Where do you show up on the map?
See your spot on Google Maps next to the top 3 in your city. Free.
What this shows you
When someone near you searches for what you do, Google shows a map with a short list of businesses. This check runs that search from the middle of the city you pick and shows you:
- Where your business shows up, out of the top 20.
- The top 3, with their star rating and how many reviews they have.
- How many more reviews you'd need to match the business in 3rd place.
What Google looks at
Google says it decides who shows up on the map with three things:
| What Google checks | What it means |
|---|---|
| Relevance | How well your profile matches what the person searched for. |
| Distance | How far you are from the person searching. That's why your spot changes from city to city. |
| Prominence | How well known you are: your reviews and star rating, what's said about you around the web, and where your website shows up in regular Google results. |
What you can do about it
You can't move your shop. You can work on everything else:
- Get more reviews. Google says how many you have and how good they are both count. This is the one you can grow every week. The free Google Review Kit makes asking easy.
- Reply to your reviews, the good ones and the bad ones.
- Fill out every part of your profile: the right main category, your services, your service area and a description of what you do.
- Keep your hours right, including holidays.
- Add real photos of your work, your team and your trucks.
- Get found around the web. Links to your website, local news stories and directory listings all help Google know you're real.
- Have a website that ranks. Google says where your site shows up in regular search results counts for the map too.
Which one is holding you back?
Knowing the list is the easy part. The hard part is knowing which one is keeping your business off the top 3, because it's different for every business. That's what I look for. I get a copy of your results, and if you're not where you want to be, I may reach out with the first thing I'd fix. If you don't want help, that's fine. The results are yours to keep.