You type “roofer Widnes” into your phone at work, see yourself in the top three, and relax. Then a customer in Warrington mentions they couldn’t find you anywhere. Google’s own help forum has plenty of owners asking why.
The answer is in Google’s help pages. One of the three things behind local results is distance: “how far each business is from the customer who’s searching.” So a check from your own premises is a check from the one spot where you’re guaranteed to look good.
This guide shows you how to check Google Maps rankings properly, for free: remove the personalisation, check from specific places, run a geo-grid scan across your area and read what it tells you. It covers the map ranking itself. Tracking the leads those rankings bring in is a separate job, and we’ll point you to it at the end.
Step 1: Decide Which Searches and Which Places You Need to Check
Five minutes with a notepad gives you two short lists that make every later check meaningful.
The searches. Pick three to five:
- Your main service plus your town, such as “emergency plumber St Helens”
- The same service without a town, as many people search on their phone. Google answers that from where they’re standing
- One secondary service that earns you good money
The two versions behave differently. Whitespark’s survey of 47 local search experts ranks “physical address in city of search” as the fourth biggest local pack factor. Search a town you’re not based in and you’re running an uphill check.
The places. Pick three to five spots where your customers are: your own postcode, the town you most want work from, and the edge of your realistic travel area. Say you run a Widnes pest control firm covering Runcorn, Warrington and St Helens: check from each.
Rank checks read public results, so note the two or three competitors who keep beating you.
If you only check one search, make it the service that pays best, without a town name, from the place you most want work.
Step 2: Strip Out the Personalisation Before You Search
Google admits in writing that your own searches aren’t neutral. It estimates your location from your device, the home and work addresses you’ve saved, areas you’ve searched for before and your IP address, which is “roughly based on geography”.
Results also differ by time, location, language, device, recent searches and, with personalisation on, search history. They can be customised even when you’re signed out. And you search for your own business constantly. Your customers don’t.
Before any manual check:
- Open a private or incognito browser window, signed out.
- In the Google Maps app, tap your profile picture, then Turn on Incognito mode. Google says Maps then won’t “use your activity to personalize Maps”.
- Use mobile data rather than the office Wi-Fi, because your IP address is one of Google’s location signals.
Incognito removes history, not geography. Google still uses your approximate location, so a clean search from your office is still a search from your office. That’s Step 3’s job.
Watch the clock too. Whitespark’s survey puts “business is open at time of search” fifth among the Google Business Profile ranking factors, and Semrush notes a “flower shop near me” search can show different shops depending on opening hours. Check during your opening hours, at roughly the same time each time.
A signed-in search on office Wi-Fi tells you what Google thinks you want to see. Incognito on mobile data is at least closer to a stranger’s view from the same spot.
Step 3: Check Single Points by Hand From Your Customers’ Locations
You don’t need to drive to Runcorn to see what Runcorn sees. You can set the search location yourself, free, from your desk.
Option A: Chrome’s location override. An official Chrome feature, built for developers:
- Right-click the spot in Google Maps to see its latitude and longitude.
- In Chrome, open Developer Tools (F12) and press Ctrl+Shift+P (Cmd+Shift+P on a Mac).
- Type “sensors” and choose Show Sensors.
- Under Geolocation, choose Custom location and enter the coordinates.
- Search Google in that tab with Developer Tools still open.
It’s fiddly, takes a couple of tries at first and won’t perfectly replicate a phone search, but it beats your office.
Option B: a free extension. GMB Everywhere has a Teleport feature. On maps.google.com, click Teleport, enter the search term, drop a pin and click Teleport Me Here. It shows your position and the competitors around you. The vendor describes it as free.
Check the right part of the page. The local pack is the map plus three businesses on Google’s results page. More places opens the Local Finder, showing positions beyond three. The Maps app is a third surface. Positions often overlap but can differ, so note which you checked and stick to it.
Each method checks one point at a time and keeps no history: fine for five checks, unworkable for fifty. Step 4 fixes that. If doing this every month is the bit you’ll never get round to, it’s part of Local Magnet’s Google Business Profile management.
Best for a quick answer to “do they see me in Runcorn?” Skip it if you want a picture of your whole area.
Step 4: Run a Free Geo-Grid Scan With a Google Maps Ranking Checker
What if you could run Step 3 from 49 points at once? A Google Maps ranking checker that uses geo-grid rank tracking does exactly that. It runs the same search from a grid of GPS points across your area and colours each point by where you appeared. Grids run from 3x3 to 13x13 and beyond; a 13x13 grid is 169 checks. Your settings decide whether the result means anything.
Free ways in, in no particular order, as each vendor states them:
- Local Falcon: 100 free credits on sign-up. One credit is one grid point, so a 5x5 scan uses 25.
- Local Viking: its help centre says its service-area-business mode currently runs free, with no credits needed.
- localseotool.io: a free 3x3 grid for one business, three keywords and up to five reports a month.
