What actually decides your position in local results
Relevance, distance and prominence — three pillars you influence to very different degrees.
Google describes local ranking with three factors: relevance, distance and prominence. Two of them you can improve this week; the third takes months. It pays to know which is which before you spend the time.
Relevance: the cheapest to fix
Relevance is how well the profile matches the query. You improve it with categories, the service list and the description — fields you fully control. It is the only one of the three you can shift in a single afternoon. a complete listing.
You cannot out-run distance
Distance from the searcher is a given and cannot be optimised. You can widen the service area, but for someone across town you will still lose to the business around their corner. That is why the work goes into relevance and prominence. working with reviews.
Prominence: slowest and most durable
Prominence is built from the number and quality of reviews, mentions across the web and consistent business data in directories. It is months of work, but the effect does not vanish with one algorithm update.
Two factors are in your hands, one is not. The whole craft is not confusing them.
Frequently asked
- Can I rank a listing outside my own city?
- Not directly. You can widen the service area, but distance from the searcher remains a factor.
Sources
Redakcja YesOpen
Editorial team
We write about local business visibility in Google, based on what we see in customer audits.
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