For trades and local businesses that show up on the map near their own yard and vanish a mile or two out. We map where you rank across the area you work, find out why the three businesses above you are there, and close the gaps that can be closed. Local SEO and Google Business Profile work is paid on results: there is nothing to pay upfront, and you pay nothing until the results we agree with you in writing, before we start, have been met.
110 to 173calls a month from the Google Business Profile, up 57%
“My business is doing very, very well. I wasn’t expecting this in this short period.”
Ash, Norwich Tyres & Auto Servicestyres, MOTs and servicing, Norwich
May to August 2026. Source: Google Business Profile.
Read the full storyThree counts of calls from the Google Business Profile, each Google's own, from the first month we tracked to the best month since, using Google's complete monthly data. Months and source sit under every number.
+159%
more views of the Google profile in search, and calls up from 38 to 60 a month
“I’m so busy I can’t do it anymore myself.”
Hiwad, Rescue Tyresmobile tyre fitting, north-west London
June to August 2026. Source: Google Business Profile.
Read the full story225 to 311
calls a month from the Google Business Profile, for a fixed workshop, up 38%
Park Royal Tyrestyre fitting and alignment, NW10, London
June to July 2026, two months. Source: Google Business Profile.
Google only logs a call when the call button on the profile is tapped, so a number copied down and dialled later is missing from these figures. Park Royal's window is two months, too short to call a trend. Two of the three work from a fixed address and one drives to the customer: both kinds of profile this page describes.
Google's help page on local ranking names the three: 'relevance, distance and popularity', with the third explained under the heading Prominence. In plain terms: does your profile fit the search, how close are you to the person searching, and how well known is your business?
Two of the three can be worked on. Distance comes from where your business is and where each customer happens to be, so your position changes across your area. That is why the free analysis starts with a map.
Keeping the profile accurate and out of suspension trouble is a separate monthly job, covered under Google Business Profile management. The rest of local SEO for trades is on SEO for tradesmen. This page is about where the profile ranks.
How closely your profile fits what someone searched for. Google says the categories you pick affect your local ranking, and that it can also pick up category information from your website. We line both up with the searches that bring you paid work.
The gap between each business and the person searching. When someone doesn't share their location, Google falls back on what it already knows about where they are. Nobody can move your yard closer, so we measure where distance settles the result and plan around it.
How well known the business is. Google gives two examples, the number of websites linking to you and the number of reviews you hold, and adds that more reviews and good ratings can help. We check both against the businesses beating you, so your targets come from your own map.
Because Google works out the top three from wherever the searcher is. Its location help page says your location is used to show nearby results 'even if you didn't include a location in your search', so two people typing the same words a few streets apart can see different businesses.
The honest answer to 'where do I rank?' is a map. A grid scan runs the same search from dozens of points across your area, each one, in Local Falcon's words, 'a separate search from that spot'. It shows where you already hold a top three place, where you sit fourth to eighth and could be pushed up, and who holds the top three everywhere else. That last list is the competition that matters, and it may not be the firms you would have named.
Your free analysis includes a ranking map of your area. Run again on the same points with the same searches, that map is the fairest test of whether anything has moved.
Some mix of the six things below. Measuring that difference, the competitor gap, is where the work starts: for each search that brings in paid work, we take the businesses holding the top three where you lose and set their profiles, reviews and websites beside yours.
Searches where you already sit just outside the top three across much of the grid come first, because profile changes can tip those. Where you barely appear, distance and prominence are usually the reason, and the analysis says so.
The categories held by the businesses beating you, set against yours, and any you could honestly add. The primary one gets a section of its own below.
Services on their profiles that are missing from yours. Only work you actually do goes on, named the way customers search for it, with no town names added to the titles.
How many reviews the businesses beating you hold, and how recent they are. A fair target is the middle figure among them. The way there is a simple request to every customer, with nothing offered in return and no say over what they write.
Whether your site has a proper page for each service that pays. A site that never mentions a service gives Google little to match it with. How a service page should be built.
Google counts links to your business towards prominence. The sites that list the businesses above you show which listings you are missing, and those gaps get filled wherever your business genuinely belongs. The UK citations that matter.
The one gap nobody can close. The grid shows where it settles the result, and the result we agree in writing takes that into account.
The one that matches the searches you most want to win, checked against what the businesses winning those searches use. Google's category help page says plainly that the categories you select affect your local ranking. In its own example, a primary category of Pizza restaurant can get a business shown for restaurants, Italian restaurants and pizza.
Plenty of businesses have more than one honest choice. A garage that fits tyres and services cars could lead with Tyre shop or Auto repair shop, two real categories that sit side by side in an example in Google's guidelines. Which one leads should follow where your money comes from and what the businesses beating you on those searches have picked.