KrakenTrack’s Local Business Rank Tracker is another option that runs inside Google Sheets and emails weekly or monthly reports. Allowances change, so check current terms.
Set the grid up properly.
- Centre it on your verified address. Sterling Sky found you rank from the address you verified with, and the service area on your profile is “visual” only. Centre on a town you merely list and you’re measuring somewhere you don’t rank from.
- Match the radius to where you’d actually take work. Practitioners’ rule of thumb: a mile or two for shops and clinics, several miles for trades that travel. Google allows service areas of about two hours’ drive, but don’t grid that far. Too wide a radius turns almost every point red.
- Hidden address? Check the mode. Some grid methods miss service-area businesses entirely. If the grid can’t find you anywhere, check the tool’s service-area setting before panicking.
If your priority town is separate, run a second grid centred there. Otherwise start with a 5x5 or 7x7 grid on your two most valuable searches. That’s enough to see the shape.
Step 5: Read the Grid: Colours, Averages and the Patterns That Matter
The colours are the easy bit. The grid’s shape and the gap between two averages tell you far more.
Colours vary by tool (localseotool.io uses green for the top three, amber for four to seven, red for eight and below). Green in the top three is what matters: that’s the local pack.
The three numbers come from Local Falcon:
- ARP (average rank position): your average across only the points where you’re in the top 20.
- ATRP (average total rank position): your average across every point, counting “not found” as 20+. Usually the more honest figure.
- SoLV (share of local voice): Local Falcon describes this as the share of points where you’re in the top three.
A good ARP with a poor ATRP means you rank well where you appear at all, but vanish across much of the grid. If an agency reports only ARP, ask for ATRP.
The shapes:
- Green centre fading to red at the edges: normal. Distance is one of Google’s three factors, so you rank best near your address. You’re trying to grow that green patch.
- Patchy “Swiss cheese”: Sterling Sky says this often means filtering: when two businesses share a primary category within roughly 200 feet (about 60 metres), Google typically hides one for some searches.
- Red everywhere, including your own street: a relevance or profile problem, not a distance one.
Click the pins to see who beats you where. Spot a name like “Best Emergency Plumber Warrington Ltd”? Google’s guidelines don’t allow location information or service descriptors in business names. Whitespark’s survey ranks keywords in the business title third, which is why it works until someone reports it. You can use Suggest an edit; what happens next is Google’s call.
Once you know what the grid shows, here’s how to grow that green patch. The number to watch is how much of the grid is green in the top three, not your best single position.
Step 6: Check on a Fixed Rhythm and Only React to Sustained Changes
Map rankings wobble day to day. Check every morning and you’ll spend your time reacting to noise.
Keep everything identical: same keywords, same grid centre, size and spacing, same surface (pack or Maps), same time of day. Change one and you’re comparing two different tests.
Check monthly. Sources disagree: localseotool.io suggests weekly or fortnightly; Wiremo says monthly suits most local businesses, and to wait four to six weeks after a big profile change before re-scanning. Check more often only while you’re actively changing things.
Movement from new reviews, competitor edits and index refreshes is normal. A drop that holds for several weeks is worth investigating.
Rank is the thermometer, not the patient. Joy Hawkins of Sterling Sky has long argued rankings shouldn’t be the headline number in a local SEO report, because results are “highly personalized based on the location of the user and their previous browsing history”. Leads are what count. (Search Console’s average position isn’t a map rank either; see the FAQ.) Pair your checks with tracking the leads that rankings are meant to produce.
If you’d rather someone ran these checks and told you plainly what they mean, that’s part of Local Magnet’s Google Business Profile service. Tell us what you do and where, and we’ll give you a straight answer on whether we can help.
FAQ
Can I check my local rankings for free?
Yes. Incognito searches, Chrome’s location override and free browser extensions cost nothing. Several geo-grid tools also have free allowances: Local Falcon gives credits when you sign up, localseotool.io has a free plan, and Local Viking’s service-area mode currently runs free. Free tiers are small, so keep your grids modest and check each tool’s current terms before you start.
Why do I rank first when I search but customers can’t find me?
Because you’re searching from next to your own address, often signed in on a device that looks your business up constantly. Distance is one of Google’s three local ranking factors, and Google personalises results by location and search history. A customer a few miles away can see a completely different list. Check from their location, not yours.
Is Search Console’s average position my Google Maps ranking?
No. Google counts each element on the results page as a single position, whether it holds one link or many, and most mobile Business Profile interactions aren’t tracked in Search Console at all. To see your map ranking, use a location-controlled check or a geo-grid scan.
Will adding more towns to my service area help me rank there?
No. Sterling Sky’s testing found that the service area on your Business Profile is visual only. You rank from the address you verified with, so adding towns changes what’s displayed on your profile, not where you appear in results. Centre any grid check on your verified address for the same reason.
Can I pay Google to rank higher on the map?
No. Google says: “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.” Advertising is a separate product and doesn’t change where your Business Profile ranks in the local results.