Why a Competitor Shows Up in the Map Pack and You Don't

Google says local results are based mainly on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. When a competitor shows up in the map pack and you don't, one or more of those is working in their favor. They may be closer to the person searching, their profile and website may match the search more closely, or more of the web may know about them. You can't move the searcher, so the other two are where your time goes.

Google's help page on local ranking is short and worth reading once. In its current wording, relevance is how well a Business Profile matches what someone searched for, distance is how far the business is from the person searching, and prominence is how well known the business is. The page says prominence is based partly on how many websites link to a business and how many reviews it has, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help. Google edits these pages, so check the current version rather than trusting anyone's summary, this one included.

The rest of this post takes one invented example and walks it through all three.

The setup

Say you run a three-van plumbing company we'll call Fieldstone Plumbing, with a shop off Hull Street Road in Chesterfield. A competitor we'll call Copper Kettle Plumbing works out of a building in the West End. Both businesses are made up for this example, and so are all the numbers below.

A homeowner in the Fan finds water on the basement floor under her water heater. She picks up her phone and types "water heater replacement". The map pack shows three plumbers. Copper Kettle is one of them. Fieldstone isn't, even though water heaters are half of what your vans do.

Distance: the part you can't change

The Fan is north of the James. Your shop is south of it, in the county. Copper Kettle is closer to where her phone says she is.

Google's page currently says that when a searcher doesn't share their location, Google uses what it knows about it. Her search named no place, so where she is standing does the work. If she had typed "water heater replacement Chesterfield", she would be asking a different question and would likely see a different set of businesses.

Two practical points follow.

• Searching from your own office tells you very little. You're standing next to your own pin, so you'll look better placed than you are. The pack she sees in the Fan is not the pack you see off Hull Street Road.
• You can't fix distance with an address trick. If anyone suggests renting a mailbox or a virtual office across the river to get a second pin, read the current version of Google's guidelines for representing a business first, since they set out which addresses a profile may use. A suspended profile drops out of the map pack everywhere, including next to your real shop. The same trap catches home-based owners, and hiding your address without disappearing from the map covers the setup Google does accept.

What you can do is look at results from where your customers are. When you're on a job in Church Hill, Bon Air or Midlothian, search your three main services on your phone and take a screenshot. Do it for a month. You'll end up with an honest map of where you show up, which is more useful than a single ranking number from anyone's tool.

Relevance: what you tell Google you do

Now compare what each business says about itself.

Copper Kettle's profile uses "Plumber" as its primary category. Its services section lists "Water heater installation", "Water heater repair" and "Tankless water heaters". Its website has a page about water heater replacement with photos of real installs, the brands it works on and the parts of town it covers. Its profile description mentions water heaters in an ordinary sentence.

Fieldstone's profile also says "Plumber", but the services section is empty. The website has one Services page with fourteen bullet points and no detail on any of them. "Water heaters" is bullet nine.

When she searches "water heater replacement", Copper Kettle has said it in three places. Fieldstone has said it once, in a list.

Here's what Fieldstone could fix this week, and what you can check on your own profile:

1. Primary category. Pick the most specific category that matches your main line of work. Business Profile lets you add further categories for other real services; use them only for work you actually do.
2. Services. Fill in the services section with the jobs people search for, in their words ("water heater replacement", "sewer line repair"), not internal job codes.
3. Description. Write two or three plain sentences about the work and the areas you cover.
4. Website pages. Give each main service its own page that says what's included, which areas you cover and how to book, with photos of real jobs.

One thing not to do: add keywords to the business name on your profile. "Fieldstone Plumbing Richmond Water Heaters" breaks Google's guidelines and can get the profile suspended. Use the name on your sign and your paperwork. If an agency suggests the change, treat it as one of the red-flag rows on a worksheet for comparing SEO proposals.

Prominence: how well known you are

Prominence moves slowest. In the example, Copper Kettle has about 140 reviews, with a few new ones every month, and many of them mention water heaters because that's what the customer had done. Fieldstone has 22, most of them from two years ago, when someone in the office asked everyone for a few weeks and then stopped.

Copper Kettle also turns up in more places around the web: a supplier's dealer page links to it, a youth league lists it as a sponsor, and its name and address match on every directory that lists it. Fieldstone's listings still show the old address from before the move to Hull Street Road, on some sites with a different spelling of the name.

What Fieldstone can change, and what you can work on:

• Reviews. Ask every customer, the same way, soon after the job: a short message with the invoice and a direct link. Asking only the customers you expect to be happy (review gating) and offering discounts or gifts for reviews both break Google's review policies, and fake reviews are prohibited. A plain, steady request keeps you inside the rules and keeps reviews arriving every month instead of in a burst.
• Listings. Search your business name with every old address and spelling you've used. Correct the listings you find, starting with the large directories and the ones for your trade.
• Links and mentions. Start with connections that already exist: the supplier whose dealer locator could list you, the event you sponsor, the trade association you pay dues to. Ask each one for a link to your site. It's slow work, and each link is one conversation.

What a fair timeline looks like

The profile and page fixes are the quick part: an afternoon for the categories, services and description, a few weeks to write proper service pages. Reviews and links build one at a time over months, and how far they move you depends on how strong the businesses around you already are. If the vans need calls before then, splitting a small budget between SEO and Google Ads shows one way to cover the gap while the slow work builds.

Distance never changes. From the Fan, Copper Kettle may keep that spot for "water heater replacement" for a long time. A realistic goal for Fieldstone is to show up for searches made closer to its shop, for searches that name Chesterfield and the communities it serves, and for the specific services it has now described properly. That is how a single-location business covers its own part of the metro, and it's the core of our local SEO work for Richmond-area businesses: the profile, the listings, the reviews and the links, worked on together.

If you want a second pair of eyes

Send your business name and your main service through the free SEO snapshot. We'll look at your profile and site for that search and tell you by email which of the three you'd work on first.