Google warns that adding or editing a category can mean verifying the business again. So change the main category on its own, then check the map again: if the switch loses ground, it can be put back. Only categories that are true of your business belong on it, whatever the firm above you has chosen. How to choose a category.
Less far than your service area suggests. Darren Shaw of Whitespark, writing in October 2024 after testing service areas, says businesses that travel to their customers 'can only rank in a small radius around the address associated with their Google Business Profile', whether that address is shown or hidden. The radius, he adds, varies with how competitive the area is.
Google's guidelines let a service-area business mark out far more ground, up to about two hours' drive from its base. The map still ranks you from the address, so every town on that list competes from one point.
A rented address you don't operate from, which Google calls a virtual office, isn't eligible for a Business Profile, and a service-area business can't list one unless it is staffed during opening hours. Using one to reach a new town puts the whole listing at risk.
What widens the circle is the other two factors. More reviews, more links and a website that covers the work properly lift you in the streets where you are already close to the top three. A town well outside that radius stays out of reach on the map however it is listed, and the analysis tells you so. Service area or address covers the set-up.
Sometimes. Anyone can report a listing that breaks Google's rules, and Google decides what happens to it. It promises nothing, so a sound plan assumes the listing stays.
There are two routes. On the listing in Maps, choose 'Suggest an edit', then 'Place is closed or not here', then 'Offensive, harmful or misleading', as Google's reporting page sets out. A misleading name, phone number or website that points to fraud goes on the Business Redressal Complaint Form, which takes a batch of Maps links, even a spreadsheet of them, and asks you to quote the exact content you object to. Google warns that it can't guarantee any action and won't update you on its status.
Fake profiles are common: Google removed over 13 million worldwide in 2025 (Google, April 2026). Your ranking map shows exactly which listings hold the top three where you lose, so a rule-breaker among them is easy to spot against the breaches below. Good evidence is often simple, such as the name the firm trades under on its own website or at Companies House. A genuine business above you is a gap to close, not a report to file. Fake reviews are a separate problem: what to do about those.
Local SEO and Google Business Profile work is paid on results. There is nothing to pay upfront: you pay nothing until the results we agree with you in writing, before we start, have been met.
Websites, ads and social media are quoted separately after the free analysis. How pay on results works
Tell us your trade and area. We record a short video of where you rank, who is above you and what would have to change. It is yours to keep.
If your market is not winnable, we say so. If it is, we agree in writing what a result is and how it is measured, before anything starts.
Your Google Business Profile, the pages that need to rank, citations and reviews. One business per trade per area, so never your rival as well.
Clicks, calls and where you show up, in your own portal, straight from Google. You pay once the agreed results are met.
They overlap, because both work on the same profile. Google Business Profile management keeps it accurate, answered and clear of suspension risk month after month. Google Maps SEO is the ranking side, covered on this page: the grid, the businesses beating you, your categories, reviews measured against theirs and your website. Both are paid on results.
It depends on your map, so no figure appears here. A business already in the top three across half its grid needs less work than one that vanishes a street from its own door. Your ranking map shows which you are, and your price comes after the free analysis. Nothing is invoiced before the result in our written agreement is met. From that point it rolls monthly, with no minimum term to sit out.
There is no date or fixed position we could stand behind, so we don't offer one. It depends on the size of the gap and how much of it is distance, which nobody controls. Searches where you already sit just outside the top three are the place to start, and some streets may never move. The free analysis shows you the gap before you commit to anything, and the fee only starts once the agreed result is met.
Not in the map results themselves. Google's ranking help is plain that a higher local ranking can't be bought or asked for. Money buys an ad instead: Google Ads can place your location beside, above or below the results in Google Maps for as long as the budget runs. Ads are quoted separately from the SEO.
Because you are searching from the best spot there is. From your own yard, distance works for you harder than anywhere else on the map, and a customer three miles away may be shown a different top three. The ranking map in the free analysis shows the view from across your area, which is the one your customers get.
There is no set number, because it depends on who you are up against near each customer. A useful yardstick is the middle figure among the businesses beating you on your grid. Google's help says a bigger pile of good reviews can help you rank, so the plan is a simple request to every customer, kept going week after week. Why a steady pace matters.
Not usually, because distance is measured from the address behind your profile, and a virtual office in that town isn't allowed. If you genuinely have staff based there, Google's guidelines allow a separate profile for each location with its own staff and its own service area. Otherwise the realistic goal is to win more of the streets around your real base.
Then the free analysis tells you. Some maps are held by firms with years of reviews and links, sitting closer to most of your customers than you are. If the gap can't be closed, we say so, and show you where on the map it can be if there is anywhere. You keep the video whether we work together or not.
Tell us your trade and your area. The video shows your position across the map, which businesses hold the places above you, what they have that you lack, and whether that gap can be closed. The video is yours whatever you decide.