Chapter 3: How Google Determines Local Results

3.1 Google's Three Main Local Factors

We now know that Google can obtain information about a local business from several different sources.

The next question is what Google does with that information.

When somebody searches for a local business, how does Google decide which businesses to show?

Google gives us a clear starting point.

Its current local ranking guidance says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity. On the same page, Google explains the third factor under the heading Prominence, which it defines as how well known a business is.[1]

The wording is slightly inconsistent, so throughout this book I will use Google's explanatory term prominence.

That leaves us with three broad questions:

• How well does this business match what the customer is searching for?
• How far is the business from the customer?
• How well known is the business?

Those three factors are fundamental to understanding local visibility.

Google says relevance is how well a Business Profile matches what somebody is searching for. It recommends complete and detailed business information to help Google understand the business and match it to relevant searches.[1]

Distance is more literal. Google says it refers to how far each business is from the customer who is searching. If the customer does not share their location, Google uses what it knows about that location instead.[1]

Prominence is how well known the business is. Google points to information such as links from other websites, review volume and review ratings, and explicitly says more reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking.[1]

The important word is together.

Google says these factors work together to help it find the best match for the customer's search.[1]

A slightly farther-away business may be the better match. A prominent restaurant still has to be relevant to the search, and a perfectly relevant business still operates inside a local system where geography matters.

So rather than imagining one secret score, think of Google trying to answer three questions:

Does this business match what the customer wants?

How far away is it?

How well known is it?

That is our factual starting point.

Google's published guidance gives us the three factors we need to understand: relevance, distance and prominence.[1]

3.2 Relevance: Does the Business Match the Search?

At first, relevance sounds simple.

Someone searches for a plumber.

Google looks for plumbers.

Someone searches for an Italian restaurant.

Google looks for Italian restaurants.

But customers do not always search for the business category itself.

A plumber might provide emergency plumbing, leak repairs, tap repairs, bathroom installations or central heating work.

The business is still a plumber.

The customer's need can be described in several different ways.

Google therefore needs enough accurate information to understand when that business is relevant to a particular search.

That is one reason Profile Completeness matters.

Completing the relevant Business Profile information helps Google understand the real business.

The business category is an obvious example. Google's guidelines say businesses should choose the category that best describes the core business and use as few categories as possible to describe it accurately.[2]

The objective is to tell Google what the business genuinely is.

The rest of the profile adds detail.

Services.

Opening hours.

Location information.

Attributes.

Products where applicable.

Other relevant fields available to that type of business.

Google gives a useful example in its explanation of local business information. It says a hair salon might appear for searches such as "salons near me" or "salons open now" because information including its address and opening hours has been supplied.[3]

Those two searches require different pieces of information.

"Salons near me" depends partly on location.

"Salons open now" depends partly on opening hours.

The business is the same.

The information that makes it a useful result changes with the search.

That gives us a better way to think about relevance.

What is the business?

What does it genuinely offer?

Where is it?

When is it available?

Which attributes actually apply?

The clearer and more complete those answers are, the easier it is for Google to understand what the Business Profile represents.

Relevance is one part of local search. Geography is another.

3.3 Distance: Where the Search Happens

Distance is the main reason I dislike asking where a local business "ranks" without any further context.

The obvious next question is:

From where?

Google says distance refers to how far each business is from the customer who is searching. If the customer does not share their location, Google uses what it knows about that location instead.[1]

Imagine a plumber based in the centre of a town.

One potential customer searches from half a mile away.

Another makes the same search from three miles away.

A third searches from seven miles away.

The business has not changed.

Its category has not changed.

Its services have not changed.

Its reviews have not changed.

The relationship between the searcher and the business has.

That gives a local business a pattern of visibility rather than one permanent ranking position.

The pattern can also vary by direction because the competitive environment changes around the business.

This becomes particularly important for service-area businesses.

A plumber may be happy to travel ten miles. A locksmith may cover a whole town and the surrounding villages. A cleaning company may serve several neighbouring areas.

Google allows eligible service-area and hybrid businesses to specify the areas they serve.[4]

A service area tells customers where the business serves them. The business still operates from its genuine location or operational base, so listing surrounding towns as service areas does not create additional physical locations.

Later, when we measure local visibility, we will look at the same search from multiple geographic points. That allows us to see where a business is more visible and where it is less visible.

