Vander Els Partners
The rank you see from your desk is the best rank you will ever see, because you are standing on top of your own listing. Here is how to see what a customer across town sees. Twenty minutes, and you will want to do it from a few places.
The honest way: go there
- Pick three spots you actually serve. One near the office, one at the edge of the area you drive to, and one in the neighbourhood you most want more work from.
- From each spot, on your phone, on cellular, search the way a customer would. The service and nothing else: "furnace repair," "roof replacement," "deck builder." Not your company name. Not "near me" unless that is what your customers type.
- Read the map pack, the three listings at the top with the map. Note where you are, or that you are not there. Then tap "more businesses" and note where you fall in the longer list.
- Write down all three results. That is your first real map of the market.
The lazier way, from your desk
You can approximate a location by searching Google Maps directly, dragging the map to the spot you care about, and then searching the service. It is not identical to standing there, but it will show you the shape of the problem.
What it means if
You are in the top three at all three spots. Good. Repeat it quarterly. Positions move.
You are in the top three near the office and gone at the edge. This is the normal picture and it is fixable. It means the listing and the site are carrying you where distance helps and nowhere else. The work is reviews, categories, photos, posts, and pages on the site that name the towns you serve. It is slow and it is real.
You are gone everywhere, including near the office. Something is wrong with the listing itself: a suspension, a category change, a duplicate. Open your Google Business Profile today and read it as a customer would.
A competitor you have never heard of is beating you at the edge. He is not better. He is closer. Distance is fixed; everything else about his listing is beatable.
The one thing to take from this
Rank is not a number. It is a map, and it is different from every point on it. Look from three places once, and you will know where you disappear. Look from the same three places every quarter, and you will know when it changes.