Google Maps ranking study: why one ranking never tells the whole story

If you check your Google Maps position from your office, you are seeing one customer's result from one spot. Move the search a kilometre and the order can change. Move it across the suburb and you may be competing with a different group of businesses.

I measured that change across 480 local search grids, covering 20 industries and 24 cities in Australia and New Zealand. The most useful conclusion is not a national ranking radius. It is that Google Maps visibility has to be measured across the market where customers actually search.

A local business does not have one Google Maps ranking. It has a different result from every part of the area it wants to serve.

The three findings that matter to a business owner

• Being nearby helped, but did not guarantee a visible position. Even when a business appeared within 1 km of its address, it was outside the top three 67% of the time.
• The competitive set changed across the map. The median grid returned 65 different businesses across its 25 search points, and only about 20 reached the top three anywhere.
• More reviews were linked with better positions in 17 of the 20 industries measured. The strength varied, and the result does not create a magic review target.

Finding 1: one rank check can hide most of the market

At each grid point, I recorded the businesses Google returned and their positions. Among those recorded appearances, 32% were in the top three when the search was within 1 km of the business address. That fell to 18.5% at 1 to 2 km and 8.1% beyond 8 km.

Those percentages are deliberately narrower than a claim about every local business. A business absent from the returned results is not in the denominator. The data says that even when Google showed a business, the quality of that appearance changed sharply with the searcher's location.

What an owner should do with that

• Choose the non-branded searches that actually produce valuable enquiries.
• Check them from fixed points across the suburbs or neighbourhoods that matter.
• Report top-three coverage and leads by area, not one position from the office.
• Keep the same grid and query when measuring change.

A local rank grid makes the geography visible. The goal is not to turn an arbitrarily large map green. It is to improve visibility in the places where the right customers search.

Finding 2: your real competitors change street by street

Across the typical 8 by 8 km grid, Google returned 65 different businesses. About 20 of them reached the top three at least once. That means the businesses you see beside your office are not necessarily the businesses a customer sees three suburbs away.

The number of different businesses returned across a grid had a strong inverse relationship with the top-three footprint. In grids where Google rotated through more businesses, each top-three winner tended to cover less ground. The direction was the same inside all 20 industries.

I am not calling that a causal competitor-density law. The measure counts businesses Google returned, not every operator in the city, and result turnover is part of what it captures. The defensible business conclusion is simpler: national industry averages are a poor substitute for measuring the actual local result set.

The same industry behaved differently in different markets

I compared the 12-location core panel with a 12-location extension panel that returned fewer different businesses for every industry. The median furthest top-three point was larger in the extension panel in 19 of 20 industries.

• Across all industries, the median was 1.35 km in the core panel and 2.32 km in the extension panel.
• For dentists, the panel medians were 0.80 km and 2.06 km.
• For plumbers, they were 2.34 km and 4.91 km.
• Mobile mechanic was the one industry that did not follow the pattern.

These are sample comparisons, not guaranteed radii. They show why “what is normal for my industry?” is usually the wrong first question. The better question is “what does Google show across my market?”

Finding 3: review count was linked with better positions in most industries

At each search point, I compared review count with position among the businesses Google returned. More reviews were associated with a better position in 17 of 20 industries. The relationship was strongest for plumbers, painters, vets and dentists. It was weaker for physios, car servicing, hairdressers and psychologists.

• Positive relationship: 17 industries
• Inconclusive: pest control and mobile mechanics
• Opposite direction in this sample: cafes

This supports keeping review growth as a serious part of local SEO for most businesses. It does not prove that reviews caused the position. Older, better-known businesses often have more reviews and other advantages, and the main published comparison did not fully remove the distance between each business and the searcher.

Average star rating was different. It had no consistent linear relationship with position across the 480 grids. That does not mean rating is unimportant. It can strongly affect which visible business a customer trusts and chooses, and this study did not measure conversion.

The detailed review results and limitations are in Do Google reviews help Map Pack rankings?.

What this study does not show

• It does not produce a universal ranking radius.
• It does not prove that adding one competitor shrinks another business's footprint.
• It does not establish an ideal distance between branches.
• It did not test whether changing the Google Business Profile service-area field changes rankings.
• It did not measure review recency, review text or review responses.
• It used one search per industry and one collection period, so it does not represent every service or season.

How the study was run

Each grid used 25 fixed search points spaced 2 km apart. The full frame combined 20 industries with 24 locations, producing 12,000 search locations. DataForSEO returned up to roughly 20 local results at each point, creating 231,907 recorded business appearances.

The honest sample size is 480 grids, not 231,907 independent tests. The same business can appear at several nearby points, and that repetition is the reason the study can observe how the result changes with location.

The “furthest top-three point” used in some charts is the furthest sampled point where a business achieved a top-three position, summarised across businesses that won somewhere. It is not a clean circle or a guaranteed boundary. Long-footprint industries also pressed against the grid edge, so their figures are likely lower bounds.

The practical conclusion

Use local ranking data as a map, not a trophy number. Measure the searches and areas that matter, identify the competitors customers actually see there, keep review growth moving, and connect visibility to calls, bookings and revenue. That is a decision system a local business can use. A city-wide rank checked from one desk is not.