Knowledge base / Local search
Getting into the map pack: proximity, prominence and relevance.
Three factors decide the three listings. You can move two of them. Anyone promising to move the third is selling you something that does not work.
Key takeaways
- What is the map pack? The map and three business listings that appear above organic results for searches with local intent. For many service businesses it is the most valuable position on the page.
- What decides who appears? Google describes three factors: relevance, distance and prominence. In plain terms, how well you match the search, how close you are to the searcher, and how well known you are.
- Which can I actually influence? Relevance and prominence. Distance is calculated from where the searcher is to where you are, and no amount of optimisation changes geography.
- How long does it take? Profile and consistency work often shows within weeks. Prominence, which rests on reviews and mentions built over time, moves over months. Anyone promising a fixed position by a date is guessing.
What are the three factors?
Google describes local ranking in terms of relevance, distance and prominence. The terms are vague on purpose, and they are still the most useful frame available because they come from Google rather than from inference.
Relevance is how well your listing matches what was searched. Your categories, services and description decide it. Distance is how far you are from the searcher or the area they named. Prominence is how well known the business is, drawn from reviews, mentions across the web, and your position in ordinary search results.
What you can and cannot move
| Factor | Can you influence it? | How |
|---|---|---|
| Relevance | Yes, quickly. | Correct primary category, honest secondary categories, every service listed, a plain description. See the profile guide. |
| Prominence | Yes, slowly. | Steady real reviews, consistent listings across the web, ordinary organic rankings for the same terms. |
| Distance | No. | It is geography. The only honest lever is opening a real second location, which is a business decision rather than an SEO one. |
That third row is the one worth sitting with. It explains why your results differ from your customers’, why you cannot dominate a whole county from one office, and why any promise of a fixed position should prompt the question: for someone standing where?
The order we work in
Relevance first, because it is the fastest to fix and costs nothing. A correct primary category and a filled-in services list can change which searches you are eligible for within weeks.
Consistency second. Your name, address and phone number have to agree everywhere a machine can find them, because contradictory records make you harder to resolve as one business. NAP consistency covers the method.
Prominence third, and continuously. Reviews asked for properly and answered, the website ranking for the same services, and your business described the same way wherever it appears. This is the slow part, and it is also the part competitors cannot copy in a weekend.
How to measure it honestly
Searching for yourself is the least reliable measurement available. You are at the shortest distance, Google knows your account, and the result is personalised in your favour.
Measure instead from a set of fixed points, the same ones each time. Pick three locations across your service area, run the same searches from each, record the three listings and the date, and repeat monthly. The pattern across months is the signal. A single check from your desk is not.
We run this for clients as part of a weekly tracker and report the position per keyword per city with its history, because one number with no location attached is not a measurement of anything.
Map pack questions
Sometimes, and it gets harder the further out you go. Distance is measured from your actual location to the searcher, so a business ten miles from a town centre is competing against businesses sitting in it. What helps is genuine prominence and relevance for that area, not setting a wider service radius.
No, and renting a mailbox to create one is against Google's guidelines and gets listings suspended. A service-area business is a supported setup. Use it honestly and compete on the two factors you can move.
Because you are searching from your own premises, which is the shortest possible distance. Your results are the best ones that exist for your business. Check from a few miles away, or use a tool that specifies a location, before drawing any conclusion about where you rank.
There is no threshold, and anyone quoting you one is making it up. What is observable is that recency and steady accumulation track better than a large old total. A profile with forty reviews spread over two years usually outperforms one with eighty from a single push in 2023. See reviews without gaming them.
Indirectly. Google reads the site linked from your profile, so matching services, a plainly stated address and working pages all help it understand you. But the profile does the heavy lifting, which is why we fix it before touching the site for a local business.
No. The result varies by where the searcher is standing, so there is no single position to guarantee. A guarantee of a fixed spot is either ignorance of how the ranking works or a promise made knowing it cannot be checked.
Fix the website half of local search.
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