How to rank in the Google map pack
Three businesses get the map. Everyone else gets the list underneath, where almost nobody scrolls. Google has published what decides those three places, and most of the advice you'll read adds things Google never said.
What the map pack is
Search for a service and a town and you get a small map with three businesses under it, above the ordinary blue links. That block is the map pack, and for anything urgent it takes most of the calls.
It is not the same as ranking on page one. A business can sit fourth in the map pack and never be seen, while a weaker website above it takes the phone calls.
The three things Google names
Google publishes this. There is no need to guess, and the guesswork is where most local SEO advice goes wrong.
| Factor | What Google says it means | What you can do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Relevance | How well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for. | Category, services, and a profile filled in properly. |
| Distance | How far each business is from the person searching, or from the place they named. | Nothing, directly. It is the reason you rank at home and vanish across town. |
| Prominence | How well known a business is, based partly on links to your site and on how many reviews you have. | Reviews, coverage, and links earned over time. |
Two of those you work on. One of them you plan around. Google's page also settles a question we get asked most weeks: There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google. Ads buy you the ad slot above the map, not a place in it.
The full page is worth ten minutes of your time: how Google says local results are ranked.
Why you show at your own address and vanish across town
Distance is measured from wherever the person is standing, or from the place they typed. So there is no single ranking to check. Your position changes street by street, and the report that shows you at number one is usually measuring from your own office.
A plumber in Casper can own the map for the east side and be invisible in Mills, and nothing is broken. That is distance doing its job.
What this rules out: renting a mailbox in the next town. Google's guidelines are clear that a location needs real staffing during its stated hours, and fake addresses are one of the fastest ways to lose a profile entirely.
What it leaves you: being the obvious choice inside your real radius, and using pages on your own website to reach the towns your van actually drives to. Those pages can rank in the normal results even where the map pack is out of reach.
Relevance: the part most profiles get wrong in a day
Your primary category is the biggest single lever
Google matches searches to categories before it looks at anything you wrote. A roofer filed under "construction company" is competing in the wrong race. Pick the category that names the job people search for, then add the others underneath it.
Fill in the parts that look like admin
Services, hours, the description, the areas you serve, whether you come to the customer. Every blank field is a question Google answers from somewhere else, or not at all.
Photos, and photos with dates on them
A profile with pictures of real jobs reads differently from one with a logo. Google's own advice lists photos and videos among the things worth adding.
Make the website say the same thing
If the profile says emergency plumbing in Casper and your site says "quality solutions", the profile is carrying the claim alone. The two should read as the same business, which is also what our Google Business Profile service spends most of its time fixing.
One link, and you get the three things holding it back, free and in writing.
Prominence: the slow one that actually separates you
Google describes prominence as how well known a business is, and says it counts things like how many sites link to you and how many reviews you have.
In practice, for a local service business, that comes down to three habits:
- Ask every customer for a review, every time. Not a campaign. A habit, at the end of each job.
- Reply to them. Google says replying shows you value the feedback, and a reader can tell in ten seconds what kind of company they are dealing with.
- Be mentioned off your own site. A chamber page, a supplier's dealer list, a local paper, a sponsorship. Real mentions from real local places.
This is the part that takes months, and it is also the part a competitor cannot buy overnight. When two plumbers are the same distance away and both have decent profiles, prominence is the tiebreak.
Four things that get people nowhere
- Stuffing the business name. "Casper Plumbing & Drain Cleaning Best Emergency Service" is against Google's guidelines and gets profiles suspended. The name is the name on the van.
- A second profile for the same business. Duplicates split your reviews and confuse the map.
- Buying reviews. It is against Google's policies and now against the FTC's rule, and a burst of five-star reviews with no detail is visible to anyone reading.
- Checking your rank from your own desk. You are standing at the address. Of course you are first.
Questions owners ask us
Straight answers, with Google's wording where Google has published it.
Can I pay Google to be in the map pack?
No. Google states there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. You can buy the sponsored slot that sits above the map, which is an ad and is labelled as one.
Do I need an address in every town I serve?
No, and a fake one is dangerous. A business that travels to customers sets a service area instead, and keeps one real address where the staff actually are.
Why does my ranking change during the day?
Because distance is measured from the person searching, and the searchers move. Two people a mile apart can see a different top three at the same moment.
How many reviews do I need?
There is no number Google publishes. What matters in a small market is being in the same range as the businesses already in the top three, and still collecting reviews after you get there.
Does my website matter if the map pack is the goal?
Yes. Google counts links to your site as part of prominence, and the site is where you can cover the towns the map pack won't give you.
Where to start this week
Open your profile and check the primary category against what customers actually type. Fill every empty field. Ask the next five customers for a review and reply to each one. Then look at your position from a few different parts of town, not from your desk.
That is most of it. The rest is doing it for long enough that Google has something to go on.
Read next
Tell us what you do and where. We'll check the profile against what Google says decides the ranking.