You are first at one end of your street and fourth at the other
There is no single position on the map. Google picks the three businesses it shows per search and per point, so the answer to “where am I” changes as the person asking walks down the road. Anyone who promises you a position is promising you a number that does not exist.
What does exist is a map of points, each with what came back at that point, on the same date every month. Start with the free check and see what your listing looks like today.
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What the map actually shows
Above the ordinary results Google shows three businesses on a map. People call it the local pack. It is not a list of the three best businesses in your city, and it is not sorted by how long you have been open. It is picked for that search, from that point, at that moment.
| What Google reads | Who controls it |
|---|---|
| Categories and services you filled in | You |
| Photographs and posts, and how recently they arrived | You |
| Reviews, and whether they were answered | You, and the people who write them |
| Name, address and phone, on your listing and everywhere else | You, and the directories that copied you |
| The distance from the person searching to your door | Nobody |
Four of those five are work. The fifth is geography, and it is the reason a single position is meaningless.
Why one number is not a measurement
Ask two people standing half a mile apart to search for a dentist and they will not see the same three. A listing can be first at one end of a street and fourth at the other. So a report that says “you are third in Oslo” is not wrong, it is meaningless: it is one point, chosen by whoever wrote the report.
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The honest way is to run the same search from a grid of points across the area you actually serve, record what came back at each one, and repeat it from the same points on the same date every month. Then a change is a change, and not a different point.
We do not report a position. We report a map of points, and you can count it yourself.
What the work on a listing is
Nothing about it is a trick. It is the same short list every month, done, rather than listed in a plan and left there.
| What is done | How often |
|---|---|
| Categories and services, checked against what people search for | Every month |
| Photographs, taken from your own material | Every month |
| Posts, planned ahead, not written the day they are due | Every month |
| Questions on the listing, asked and answered | Every month |
| Reviews, read and answered | Every week |
| Name, address and phone, checked on the directories that copied you | Every month |
| The grid of points, run from the same points | Once a month, same date |
The work above is done for one location every month, on the same dates, and what was done is listed in the report.
What arrives
A report you can take apart: the map of points with the date, what changed on the listing that month, the reviews that arrived and the answers that went out, and the directories that were corrected. Every number comes from a source you can open yourself.
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The first report is the one that surprises people, because it is the first time the whole thing is in one place. After that it is a comparison: this month against last, from the same points.
What this costs
Monthly care for one location is €1,200 per calendar month, and what is done in that month is the table above.
An audit is specialist work; monthly care is team work, which is why a month of care covers far more work than an audit does.
Current terms. A business audit is €960. Initial setup is €1,200; the first month of care is included in that amount, so setup plus that month totals €1,200, not €2,400. Ongoing care is €1,200 per calendar month. Work starts after payment. The audit fee is separate and is not credited.
More than one location
A second location takes fewer hours than the first, because competitors, keywords and material are shared. Work for more than one location is agreed per project. It is arithmetic, not a discount.
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A network is a different job from a single listing, and this page is about a single listing. If you have more than three, the conversation starts with which locations compete with each other, and that is a different table.
Three things we will not do
We will not promise you a position. Nobody can promise that honestly, and the map does not have one position to promise.
We will not buy you reviews, and we will not write them. That is the subject of its own page, and the answer there is the same.
We will not create a second listing to catch a search your first one is missing. Duplicate listings compete with each other, and Google eventually removes one. Which one is not up to you.
What clients said
Fifty reviews for work on Google listings, 2022–2026, by service
Questions
what is google local pack
The three businesses Google shows on the map above the ordinary results. It is picked for that search, from that point, so two people standing half a mile apart can see three different businesses. It is not a ranking of the best businesses in a city, and it is not sorted by how long you have been open.
how to rank higher on google maps
By being complete, active and near. Google reads the categories and services you filled in, the photographs and posts that arrived recently, the reviews and whether they were answered, and the distance from the person searching to your door. Only the first three of those are yours to change, which is why the work is monthly rather than a one-time fix.
business not showing up on google maps
There is no single position in a city: a business can be first at one end of a street and fourth at the other, so the honest answer comes from running the same search from a grid of points on the map. If it is not showing at all, the usual causes are verification, a suspended profile, or a duplicate listing competing with the real one, and all three show up in the presence map at step two.
why is my business not showing up on google maps
Most often the listing is unverified, suspended, or duplicated, and a duplicate is the one people miss because the profile they are looking at is fine. Less often it is there and you are looking from the wrong place, which the grid of points settles in an hour.
google maps seo services
Work on the listing itself and on the pages that copied it: categories and services, photographs, posts, questions, reviews and the answers to them, and the name, address and phone as they appear on the directories. It is done every month for one location, and monthly care is €1,200 per calendar month.
how to track local pack rankings?
Run the same search from a set of fixed points across the area you serve, record what came back at each point, and repeat it from the same points on the same date every month. One number for a city is not a measurement, because the answer changes as the person asking moves.
What monthly work on the map costs
Monthly care is €1,200 per calendar month for one location, and work starts after payment. The business audit that comes before it is €960.
How long before anything moves
Three weeks at the earliest, and often longer. The listing changes the day we change it, but what a person sees on the map moves later, because Google has to read the change and the photographs and reviews have to accumulate. What arrives sooner is the measurement: the first map of points inside the first month, the second from the same points a month later, and that pair is the first honest comparison anyone can make about your listing.
Free check
See where you actually are
Send the link to your listing. Nothing else.
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Reading on this
Questions people ask us about this, answered with Google’s own help pages and what we see in our own work.