guide · GOOGLE MAPS SEO

Yes, and it is a separate ranking from the blue links below it. That is the most useful thing to understand here, and almost nothing written about local search says it plainly.

When someone searches for a service near them, Google shows a small map with three businesses on it, then the ordinary results underneath. Two different rankings, two different sets of rules. You can hold the top of the map and be nowhere in the results, or rank first in the results and never appear on the map.

The map ranking is decided mostly by your Google Business Profile, the free listing with your hours, photos and reviews on it. The results ranking is decided mostly by your website. Any proposal that treats them as a single job is either careless or deliberately vague.

Google publishes what decides this, in its own words, and there are three factors. Everything a firm sells you is an attempt to move one of them.

Two profiles with the same address and the same category rank differently, and these are the reasons why. The last two are the ones that quietly undo work you already paid for.

Some fields on a Google Business Profile are safe for an owner to edit and some carry real risk, and nobody tells you which. Photos, posts, services, hours, your description and replying to reviews are all safe and all worth doing. The name, the address and the primary category are the careful ones: editing them can put the listing into review, and adding words to your name that are not on your signage can get it suspended.

Four moves, in the order that pays off soonest. Do the first one today, it is free and it takes an evening.

Fill the profile completely and honestly. Every category that genuinely applies, every service with a real description, real photos of your place taken recently, correct hours including holidays, and the booking link pointed at the right page. A profile at half fill is the most common finding in this work and the fastest to fix.

Ask for reviews continuously rather than in a burst. Recency counts, so a steady trickle beats a campaign, and replying to every one of them is a signal in itself.

Clean up the old listings. Every place your business appears with an old address, an old number or a misspelled name is working against you. This is dull, cheap work that most firms charge for and few finish.

Give the profile a real page to point at. If the profile says you do a service and your website has no page for it, the two do not reinforce each other.

One thing to expect. Google rejects edits routinely, sometimes with no explanation, and a change can revert days later. That is normal instead of a sign something went wrong, and it is a reason to keep a dated record of every change.