Your business does not show up on Google because Google does not have enough to go on. Either your Business Profile is missing, unclaimed or incomplete, your website has no page about the thing being searched for, or the details about you disagree across the web, so Google cannot be sure who you are or where you work. Fix those three and you show up. The rest is about showing up higher.
First, which search are we talking about?
If you do not show up when someone types your business name, that is a different problem from not showing up for "dentist near me", and it is the easier one. Check both. Type your business name into Google on your phone. Then type what you do and your town. Note what you see for each, because the six reasons below do not all apply to both.
Reason one: you have no Business Profile, or someone else owns it
How to check:
Search your business name. On a phone, a panel with your name, hours, photos and reviews should sit at the top. On a computer it sits on the right. No panel means no profile, or one Google is not confident is you.
What to do:
Claim it at business.google.com. If it already exists and someone else set it up, Google has a process to request access. It takes days to weeks. Do this first; nothing else matters until the profile is yours.
Reason two: the profile is incomplete or in the wrong category
How to check:
Open your profile. Is the primary category exactly what you do, not something close? Are your services listed? Your hours? Are there photos from this year?
What to do:
Set the one category that describes most of your work, add every service in the words a customer would use, set real hours, and add real photos of real jobs. Then keep adding them. Google shows first the profiles it can trust, and an empty one earns no trust.
Reason three: your website has no page about what they searched for
How to check:
In Google, type site: followed by your domain, a space, and the service. For example, site:yourcompany.ca kitchen renovation. If nothing comes up, Google has no page of yours about it.
What to do:
One page for each thing you do, named plainly, naming the areas you serve. Not one page that lists everything. Google ranks pages, not businesses, and it cannot show a page that does not exist.
Reason four: your details disagree across the web
How to check:
Google your phone number in quotation marks. Look at every listing that comes up. Is the name spelled the same? Same address or service area? Same hours?
What to do:
Pick one exact version of your name, number, address and hours, and fix every listing to match it: your site, your profile, Bing, Apple, the directories. Google checks for agreement, and so do AI engines. Disagreement reads as doubt.
Reason five: you have few reviews, or no recent ones
How to check:
When was your last review? How many do the three businesses on the map for your search have, and how recent are theirs?
What to do:
Ask every customer, after every job, with a link that opens the review box. A few a week, steadily. Never buy them, never write them, never ask only the happy ones. All three get profiles suspended.
Reason six: your site is slow or broken on a phone
How to check:
Open your site on your phone, on mobile data, not wifi. Does the main content show within a couple of seconds? Can you tap the phone number and have it dial?
What to do:
If it is slow, it is usually oversized images or a heavy theme, and a developer can fix both in a day. If the number does not dial, that is a quick fix. Google ranks the phone version of your site, so this counts more than it seems.
Which one to fix first
In this order: the profile, then the details, then the pages, then the reviews, then the speed. The profile first because the map is where most local calls come from. The details second because they decide whether Google trusts the profile. The pages third because they are what the profile links to. Reviews and speed keep paying off after the others are done.
Where it gets hard
Doing all six once is a long weekend. Keeping them current is the job: new photos, new reviews, new pages for new searches, replies to every review, and a check each month that the details still agree. That is the part most owners stop doing by month three, and it is the part that decides whether the first weekend was worth it. If you would rather not, it is what we do.