Local results follow their own logic
Search for a dentist, a tyre shop or a wedding caterer and the page that comes back looks different from an ordinary results page. A map appears with a short list of businesses beside it, each with a rating, opening hours and a call button. The ordinary website links sit underneath.
That short list is produced by a separate system from the one that ranks web pages. Google describes it in public guidance as depending on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. Other map and directory products work on similar principles, even where the wording differs. The detail of how the three are weighed is not published and changes over time, so treat any precise formula you are shown with suspicion.
The three ideas themselves are durable, and they are enough to plan with. Each one answers a different question about the business.
Relevance asks whether the business matches the request
Relevance is the fit between what the person typed and what the business says it does. A search for emergency plumber should return plumbers who take emergency calls, and the system can only know that if the business has said so somewhere it can read.
The main sources are the business profile (its category, services and description), the website it links to, and what customers write in reviews. A clinic listed only under a broad medical category, with a website that never mentions the treatments it offers, gives the system very little to match against.
Relevance is also about the words customers use, which are rarely the words the trade uses. People look for a boiler repair, not a heating engineer. They look for a tiffin service, a notary, a car wash near the metro. A business that describes itself in its customers' vocabulary is easier to match.
Distance asks how far the business is from the place in question
Distance is measured from wherever the search is anchored. If the person names a place, it is measured from that place. If they do not, it is measured from where their device appears to be. Two people typing the same words a few kilometres apart will often see different businesses.
The way people name places varies by country, and it matters. In Indian cities people search by sector number, colony, market or metro station. In the UK they use the town, the borough or the first half of a postcode. In the UAE they often name a community, a tower or a landmark, because that is how directions are given. In the USA neighbourhood names, suburbs and zip codes all appear. A business needs to know which of these its own customers use.
A business cannot change where it is. It can make sure its location is recorded accurately, and it can decide which nearby areas are realistic to compete in. Being shown to someone on the far side of a large city is unlikely when closer, comparable options exist.
Prominence asks how well known the business appears to be
Prominence is the system's estimate of reputation. Some businesses are well known offline, and that tends to be reflected online. For everyone else, prominence is assembled from signals: the number and quality of reviews, how often the business is mentioned on other sites, links to its website, and how well that website performs in ordinary search.
The website counts for more here than many owners expect. A local business with a thin site, or none, is relying on its profile alone. One with clear service pages, real location details and a few links from organisations that know it gives the system more reasons to consider it established.
This is the slowest of the three to change. A review profile is built one customer at a time, and mentions in the local press, trade bodies and community sites accumulate over years. Our piece on asking for and replying to reviews covers the part of this that is most within a business's control.
What a business can influence
Most of the available effort belongs in relevance and prominence. The list below is roughly in order of how quickly each item can be done.
None of these is a trick. Each one makes the business easier to understand or easier to trust, for a person as much as for a ranking system. That is why the work keeps its value when the systems change.
- Choose the most accurate category and list every service you actually offer.
- Keep the name, address, phone number and hours identical wherever they appear.
- Give the website a clear page for each main service and each real location.
- Ask every customer for a review as a matter of routine, and reply to them.
- Earn mentions from local organisations, suppliers and publications that know you.
What a business cannot influence
The searcher's position is outside your control, and so is the number of competitors who happen to be nearer to them. So is the way a query is interpreted on a given day: the same phrase may be treated as a request for a nearby shop in one case and as a request for information in another.
Attempts to get round distance tend to end badly. Listing an address where the business does not operate, or adding place names and service words to the business name, are the usual ones. Platforms publish guidelines against misrepresentation, and profiles that break them can be suspended, sometimes after a competitor reports them. Read the current guidelines for any platform you rely on before changing how the business is presented.
No agency can promise a position in the map results either. The honest claim is that a complete, accurate, well reviewed business is shown more often, to more of the people who are close enough to choose it.
How to use this when deciding where to spend effort
Start with relevance, because it is cheap and mostly a matter of accuracy. Our guide to setting up a business profile that earns enquiries works through it field by field. Then put a review routine in place, because prominence compounds and the sooner it starts the better.
Treat distance as a boundary to plan within. Decide which areas you can reasonably serve, check what customers there call those areas, and measure results from several points inside them instead of from your own desk. That is the starting point of the local SEO work we do, and of any map visibility project worth paying for.
