why your Google rank changes from one street to the next

The first place spot you saw on your own phone is real, and it is also only true from where you were standing.

Hi,

An owner searches his own business from the shop. He is first on the map. He tells me he is ranking fine and asks why the phone is quiet.

Then I run the same search from a spot across town, and he is not on the first page of the map. Both results are true. That is the lesson today: there is no such thing as your Google Maps rank. There is your rank from a spot, and Google draws a new map for every spot.

Here is why. One of the three things Google ranks local results on is distance, meaning the distance from the person searching to each business. When you search from your own counter, you are the closest business in the world to that search, and distance carries you to the top. Walk a few blocks and now a few competitors are closer than you, and distance carries them instead. Your relevance and your reviews have not changed. The person moved.

Most of your customers are not standing in your shop when they search. They are at home, at work, in the car, spread across the town and the towns next to it. So the number that matters is not where you rank from your address. It is where you rank from where the customers are.

Picture a plumber in Newton. From his own street he is first. From Newton Centre, a few minutes away, he drops out of the top three, because a competitor sits closer to the centre. From Waban he is not on the map at all. He thinks he is ranking. In fact he is winning a small circle around his own building and losing the rest of the town, which is where the leaks are.

The fix is not to move. It is to be relevant and prominent enough that Google keeps you in the top three even when someone closer exists. A tighter category, services with descriptions, a website that names the town, reviews that keep arriving and mention the neighborhood. Every one of those widens the circle in which you win. The work is turning the map green one ring further out, and the ring closest to you turns first.

Two things follow from this. First, never trust a single screenshot, yours or anyone's. A phone showing your business in first place tells you where the phone was, nothing more. Second, if someone promises you the top spot, ask "from where". If they cannot answer, they have not measured anything.

The honest way to measure is a rank grid: the same search run from a grid of points across your area, on the same day, with your position at each point. I send one before any work starts and one every month after, from the same spots, so the change is visible. I will write about what the grid shows next time. The Google Maps ranking page explains how it fits into the plan if you want it now.

Tonight, search your main term from somewhere that is not your shop. Then you know what your customers see.

Talk soon,
Brandon

P.S. Want the 3 tips that get you started? They are in the newsletter: sign up here.

P.P.S. If you want me to do it for you, the plan is here: the plan.