Local ranking factors are the signals that decide which businesses appear, and in what order, in Google's local pack and Google Maps. Google describes three main groups: relevance, distance and prominence. Beyond that, specific factors are inferred by practitioners through testing and surveys, and should be treated as informed opinion rather than confirmed fact.
Google's three groups
Relevance is how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for, influenced by categories, description and services. Distance is how far each result is from the searcher's location or the location in the query. Prominence is how well known a business is, based on information from across the web, including links, articles, directories and reviews. Google says review count and score factor into local ranking.
Factors practitioners commonly cite
These come from industry experience. Their relative weight is not published by Google.
- Primary category choice on the Business Profile
- Proximity of the business to the searcher
- Review quantity, rating, recency and responses
- Keywords in the business's actual name
- Quality and relevance of the linked website
- Consistent citations across directories
What you cannot change
Distance is fixed by where the business is. A business at the edge of a city will struggle to show for searchers on the other side, and no profile tweak changes that. Google also says that paying for ads does not affect local organic ranking.
Example
Auditing a client's local presence
Hypothetical marketing platform Footlane offers a local audit to its customers. The audit checks primary category, profile completeness, review volume and responses compared with nearby competitors, and citation consistency, then explains which items the customer can change and which, like distance, they cannot.
Common mistakes
Treating surveys as confirmed signals
Ranking factor surveys reflect expert opinion. Test changes and measure, rather than assuming.
Adding keywords to the name
Name keywords may correlate with rankings, but adding them when they are not the real name breaks the guidelines.
Questions
Google says high review counts and positive ratings can improve local ranking, as part of prominence.
