How does Google decide which three businesses show in the map pack?
Short answer
Google says it chooses local results mainly on relevance (how well a profile matches the search), distance (how far the business is from the searcher or the place named) and prominence (how well known the business is). It doesn't publish how they are weighed, and it states that a better local ranking can't be bought.
Google says it chooses local results mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. That is Google’s own documented description, and it’s about as far as the documentation goes. Google doesn’t publish how much each factor counts, and nobody outside Google knows. It also states that there’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Most of what follows beyond those three words is what practitioners have learned by testing.
The three factors side by side
| Factor | What Google means by it | What you can change |
|---|---|---|
| Relevance | How well your profile matches what was searched | Category, services, accurate business details |
| Distance | How far you are from the searcher, or from the place named in the search | Nothing, short of moving |
| Prominence | How well known the business is | Reviews, your website, mentions and links from other sites |
Relevance: does your profile match the search?
Google judges whether your business does the thing being searched for, and it reads this mainly from your Google Business Profile. In practice the primary category carries the most influence here, which is observation and not a published rule. A company whose primary category is “Plumber” will struggle to appear for “water heater installation” against a company that has chosen a closer category and listed that service by name. Getting the categories and services right is how you work on this factor.
Distance: how far are you from this searcher?
The measurement runs from the person searching, or from the city they typed. Google says that when a search names no place, it works from what it knows about the searcher’s location. This is the one factor you can’t work on, and it’s why no business is “in the map pack” everywhere. A plumber in Vista and a plumber in National City can both be first, each for the searchers nearest to them.
The factor itself doesn’t tell you how far from your office you can rank, which is a separate question.
Prominence: how well known are you?
Google describes prominence, meaning how established it believes the business to be, as drawing on information from across the web, such as links, articles and directory listings. It says that the number of reviews and the rating are taken into account. It has also said that how a business ranks in the ordinary website results plays a part, which is why your website matters to a listing that never shows a web page.
It isn’t a simple count. A company with fewer reviews can outrank one with more if it’s closer or a better match, and that is why a competitor with fewer reviews outranks you on some searches.
What practitioners observe beyond the documentation
Google’s help pages don’t spell out some effects that show up in testing. I treat them as observations that can change:
- Businesses that are closed at the moment of the search tend to appear lower than they do during opening hours.
- Words in the business name appear to influence which searches a listing shows for. Adding keywords to a name that isn’t your real business name breaks Google’s rules and can get a profile suspended, so the only correct use of this is to make sure your real name is listed accurately.
- When several similar listings share an address or a building, Google often shows one and holds back the others.
Because the weights are unknown and the result is recalculated for every searcher, I don’t argue from theory about which factor is holding a business back. I measure positions across the service area, change one thing, and measure again. That’s the method behind my map pack ranking work.