Local SEO: how to show up in Google's map results

Search for a plumber, a dentist or an accountant on Google and you'll usually see a map with a short list of businesses before the normal results. People in the trade call it the map pack or local pack. For a business that serves customers in a particular area, it's often where most enquiries from Google start. This guide covers how Google decides who appears there and what you can do about it.

How Google ranks the map results

Google's help page on local ranking names 3 main factors.

• Relevance: how well your Business Profile matches what someone searched for. Complete, detailed information helps Google make the match.
• Distance: how far your business is from the searcher, or from the place named in the search. If the searcher doesn't share a location, Google estimates it.
• Prominence: how well known the business is. Google says this includes information from across the web, such as links and articles, along with your review count and rating.

Google also says verified profiles are more likely to appear, and that there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. You can't change distance, so the work goes into relevance and prominence.

Get the profile right first

Your Google Business Profile is the starting point. Our Business Profile guide goes through the set-up step by step. In short: your real business name with no added keywords, the category that best describes your main work, every main service listed, accurate hours including bank holidays, recent photos and a link to the right page of your website.

If you travel to customers

Trades, mobile services and many consultants don't receive customers at their base. Google calls these service-area businesses, and its guidelines are specific:

• Hide your address if customers don't visit it. A plumber working from home should remove the home address from the profile.
• Set your service areas by town or postcode area. Google says these should generally stay within about 2 hours' driving time of where you're based.
• Use one profile for the business, unless you have genuinely separate locations with their own staff.
• No virtual offices. A rented mailing address where you don't work isn't eligible. A co-working space only qualifies if it has your signage and your own staff there during your hours.

Listing a service area doesn't mean Google will show you everywhere in it. Distance still counts, so you'll usually show more readily near your base. That's where area pages on your website and reviews from customers in those towns come in.

Area pages that help

A page for each main town you cover gives Google, and customers, something specific to match. The risk is making 30 copies of the same page with the town name swapped. Google's spam policies describe that as doorway abuse, and its guidance on helpful content warns against content made mainly to rank.

A useful area page has things only you could write:

• The work you do most there, and any local detail that matters, such as older housing stock, hard water or parking restrictions.
• A recent job or two, with photos, described in plain words.
• Reviews from customers in that town, if they've agreed to be quoted.
• Practical details: how quickly you can usually get there, any call-out charge, the postcodes covered.

Start with the towns that bring the most work, and write fewer, better pages. Link each one from your main areas page so Google and visitors can find them.

Keep your details consistent

Your business name, address and phone number appear in many places: your website, your Google profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, directories such as Yell, trade body registers and review sites. When they disagree, because of an old address or a former phone number, Google has conflicting information about you, and so do customers.

Pick one exact version of your name, address and number and use it everywhere. Then work through the listings that already exist, starting with the ones that show when you search your business name. If you use LocalBusiness structured data on your website, make it match too.

Reviews

Review count and rating feed into prominence, and they're what customers compare on the map. The rules are strict. Google prohibits offering incentives for reviews and asking only happy customers. In the UK, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 bans fake reviews and concealed incentivised reviews, and the CMA has published guidance for businesses.

The process that works: ask every customer, the same way, at the same point, usually when the job is done. Send a direct link to your review form. Reply to reviews briefly and politely, including critical ones.

Tracking where you show up

Because distance counts, a search from your office will often show you higher than the same search from a town 10 miles away. To get a fair picture:

• Pick 3 to 5 searches customers really use, such as emergency plumber or boiler service.
• Check each one as if searching from several towns you cover, and note your position in the map results.
• Repeat monthly with the same searches and towns, so you're comparing like with like.
• Look at your profile's performance figures too: calls, website clicks and direction requests show whether people act after finding you.

Tools can automate the town-by-town checks, but a careful manual check once a month is enough for most small businesses to see the trend.

Common mistakes

• Adding service or town keywords to the business name. It breaks Google's guidelines and can get the profile suspended.
• Duplicate profiles for the same business, often left over from an old address or a previous agency.
• A home address shown on the profile when customers never visit.
• Opening hours that differ between the website and the profile.
• The profile owned by a former web designer or employee. Make sure the business owns it, with anyone else added as a manager.

Next steps

Search for your main service as a customer would, from a few of the towns you cover, and see who shows on the map. Then compare their profiles with yours. If you'd like us to do that for you, ask for a free SEO check, or see what local SEO with us covers.