me voice searches explains, but it is the second job.

How to test Siri, and the misses that show up most

A ten-minute Siri check

1
Borrow an iPhone.
Your own phone has history with your business and may lean toward it. Use one belonging to a friend or relative who has never called you.
2
Stand where customers stand.
Drive a few miles out, toward the neighborhoods your work comes from, and ask from there.
3
Ask the way a customer would.
"Find a [your trade] near me." "Is [your name] open right now?" "Call [your name]." "Directions to [your name]."
4
Write down every word.
The business named, the hours read, the number dialed. Then hold it up against your Business Connect listing.
5
Repeat in CarPlay if you can.
The spoken answer should match the phone's. If your customers drive to you, this is the version that counts.

The misses we see most

Unclaimed listing. Siri is reading a guess. Claim it before doing anything else.
Holiday hours never set. Siri tells someone you are open on Christmas Eve afternoon when you are not.
Category too broad. A general home services label does not match "plumber."
Old phone number. Siri dials a dead line, and the customer calls the next name.
Duplicate place cards. One from the old address, one from the new, splitting ratings and scrambling directions.
Mismatch with Google. Apple and Google disagree on hours, and the customer who checks both trusts neither.
A competitor keeps winning. Usually a review or category gap; this fix walks through it.

For a baseline that checks Apple Maps alongside Google, Yelp and your site, run the free Voice Search Visibility Check. If you want the Apple listing claimed, corrected and kept in step with everything else, that is part of voice and ambient assistant optimization. The Google half of the job is in the Google Assistant and Gemini guide, and Alexa, which leans on yet another set of sources, is in how Alexa finds local businesses.

Free · no sign-up

See what a customer in your area sees when they search.

The free visibility check runs the search your customers run and shows where you land: the map pack, the organic results, or nowhere. Then it tells you why.

Check my visibility See the local marketing program

Free · No obligation

Is a voice assistant getting your business wrong?

Pick what sounds familiar. We will check what Siri, Google and Alexa are reading about you, then tell you which listing to fix first. Free, and the findings are yours either way.

Which of these sounds like you? (pick any)

Questions people ask

Straight answers

Not directly. Siri answers local questions from Apple Maps, which has its own data sources and its own place cards. Your Google profile can be perfect while Siri reads outdated hours. The way to control what Siri says is to claim your listing in Apple Business Connect and match it to Google, field by field.

No. Apple Business Connect is free, and claiming, verifying and editing your place card costs nothing. There is no paid placement that makes Siri recommend you. The real cost is the hour to set it up and the discipline to update it the same day your hours, phone or address change.

Sometimes minutes, sometimes several days. A phone verification to the number on the listing can finish on the spot, while document verification goes through review and takes longer. Apple does not commit to a timeline, so claim your listing well before a move, a rebrand or a busy season rather than the week of.

Usually because the hours on your Apple Maps place card are wrong, a special-hours entry was set for the wrong date, or the listing is unclaimed and Apple is relying on old data. Claim the listing, correct regular and special hours, and test again from an iPhone a few days later.

They can. Apple Maps has displayed Yelp ratings and reviews for US businesses for years, alongside Apple's own user ratings, and phrases like "highly rated" draw on that mix. Apple does not publish how it weighs each source, but ignoring Yelp is a gamble for any business whose customers carry iPhones.

You can suggest a missing place from the Maps app, but that only adds a basic entry for Apple to review. To own the listing, edit hours and category, and run showcases, use Apple Business Connect at business.apple.com. Do the claim there so you are not later competing with a duplicate you created yourself.

Where to go from here

How to Get Your Business on Siri, and Recommended by It