Google Maps ranking radius: why your visibility changes street by street

There is no single Google Maps ranking radius around a business. Your position changes with the searcher's location, the phrase they use and the businesses Google considers relevant at that point.

That matters because a number such as “we rank second on Google Maps” can be true outside your office and useless three streets away. The business question is not how large your theoretical circle is. It is whether you appear where valuable customers search.

A local business has a visibility pattern across a market, not one Maps ranking and not one fixed radius.

What the 480-grid study actually measured

I collected 25 fixed search points for each of 480 industry and city combinations across Australia and New Zealand. Each point was 2 km from the next, creating 12,000 search locations across 20 industries and 24 cities.

For businesses that reached the top three somewhere on a grid, the analysis recorded the furthest sampled point where they did so. That measure is useful for comparing markets, but it is not a clean boundary. It excludes businesses that never reached the top three and it can miss changes between the 2 km sample points.

• Within 1 km of a business address, 32.0% of recorded appearances were in the top three.
• At 1 to 2 km, 18.5% of recorded appearances were in the top three.
• Beyond 8 km, 8.1% of recorded appearances were in the top three.
• Even within 1 km, 67% of recorded business appearances were outside the top three.

Why proximity helps without guaranteeing a ranking

Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence. Distance is therefore part of the system, but it does not act alone. A nearby business can still lose to another business that is a better match or has stronger prominence signals.

The study makes that visible. Being close improved the odds among businesses Google returned, yet most appearances within 1 km still missed the top three. Moving an address closer is not the only answer, and repeating suburb names on a page does not remove geography.

Why a national industry radius is the wrong benchmark

The same industry behaved differently across markets. Across all 20 industries, the median furthest sampled top-three point was 1.35 km in the 12-location core panel and 2.32 km in the 12-location extension panel. The extension panel returned fewer different businesses for every industry.

• For plumbers, the two panel medians were 2.34 km and 4.91 km.
• For dentists, they were 0.80 km and 2.06 km.
• For psychologists, they were 0.67 km and 1.44 km.
• For real estate agencies, they were 0.67 km and 1.99 km.

Those are sample comparisons, not recommended service areas. They show that the market around a business can matter more than a broad industry average.

What “more competition” means in this study

The study counted the different businesses Google returned across all 25 points on each grid. The median grid returned 65 businesses, and about 20 reached the top three anywhere.

Where Google rotated through more businesses, top-three winners tended to cover less sampled ground. The relationship was negative inside all 20 industries. This is descriptive evidence, not proof that adding one competitor mechanically shrinks another business's territory. The measure captures the result set Google produced, not every operator in the city.

How to measure your own Google Maps visibility

1. Choose three to five non-branded searches that produce valuable enquiries.
2. Place fixed grid points across the suburbs or neighbourhoods that matter commercially.
3. Use the same search phrase, device assumptions and points every time.
4. Report the percentage of important points in the top three, top ten and not returned.
5. Overlay the map with qualified leads, bookings or sales by area.
6. Investigate persistent weak zones rather than chasing a city-wide average.

The local rank grid guide explains how to build and read that map. If you are reporting performance, what counts as a good Google Maps ranking explains the business metrics to use.

What not to conclude

• Do not turn a sampled furthest point into a perfect circle.
• Do not calculate how many branches can cover a city from these medians.
• Do not assume setting a larger service area in your profile expands the ranking footprint.
• Do not use an industry benchmark to promise visibility for one business.
• Do not judge the result from a single search at the business address.

The practical answer

Your Google Maps ranking radius is not a setting or a universal number. It is an uneven visibility pattern created by location, relevance, prominence and the local result set. Measure that pattern where customers search, then improve the parts of the market that produce worthwhile work.