How to Rank Higher on Google Maps: What Google Says Actually Matters

Most advice about ranking on Google Maps is somebody's opinion of an algorithm nobody outside Google can see. Google does publish a short description of how local ranking works, though, and it is more useful than its length suggests, because it tells you which levers exist at all.

This guide works through that description one factor at a time, adds the parts of Google's Business Profile guidelines and review policy that most often trip businesses up, and ends with the order to do things in. Where Google's pages say nothing, this guide says nothing either, rather than filling the gap with a number nobody can check.

Google's help page on local ranking says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity, and then defines them under three headings: relevance, distance and prominence. Prominence and popularity describe the same idea here: how well known a business is.

The same page states, as an important note, that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google. Ads can put a business above the results, labelled as sponsored, but they do not move its position in the results themselves. Anyone selling a guaranteed Maps position is selling something Google says does not exist.

Relevance is the factor most within your control, because Google can only match your profile to a search using what the profile says. Google's advice is to provide complete and detailed business information, and it warns that a profile with inaccurate information might not show up for relevant searches in your area.

The category does more work than anything else on the profile, because it is how Google knows what kind of business you are. Google's guidelines ask you to use as few categories as possible, chosen from its list, and to make them as specific as possible while still representing your main business. A specific category that describes you exactly beats a broad one plus several loosely related extras.

Then fill in the rest: your full address if customers visit you, your opening hours including special hours for holidays, and the attributes Google offers for your kind of business, such as parking or Wi-Fi. Verify the profile, too. Google says verification tells it you are authorised to represent the business, which makes the profile more likely to show up.

Distance is how far your business is from the person searching. If they have not shared their location, Google uses what it knows about it. Nothing on your profile changes this, and it is the main reason two people searching the same words see different results.

It is also why checking your own ranking from your own premises is misleading. You are, by definition, as close to your business as anyone will ever be. A customer across town sees a different list. If you want a sense of how you appear elsewhere, ask someone in a different part of your area to search, rather than drawing conclusions from your own phone.

Two rules from Google's guidelines sit next to distance and catch businesses out. A service-area business, one that visits its customers rather than receiving them, should hide its address. And a virtual office, or a mailbox somewhere you do not actually operate, is not eligible for a Business Profile, so registering one to appear closer to more customers risks the profile itself.

Prominence is how well known a business is, and Google says prominent places are more likely to show up. It names two inputs directly: how many websites link to your business, and how many reviews you have. It also says more reviews and positive ratings can help a business's local ranking.

That makes reviews the part of prominence you can work on every week. Google's own advice is to remind customers to leave a review, using a link or QR code it generates for you, and to reply to reviews, because replies show customers their feedback matters. It also says a mix of positive and negative reviews often feels more trustworthy, so a few critical reviews with a calm reply are not the disaster they feel like.

Links are the slower half. A link from your local chamber of commerce, a supplier, a local newspaper or an event you sponsored is a website that knows your business exists, which is exactly what prominence describes. None of them can be bought in a way that helps.

Google's policy on fake engagement is strict and specific, and breaking it is how businesses lose reviews or face restrictions on their profile. The rule that surprises people most is that asking only happy customers is itself a violation: Google does not allow merchants to selectively solicit positive reviews, or to discourage negative ones.

Incentives are prohibited outright. Google lists payment, discounts and free goods or services offered in exchange for posting a review, changing one or removing a negative one, and its review tips page describes such incentives as fake and misleading content.

Your website feeds Maps ranking in one documented way: other websites linking to it is part of prominence. It is also where a large share of profile visitors go next, because a Maps listing is a short summary and the website is where someone decides whether to call.

Showing your Google reviews on that website is worth doing for the second reason, not the first. Google's ranking page says nothing about reviews displayed on your own site, so a reviews widget does not move your Maps position. What it does is show a visitor who arrived from somewhere else, a search result or a recommendation, the same evidence the Maps listing shows.