Guide · Local search
How the map pack
actually gets decided.
The three businesses shown above the map take the overwhelming majority of local clicks. Getting there is a different job from ranking a website, and two of the three factors behind it are not things you can buy.
Published 2026-09-08 · Formory Group
Proximity: the one you cannot change.
Google shows results near the searcher. A business in Etobicoke will not appear for someone searching in Whitby, whatever the reviews say. This is why "rank number one in Toronto" is a meaningless promise — there is no single ranking, there is a ranking per location the search happens from.
What you can do is be honest about your radius, set your service area to match, and build pages for the places you genuinely serve rather than every place you would accept work from.
Prominence: reviews, mentions, and time.
Prominence is how well known the business appears to be — review count and rating, mentions across the web, and how long the listing has existed with consistent details. It is the slowest factor and the one most worth working on, because it compounds.
14,536 of the 49,994 listings we surveyed have no reviews at all. In a market where several competitors are in that position, twenty genuine reviews is a decisive advantage.
Relevance: the one most often left broken.
Relevance is whether Google understands that you do the thing being searched for. Primary category is the heaviest lever and most businesses pick it once, wrongly, and never revisit it. Services listed on the profile, the words on the linked website, and the categories together decide which searches you are even considered for.
11,566 of the 34,180 GTA sites we opened do not name their city in a single page title. The listing and the site are supposed to confirm each other; a site that never says where it works cannot.
What does not work.
Keyword-stuffing the business name — it is against policy and gets reported by competitors, often successfully. Fake addresses and virtual offices — the verification failure takes the listing down. Buying reviews. Building fifty thin pages for fifty postcodes, which is a doorway pattern and is treated as one.
Questions
Straight answers.
How often does the map pack change?
Constantly and per-searcher. Two people on the same street can see different orders. Track a trend over weeks, not a screenshot from this morning.
Do I need a physical address?
No. A service-area business hides the address and sets a coverage area instead. That is the correct configuration for trades and consultants, and it does not disadvantage you.
Can I rank in a city I do not have an address in?
Sometimes, through service area and genuine relevance, but proximity works against you. A page about that city helps only if it says something real about your work there.
Check yours
The same test,
on your address.
We do not guess and we do not send a report by email. Type the address, wait ten seconds, read what comes back. If your site is fine it will say so.
Worth a
conversation?
No pitch deck and no discovery call. Tell us the trade and the city, and we will say what we would do and what it costs.