We are observing what happens to visibility as distance changes.

That gives us a clear management boundary. We can improve information and clarity, build genuine reviews and reputation, and manage the website and profile properly.

Geography remains geography.

3.4 Prominence: How Well Known Is the Business?

Google defines prominence as how well known a business is.[1]

Some places are prominent in the real world before Google gets involved.

A famous museum.

A landmark hotel.

A well-known store.

For local businesses, Google says prominence is also based on information such as how many websites link to a business and how many reviews it has. It explicitly says more reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking.[1]

That gives us one of the clearest direct connections between Google's published guidance and the GBP Loop.

Praise matters.

Reviews matter to potential customers because they describe other people's experiences.

And Google tells us review quantity and positive ratings can help local ranking.

That is unusually clear.

Google says reviews and other contributions must reflect genuine experiences, and prohibits incentives in exchange for posting a review, changing one or removing a negative review.[5][6]

Our job is to build a legitimate process that gives genuine customers the opportunity to leave genuine feedback.

Website links sit on the prominence side too.[1]

That reinforces something we established in the previous chapter.

The business also has a website, may be referenced and linked to by other websites, and has a reputation that extends beyond Google Maps.

Prominence is about how well known the business is, and Google identifies links, review volume and review ratings as part of that picture.[1]

3.5 The Factors Work Together

Understanding relevance, distance and prominence separately is useful.

Understanding that they interact is more important.

Imagine somebody searches for an Italian restaurant and three businesses could plausibly satisfy the search.

One is extremely close but appears to be a weaker match.

Another is slightly farther away but is clearly identified as an Italian restaurant.

A third is farther away again but is particularly well known and has a strong reputation.

Which one should appear first?

Google says the factors work together, so the answer comes from their combination rather than any one factor alone.[1]

That tells us something important.

Local search is a matching system. Distance, relevance and prominence all contribute to the match.

Google has information about what the customer appears to want.

It has information about where that customer is.

It has information about businesses that might satisfy the search.

Then Google decides which results it considers the best match.

This is why two apparently similar businesses can have very different visibility.

They may be physically close to each other but understood differently.

Their categories may differ.

Their services may differ.

Their websites may explain the businesses differently.

Their review profiles may differ.

Their wider prominence may differ.

Then move the customer somewhere else and distance changes too.

The relationship between the search and the businesses changes even when the businesses themselves have not.

Our job is to improve the parts we can legitimately influence. Google determines the result.

3.6 Local Visibility Changes by Search and Location

Ask a local business owner where they rank on Google and you may hear:

"We're number three."

That answer needs two more pieces of information.

Number three for what?

And:

Number three from where?

Change the search and relevance can change.

A plumber may appear differently for "plumber", "emergency plumber", "boiler repair" and "leak repair".

The business has not changed.

The search has.

Then keep the search the same and change the location.

At one point in town the business might appear near the top.

Move two miles away and the result can change.

Move another three miles and it can change again.

Now the search has stayed the same.

The customer's location has changed.

One manual ranking check therefore gives us one observation: one search, one location, one moment.

Imagine placing a grid over the useful area around the business and running the same search from several points.

The business may be highly visible close to its location.

Less visible farther away.

Stronger in one direction than another.

Absent from the range we are measuring in some places.

Put those results together and we have a visibility pattern.

Now repeat the scan for another genuinely relevant search.

The pattern may change again.

The more useful question is:

"Where are we visible, and for what?"

That question gives us something we can actually manage and measure over time.

3.7 What the Business Can Influence

Once we understand the three factors, it becomes easier to separate influence from control.

Start with distance.

The business has a real location or operational base.

If customers visit it there, that location should be represented accurately.

If it is an eligible service-area business, the profile can show the areas the business serves rather than a customer-facing address.[4]

Service areas should represent where the business genuinely serves customers, while the business's real location or operational base remains part of the geographic relationship with the searcher.

Google's guidelines require businesses to represent their real-world operation accurately and place restrictions on virtual offices and other ineligible locations.[2]

We understand distance and work within it.

Relevance gives us more direct management work.

Google recommends complete and detailed business information so it can better understand the business and match it to relevant searches.[1]

We can choose the correct category.

We can add genuinely relevant additional categories.

We can provide accurate services.

We can complete relevant fields.

We can make sure the official website clearly explains what the business does.

We can keep all of that current.

