Local search · map pack
How to rank in the Google map pack.
Three results appear on a map before any website does, and most people never scroll past them. Getting into those three is a different job from ranking a web page — and usually the faster one.
What the map pack is, and why it decides most local searches.
Search almost anything local on a phone and you get a map with three businesses under it. That block is the map pack — some people call it the local pack or the three-pack. Below it, eventually, are websites.
Most people never scroll that far. They tap one of the three, look at the reviews, and call. Your website was not part of that decision.
Getting into those three is a different job from ranking a web page, and it is usually the faster of the two.
The three things Google weighs.
Google publishes this, which is unusual and worth taking seriously. Local results are ranked on relevance, distance and prominence.
Distance
How close you are to the person searching, or to the place they named. You cannot change this, and it is why a business further away sometimes outranks the one down the street — the other two factors made up the difference.
Relevance
How well your business matches what was typed. This is mostly your categories, your listed services and your description. It is the fastest thing to fix and the most commonly wrong.
Prominence
How well known you are. Reviews, mentions elsewhere, links to your site, an active profile. Slow to build, impossible to shortcut, and the reason established businesses hold their position.
Two of the three are in your hands. That is the work.
Six things that actually move it.
Get the primary category right. It decides which searches you are eligible for at all. Most profiles were set once, years ago, to something too broad. Pick the most specific category that genuinely describes you.
List every service separately. Not one line saying "general services". Each thing you do, named the way a customer would name it — the same principle behind one page per service on your website.
Fill in every field. Hours including holidays, attributes, the description, the service area. Every empty field is a question Google cannot answer about you.
Add photos and keep adding them. Profiles with recent photos get engaged with more. They do not need to be beautiful — the actual place and the actual work is what gets looked at.
Answer the questions section yourself. Anyone can answer a question on your profile, including a competitor and including someone who is simply wrong. Post the questions you get asked and answer them before somebody else does.
Post to the profile. Almost no small business does. It takes a minute, it keeps the listing active, and doing the ordinary thing here puts you ahead of nearly everyone in your town.
What will get you suspended.
The map pack is policed harder than web results, and a suspension is far worse than a poor ranking.
Keywords in your business name. "Smith Dental — Best Beverly Dentist" is against the rules, it is reported by competitors constantly, and it is one of the fastest routes to a suspended profile.
A fake or shared address. A virtual office or a relative’s house to appear in another town. If you serve an area rather than trade from a location, set the profile up as a service-area business and hide the address properly.
Bought reviews. Google is good at spotting them and getting a profile reinstated takes longer than earning the reviews would have.
Multiple listings for one location. One business, one listing, unless you genuinely have separate premises with separate staff.
Check yours today.
Search your business name in a browser you are not signed into. Look at your own profile the way a customer would: is the category right, are the hours current, when was the last photo added, has anyone answered the questions.
Most profiles fail two or three of those, and all of them are free to fix this afternoon.
If you would rather have it managed, that is a service we run. It works best alongside local SEO, since the listing and the site feed each other.
