You will be able to explain the three factors Google says decide local results and which ones you can influence.
Wei Ming runs a chicken rice stall at a hawker centre in Toa Payoh, a business his father started. Office workers nearby search "chicken rice near me" at lunch and a map appears with three pins. His stall is not one of them, even though people queue for it every day. A stall two blocks away, which he knows is not as good, shows up every time.
The map results, and the listings in Google Maps itself, are chosen differently from the ordinary results you have studied so far. This lesson covers how, using Google's own explanation, and which parts you can change.
Google's help pages for Business Profile owners say that local results are based mainly on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. Google combines them to find the best match for a search. It does not publish how they are weighted, and it says a business that is farther away may be ranked higher than a closer one if it is more likely to have what the searcher wants.
These three factors decide which businesses appear in the map section of the results, often called the local pack, and in Google Maps. They work alongside your Google Business Profile, the free listing Google shows for a business with its address, hours, photos and reviews, which lesson 7.2, Set up and complete your business profile, covers in detail.
Relevance is how well a business profile matches what someone is searching for. Google says that adding complete and detailed business information helps it understand your business and match your profile to relevant searches.
This is where most small businesses lose out without knowing it. Wei Ming's profile, set up years ago by a nephew, listed his stall in the general category "Restaurant" with no description, no menu and only one photo. When someone searched for chicken rice, Google had little on his profile to connect it to that search. The other stall had a specific category, a menu listing its dishes and dozens of photos of its chicken rice.
Relevance is fully within your control. Choosing the right categories, filling in every field that applies and keeping the details accurate all make your profile a clearer match for the searches your customers use.
Distance is how far each possible result is from the location used in the search. If the searcher names a place, such as "chicken rice Toa Payoh", Google uses that place. If they do not, Google calculates distance from what it knows about their location.
You cannot change distance. Wei Ming's stall is where it is. A customer at Bishan MRT searching "chicken rice near me" is closer to other stalls, and that is simply how it works. This is worth accepting early, because it explains part of why a competitor can outrank you on a particular search, and no amount of profile work changes it.
What you can do is make sure Google knows exactly where you are. The address and the pin on the map must be accurate. For a stall in a hawker centre, that includes the unit number, so customers can find the stall once they arrive.
Prominence is how well known a business is. Google says some places are more prominent in the offline world, such as famous landmarks or well-known brands, and that its results try to reflect this. Prominence is also based on information Google has about a business from across the web, such as links, articles and directories.
Google lists reviews as part of prominence too: the count of reviews and the ratings can improve a business's local ranking. And it says that a business's position in web results, the ordinary results you have worked on in earlier modules, is also a factor. So the work you did on your website, content and links in modules 3 to 6 feeds into your local visibility as well.
Google is explicit about one more point: there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Ads can appear in Maps and the local pack, but they are labelled as sponsored. Anyone offering to buy you a higher organic position on the map is offering something Google says does not exist.
Local results depend heavily on where the searcher is, so check from where your customers are. Take your phone, stand somewhere your customers would be, or near your business, and search your main service plus your area in Google Maps. Look at the top three results. What categories do they use? What is their rating and how many reviews do they have? How complete do their profiles look, with photos, hours and menus or services?
When Wei Ming's nephew did this from the office blocks near the hawker centre, the top three all had a specific category, more than a hundred reviews each and recent photos. Wei Ming's stall had a general category, a handful of reviews and one photo from years ago. Distance was not the problem. The profile was.
The activity below asks you to run the same search and record those details for the top three results.
Search your main service plus your area on Google Maps from a phone and note the top three results, their categories, ratings and review counts.
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