Our influence over relevance comes from accurate representation. The categories, services, business name and other information should describe the business that genuinely exists.[2]

Prominence gives us work too.

A business can build a legitimate review process.

It can respond to reviews.

It can build a useful website.

It can become better known in the market it genuinely serves.

It can earn legitimate mentions and links.

Our job is to concentrate on the quality of the business information, reputation and management work we can legitimately influence. Google determines the local results.

3.8 What Matters

Google gives us a practical foundation for managing local visibility.

Relevance, distance and prominence matter.

Complete and accurate information helps Google understand the business, and Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help local ranking.[1]

Those published principles give us the basis for the GBP Loop. We organise the work Google gives us to manage, then measure what happens.

The GBP Loop is our management framework.

Google determines the results.

3.9 From Ranking to Bigger Local Visibility

We can now define the objective more precisely.

A ranking position needs search and location context.

A business can be number one for one search and number seven for another.

It can be highly visible close to its location and much weaker farther away.

So throughout this book, I use the broader term local visibility.

By local visibility, I mean the extent to which a business can be found by relevant potential customers across the geographic area that matters to that business.

A ranking is a position.

Visibility is a picture.

Imagine a business in the centre of a map.

Now imagine the same relevant search taking place from several points around it.

At some points, the business appears prominently.

At others, it appears lower down.

Farther away, it may not appear within the range we are measuring at all.

Put those observations together and we start to see the business's local visibility.

Then repeat the process for another search.

The pattern may be different.

That is why visibility needs both geographic and search context.

Google's own Business Profile Performance data gives us another view. For verified profiles, Google provides information about how people discover and interact with the Business Profile across Search and Maps. Depending on the business, this can include search terms, views, calls, website clicks, direction requests and bookings.[7]

Geographic rank tracking answers a different question.

It lets us observe how the business appears for selected searches from different points around the area.

Together, those measurements give us a broader view of local visibility.

This is why we built Rank Tracker and Rank Replay into GBPly.

Its Rank Tracker scans a selected Google Maps search across multiple points on a geographic grid. Repeated comparable scans build history, and Rank Replay can then play that ranking pattern back over time.[8]

The software measures that visibility pattern across the selected area.

If a business later appears prominently across more of the useful surrounding area, we can observe that change and compare it with the management work and other changes that happened during the same period.

So the relationship stays simple:

Manage. Measure. Repeat.

The GBP Loop organises the management work.

Google determines the local results.

Measurement tells us what happened.

That is what I mean by Bigger Local Visibility.

It means creating more opportunities for the right business to be found by the right potential customers, for relevant searches, across more of the realistic area in which that business can compete and serve people.

The objective follows the real business. If it is already visible across the realistic market it serves, the job may simply be to maintain what is working.

We manage the business accurately, improve what we can legitimately influence and measure the result over time.

We now understand the environment in which the GBP Loop has to operate.

We know the main factors Google tells us about, how visibility changes by search and location, what the business can influence and what Bigger Local Visibility actually means.

Now we can look properly at the management framework designed to pursue it.

Notes

1. Google Business Profile Help, “Tips to improve your local ranking on Google”, https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091?hl=en-GB. Checked 3 September 2026.
2. Google Business Profile Help, “Guidelines for representing your business on Google”, https://support.google.com/business/answer/3038177?hl=en-GB. Checked 3 September 2026.
3. Google Business Profile Help, “Understand how Google sources & uses info in Business Profiles & local search results”, https://support.google.com/business/answer/2721884?hl=en-GB. Checked 3 September 2026.
4. Google Business Profile Help, “Manage your service areas for service-area and hybrid businesses”, https://support.google.com/business/answer/9157481?hl=en. Checked 3 September 2026.
5. Google Business Profile Help, “Create a Google link or QR code to request reviews”, https://support.google.com/business/answer/16816815?hl=en-GB. Checked 3 September 2026.
6. Google Business Profile Help, “Tips to get more reviews”, https://support.google.com/business/answer/3474122?hl=en. Checked 3 September 2026.
7. Google Business Profile Help, “Understand your Business Profile performance and insights”, https://support.google.com/business/answer/9918094?hl=en. Checked 3 September 2026.
8. GBPly User Guide, “Keyword Rank Tracker”, https://gbply.net/user-guide/rank-tracker. Checked 3 September 2026.