Why your Google Maps ranking changes from street to street

Google ranks on relevance, distance and prominence

Google's own help page, Tips to improve your local ranking on Google, puts it this way:

"Relevance is how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for."

"Distance refers to how far each business is from the customer who's searching. If a customer doesn't share where they are, Google uses what it knows about their location."

"Prominence means how well-known a business is. ... This factor's also based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have."

The same page opens with "Local results are mainly based on relevance, distance, and popularity", so Google uses both words for the third factor. Relevance and prominence change slowly, with your profile, reviews and links. Distance changes with every search, because every searcher stands somewhere different.

Why your phone and your client's phone disagree

When you search from your shop, Google measures distance from your shop. Your customer across town gets the list for where they are standing, and a different set of businesses is nearby. If they don't share their location, Google uses what it knows about it. Neither phone is wrong. Each shows one point on a map that changes every few hundred metres.

That is why a client can say "we're #1" while their leads dry up. They are #1 at the one spot they check from.

What a grid shows that one search can't

A grid scan runs the same Google Maps search from many evenly spaced points and records the rank at each one. This is the real scan from the opening paragraph: 5×5 points, 500 m apart, 25 searches in all.

72020+199415399891355129771612111420+

C340.7547° N, 73.9870° W

#1 on its own block

C140.7637° N, 73.9870° W

Not in the top 20, 1 km north

© OpenStreetMap

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Average rank across the grid was 10.2, with points outside the top 20 counted as 21. The business was in the top 3 at 12% of points and appeared at all at 92%. One search from the centre would have shown #1 and hidden all of that. Read how geo-grid rank tracking works for more on these numbers.

Normal week-to-week movement vs a real drop

Ranks at single points can move from week to week. A move of one or two places at a few pins is not a trend, so watch the grid-wide numbers instead.

• Probably noise. A few edge pins shift, while average rank and top-3 share hold within a point or two.
• Worth a look. Top-3 share falls in one direction, for example every pin to the north. A competitor there may have opened, moved or gained reviews.
• A real drop. Average rank and top-3 share fall across most of the grid, and the next weekly scan confirms it. Check what changed on the profile first.

What to fix first

Google's help page lists what a business can do. We would check them in this order after a drop.

• Business information. "Businesses with complete and accurate info are more likely to show up in local search results." Check the category, address, hours and special hours first. The category tells Google what kind of business you are, which is what relevance matches against.
• Verification. Google says verifying tells it "you're authorized to represent the business, so it's more likely to show up in search results."
• Reviews. "More reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking." Google also asks businesses to respond to reviews.
• Photos and videos. Google lists them as a way to show what you offer.

Google also says, "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google." Distance you can't change, but you can see where it hurts. Gridrank's paid plans rescan each tracked keyword every week on grids up to 9×9, so you can tell whether a fix widened the area where you rank.

Questions people ask