See where you show up across your area

Search for your business from behind your own counter, and you’ll probably look great. Now drive fifteen minutes away and search again. You might be sixth. Or not there at all.

In this lesson, you’ll see where you really show up across your area, and how to read it without fooling yourself.

Remember the three things Google weighs: relevance, distance and prominence. Distance is the one that changes as people move. Google says distance is how far each business is from the customer who’s searching. And if they don’t share where they are, Google uses what it knows about their location.

In fact, Google says it always estimates the general area you’re searching from. It might use your phone’s location, your internet connection, or places like home and work. You can see which one it used at the very bottom of the results page.

Time matters too. Google says time may be one of the biggest reasons results differ between people. And local search experts rank being open at the time of the search fifth of 187 factors for the map results. So a search at nine on a Sunday evening can look different from the same search on a Tuesday morning.

So there’s no single position on Google. There’s a position for this search, from this spot, at this time.

Here’s the free way. Take your three to five priority searches from Lesson 1.3. Then pick three places where your customers are: one near you, one in the middle of your area, and one near the edge.

Now search from each place, on a phone, in a private window. Check the location at the bottom of the results page, so you know where Google thinks you are. Write down your position in the map results. If you’re not in the first three, tap “more places” and count down. Past twenty, just write “not found”.

You don’t have to drive everywhere. If you’re a plumber or a cleaner, search when you’re at a job across town. Or ask a member of staff, a friend or a relative who lives there to search, and send you a screenshot with the bottom of the page showing.

One honest warning. Typing “hair salon Headingley” from your sofa is a useful check for that search. But it isn’t the same as someone standing in Headingley, searching “hair salon near me”. Write down which kind of search you did.

And try to search on the same day and at the same time each month, so you’re comparing like with like.

A rank grid, sometimes called a geogrid or a rank map, does the same check at many points at once. It runs your search as if from dozens of spots across your area, and colours each one. Many use green for the top three, orange for four to ten, and red for eleven and below.

It’s a great way to see a pattern. Maybe you’re strong around your base, and weak to the east. Maybe there’s one suburb where the same competitor always beats you.

But be honest about what it is. It’s a snapshot, from fixed points, at one moment. It isn’t what every person sees, because results also change with time, device and personal history. It usually checks the map results only, not your website in the normal results. And a green dot isn’t a customer. Your calls and bookings are.

So read the patterns, not single dots. One red dot among green is noise. A whole side of town in red is a pattern worth working on.

To track it over time, keep everything the same: the same searches, the same places or grid points, and roughly the same day and time. Check once a month, write your positions in the rank notes on W14, and note what you changed that month. Keep your screenshots in one folder, named with the date and the place, so you can compare them later.

If you see a drop, don’t panic, and don’t change five things at once. First check it’s real: are your calls and direction requests down too? Then work through the checklist in the next lesson.

A rules check, because red dots make people desperate. You can’t pay Google for a better map position. Google says: “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.”

And don’t try to fake your way closer. An extra profile in another town, or an address you don’t really work from, breaks Google’s guidelines. Google says there should only be one profile per business. The honest way to win more of the map is relevance and prominence: the right categories and services, genuine reviews, and a website that backs you up.

A quick country note. Choose your check points the way your customers think about places: ZIP codes and neighbourhoods in the US, postcodes and towns in the UK, and suburbs in Australia. And if you travel to your customers, do the same check across your service area.

Let’s recap. One: your position changes with where and when someone searches, so there’s no single ranking. Two: check three places, or use a rank grid, and read the patterns, not single dots. Three: keep your searches, places and timing the same every month, and judge your progress by calls, not colours.

Your task: record your baseline. Your three to five priority searches, from at least three places, written into W14. In the next lesson, we’ll cover what to do when something goes wrong.

If you’d like to see the whole grid for your main search, our free audit includes a rank map across your area. It’s optional, and this lesson works without it.