How do I rank in the Google map pack?

Ranking in the Google map pack comes down to three things weighed together: how relevant your profile is to what somebody typed, how close you are to the person who typed it, and how well known the business is everywhere else on the web. You control the first and the third completely, and you control the second not at all. Most local businesses lose on relevance, because the profile is half filled in and nothing on it matches the job being searched for.

What actually decides which three businesses get shown?

Google publishes the model and it hasn't changed much in years: relevance, distance, prominence.

Relevance is how closely the profile matches the search. That means the primary category, the services listed on the profile, the wording of the description, and the language customers happen to use inside their reviews.

Distance is the gap between the searcher and your pin, or the middle of your service area if there's no storefront.

Prominence is everything else Google knows about the business. Review count and rating, whether your name, address and phone agree across every directory that lists you, how many other sites mention you at all, and how the website performs in ordinary organic search.

Prominence moves slowly. Relevance can be fixed in an afternoon, and it's the one most profiles are quietly failing.

Which parts of the profile actually have to be filled in?

All of them, and the primary category matters more than the rest put together. It's the strongest relevance signal on the profile, and choosing the broadest option to cover everything is the common mistake. An HVAC company that makes its money on replacements and files itself under a general contractor category is competing in the wrong list all year. Pick the category that names the job you most want to be called about, then add secondary categories for the rest.

After that:

• Every service, written the way a customer says it. Not your internal names for them.
• Service areas set to the towns you actually work in. Listing thirty towns to be safe dilutes the whole profile.
• Hours, including holiday hours. A wrong closure on a holiday is a lost job and sometimes a one-star review.
• Photos, added continuously rather than once. Recency counts, and a profile whose newest photo is years old reads as abandoned.
• The description, written for a person. It carries little ranking weight and it does get read.
• Questions and answers, seeded with what you get asked on the phone all day. Anybody can answer those, including a competitor, so answer them first.
• A link from each listing to the page that matches it, rather than every listing pointing at the homepage.

Metcalf Media treats the profile as a page of the website rather than a directory entry, which is the whole approach behind Google Business Profile management.

Why can't I rank in a town I don't have an address in?

You can, but never the same way and never as easily. Distance carries real weight, so a Tulsa business is working uphill on a search made in Claremore against a company with a Claremore address behind it. What narrows the gap is every signal that's not distance: the service area set correctly, a page on your own website written about the work you do in that town, reviews from customers who name it, and directory listings that agree you work out there.

The gap never closes completely, and any consultant saying otherwise is selling something. A business several towns out usually loses a proximity search to one sitting in the town. The workable plan is to win the map pack where it can be won and use organic listings and paid traffic for the towns where it can't.

Renting a mailbox in a town you don't operate from isn't the workaround. It's a listing suspension waiting to happen, and suspensions take weeks to reverse.

Do reviews change where I rank, or only whether I get called?

Both, and the two halves work differently. Count and average rating feed prominence, which is the slow-moving side. The words inside the reviews feed relevance, which is the fast side. A review saying a company replaced a furnace in January in a named town is telling Google two things the profile can't credibly say about itself.

That's the argument for asking rather than hoping. A customer who has just watched their heat come back on will write one if the request arrives while they're still standing there. The same customer, emailed weeks later, won't.

What doesn't work is a burst. A pile of reviews in one afternoon after years of silence looks like exactly what it usually is, and Google filters accordingly. Steady beats sudden.

What do I do about the competitor stuffing keywords into his business name?

Report it. A company listing itself as "Tulsa Emergency AC Repair Heating and Air" when the sign on the building says something else is breaking Google's naming rules, and those reports get actioned far more often than owners expect.

Use the suggest-an-edit tool on the listing first. If that goes nowhere, file a business redressal complaint. It costs very little time and it can move a competitor off the map pack entirely. Very few owners ever bother, which is why the tactic keeps working for the people using it.

How long before any of this shows up?

Profile changes such as category, services and service areas can move within days, because Google re-reads the profile quickly. Prominence takes three to six months, because reviews, citations and organic strength compound rather than switch on.

Anybody promising the map pack in a week is describing the profile edits and leaving out the part that takes two seasons. Metcalf Media states both timelines at the start for that reason: the fast half gets done in the first fortnight, and the slow half gets measured out loud against what it cost.