Three businesses get shown in the map results. Everyone else is on the “more places” screen that most people never tap. That block of three is the local pack, sometimes called the map pack or the 3-pack, and understanding how those three get chosen is the difference between doing local SEO and guessing at it.
Google says it weighs three things
Google publishes this, which is unusual and worth taking seriously. Its own documentation on local ranking says results in Google Maps and the local pack are ranked on relevance, distance and prominence.
- Relevance is how well your business matches what someone typed. A profile that says “plumber” competes for plumbing searches. A profile that says “home services” competes for less.
- Distance is how far you are from the searcher, or from the place they named. This is the one you can’t buy your way out of.
- Prominence is how well known the business appears to be, drawn from links, articles, directories and reviews.
Those three interact rather than adding up. A well known business can appear for a search further away than a weaker one nearby, which is why you sometimes see a competitor from the next town in results you think should be yours.
Proximity is measured from the searcher, not from you
This is the part that catches people out. There is no single ranking for “plumber near me”. Two people searching that phrase from opposite sides of the city see different results, because the distance component is calculated from wherever each of them is standing.
So checking your Google Maps ranking from your own office tells you almost nothing useful. You’re standing at the one point on the map where your business has its best possible distance score. Of course you look good.
The honest version of that check is to look from where your customers actually are. If most of your work comes from three neighbourhoods, those are the three places your ranking matters, and they may each tell a different story.
How to check your rankings without fooling yourself
An incognito window isn’t enough. It hides your search history but not your location, so you’re still measuring from your own address.
- Use a grid tool if you want a real picture. These check the same search from dozens of points across an area and show you where you appear and where you vanish. The pattern is usually a blob centred on your address that fades with distance, and the useful question is how far the blob reaches.
- Ask a customer for a quick screenshot if you have no tool. Two or three people in different parts of your area will tell you more than an afternoon of searching from your desk.
- Check the same phrases customers use, not the ones you’d use. People search for the problem, not the trade name.
Whatever method you pick, use the same one every time. Comparing a grid result this month against a desk search last month tells you nothing.
What you can actually influence
Distance is largely fixed. You are where you are. That leaves relevance and prominence, and both respond to work.
Relevance
Your primary category does more than any other single field on the Google Business Profile. Pick the one that describes what you mainly do, not the broadest one that covers everything. Add secondary categories for genuine services, and leave off the ones you’d rather not be called about.
Then fill in the services list, the description, the hours, the attributes, and the photos. An incomplete Business Profile is asking Google to guess, and Google guesses conservatively. Most of this is a single afternoon of work that never gets done.
Your website matters here too. If the profile claims you do commercial work and the site never mentions it, that claim is thinner than it looks.
Prominence
This is the slower half, and the one that separates businesses that have been doing local SEO for two years from businesses that started last month.
- Reviews, in quantity, quality and recency. A profile whose last review is from 2023 reads as a business that may not still be trading.
- Consistent listings across the directories that matter in your trade. This is unglamorous and it works. Our post on building citations covers what to fix and in what order.
- Links and mentions from local sources: suppliers, trade bodies, the local paper, sponsorships. These are harder to get and harder for a competitor to copy.
Why a competitor outranks you in the local pack
In rough order of how often it turns out to be the answer:
- They are closer to the person searching. Proximity is the one factor nothing on your profile changes.
- Their categories are more precise. Yours are broad and theirs name the exact service.
- They have more recent reviews. Not necessarily better ones. More recent ones.
- Their listings agree with each other and yours contradict themselves across half a dozen directories.
Work down that list before concluding anything is wrong with your website. Most of the gap is usually in the first three.
Three things that will cost you more than they gain
- Keyword stuffing the business name. Adding your trade and town to the name field does affect rankings, which is why people do it. It is also against Google’s guidelines for representing your business, competitors report it, and the correction can take the profile down with it.
- Fake locations. A virtual office or a friend’s address in a town you want to rank in is a suspension waiting to happen. If you serve that area, say so as a service area instead.
- Buying reviews. The short-term lift is real and so is the risk to every genuine review you have collected.
How long any of this takes
Profile edits usually show up within days. Movement in the results follows over weeks, not overnight, and citation clean-ups are slower still because you’re waiting on other websites to update.
Change one thing at a time and let it settle. If you edit your categories on Monday and rewrite your description on Wednesday, a change in the results the following week tells you nothing about which of them did it.
Common questions
Why do I see myself in the map pack but my customers don’t?
Because you’re searching from your own address, where your distance score is at its best. Your customers are searching from theirs. Check from a few of the places your work actually comes from and you’ll get the real answer.
Does adding more service areas help me rank in more places?
No. Service areas tell customers where you’ll travel. They don’t override the distance factor, so a long list buys you nothing except a vaguer profile. There is more on setting them properly in our post on service area businesses.
How many reviews do I need to compete?
There is no threshold. Look at the three businesses currently showing for your main search and see where they are. That is your target, and steady arrivals matter more than a burst.
If you’d like someone to run the checks properly and tell you which of the three factors is actually holding you back, that is what our profile work and wider local SEO service cover. Send us your business name and the search you want to win.