Google says local results are mainly based on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. You can’t pay for a better local ranking, and you can’t ask for one. What you can do is give Google clearer, fuller and more trustworthy information about your business than the firm next door does. That is what most of this article is about.
If you run a plumbing firm in Chesterfield, a salon in Derby or an accountancy practice in Sheffield, you’ve probably read a dozen lists of “ranking factors” that contradict each other. We’ll separate what Google has said in its own words from what the industry merely believes, then turn it into a priority order you can act on.
TL;DR
- Google’s own help page names three local ranking signals: relevance, distance and prominence. Everything else is a way of improving one of those.
- You can’t pay Google for a better local ranking, so the work is about completeness, accuracy and reputation.
- Your Google Business Profile, your reviews and your website all feed prominence and relevance. Fix them in that order.
- Distance is the one factor you can’t change, but you can make sure Google has your address and service area exactly right.
- Be wary of precise “weightings” for things like review recency. Google hasn’t published them.
Table of Contents
- The three factors Google names
- Relevance: matching what people type
- Distance: the factor you can’t change
- Prominence: how well known you are
- Local pack versus ordinary results
- What is confirmed, and what is folklore
- What to fix first: a priority order
- Our view
- How we can help
- FAQ
- Sources
The three factors Google names
Google’s guidance on improving your local ranking says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. The same idea goes back a long way: a 2010 Google post on how local search ranking works described the same three signals and told businesses to start with accurate basics like name, address and phone number, then add richer details such as photos and opening hours.
That is useful because it shows how stable the foundations are. Tactics change every year. The three ideas haven’t.
| Factor | What Google says it means | What you control |
|---|---|---|
| Relevance | How well your profile matches what someone is searching for | Categories, description, services, website wording |
| Distance | How far you are from the person searching | Accurate address or service area (not the location itself) |
| Prominence | How well known your business is, from links, reviews and wider web information | Reviews, links, mentions, directory presence |
Let’s take them one at a time, with what that looks like for a small UK business.
Relevance: matching what people type
Google describes relevance as how well your Business Profile matches a search. Its advice is that complete, detailed information helps it understand what you do and match you to the right searches.
For a small business, that means being specific. “Electrician” is a category. “Emergency electrician in Matlock” is a search. The gap between the two is where relevance is won or lost.
What to check on your profile
- Primary category. Choose the one that describes your main money-maker, not the broadest option available.
- Secondary categories. Add the genuine extra services you offer, and nothing you don’t.
- Description and services. Write them in plain words, the way a customer would describe the job.
- Photos and opening hours. Google’s guidance specifically mentions keeping business hours accurate, including special opening hours.
If you want a walkthrough of the profile itself, we’ve written a guide to Google Business Profile optimisation for small businesses, and a more general explainer on what a Google Business Profile is.
Relevance on your website
Your profile isn’t the only thing Google reads. Search Engine Land’s coverage of Google’s expanded local documentation made a point that is easy to miss: a business’s position in web results is also a factor, so ordinary SEO good practice applies to local search too.
In practice, that means a page for each main service, written for the town or area you actually serve, with your address and contact details visible and a site that loads quickly on a phone. Most local searches happen on mobile, and a slow or clumsy site loses the customer before Google’s ranking even matters. We cover the build side in our piece on how SEO works for small businesses.
Distance: the factor you can’t change
Google defines distance as how far each business is from the person searching. If the searcher hasn’t shared a location, Google uses what it already knows about where they are.
There is no trick here, and anyone promising one is selling something. A café 200 metres from the searcher will usually beat one two miles away for a “coffee near me” search, however good the farther one is.
What you can do:
- Make the address exact. The same address, written the same way, everywhere it appears.
- Set a service area honestly if you travel to customers rather than welcoming them in. Only show a full address if customers can actually visit you, which is Google’s own advice.
- Aim at the searches you can win. If a rival sits in the town centre and you’re on an industrial estate, you may not win “near me” searches, but you can win service-plus-place searches through relevance and prominence.
That last point is where small businesses get their wins. Distance is fixed, so lean on the two factors you can move.
Prominence: how well known you are
Google describes prominence as how well known a business is, based on information such as how many websites link to it and how many reviews it has. Search Engine Land’s summary of the documentation adds that prominence draws on what Google knows about you from across the web, including links, articles and directories.
So prominence is really three things in a trench coat: reviews, links and mentions.
Reviews
Google states plainly that more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking. That is the confirmed part. It’s worth being careful beyond it: there’s no published weighting from Google for things like how recent your reviews are, how quickly they arrive, or how fast you reply. You’ll see confident percentages on the internet. Treat them as opinion.
What reviews do for you is practical, and it doesn’t depend on any weighting. People read them before they ring you. A business with a handful of old reviews looks quiet, even if it’s busy.
A simple routine beats any clever tactic:
- Ask every happy customer, at the moment they say thank you.
- Send a direct link, by text or WhatsApp, so it takes ten seconds.
- Reply to every review, good or bad, in a calm, human voice.
- Never offer payment or discounts in return for reviews, and never write your own.
If you’re not sure where your reviews currently stand, here’s how to see your Google reviews. If chasing them is the bit that never happens, that’s what our online reputation and review management service is for.
Links and mentions
Links from other sites tell Google that someone else thinks you’re worth pointing to. For a local business, the useful ones are the ordinary ones:
- Your chamber of commerce or local business association
- A local newspaper or community site that has covered you
- Suppliers, manufacturers or trade bodies that list their installers or stockists
- Charities or clubs you’ve sponsored
These are slow to collect and hard to fake, which is exactly why they’re valuable. If you want a broader look at practical ways to build local visibility without paying for placement, this local SEO academy resource is worth a read alongside this article.
Directory listings and consistency
Directories and citations are the place where your name, address and phone number appear on other sites. Google’s own guidance centres on getting that basic information right, and the sensible reading is that conflicting details give Google reason to hesitate. Check that your business name, address and phone number match across your website, your Google profile, Facebook and the main UK directories. One old address from a previous unit is enough to cause confusion.
Local pack versus ordinary results
The local pack is the map and three listings at the top. The organic results are the blue links beneath. They overlap but they are not the same list.
The pack leans harder on your profile, your reviews and proximity. The organic results lean on your website: its content, its links and its technical quality. Google has said that a business’s web ranking is also part of the local picture, so a strong website helps in both places.
The practical consequence is that you need both working. A tidy profile on top of a thin, slow website will take you only so far, and a good website with an empty profile will be invisible in the pack.
What is confirmed, and what is folklore
It helps to sort claims into three piles.
Confirmed by Google
- Relevance, distance and prominence are the main factors.
- Complete and accurate information makes you more likely to appear.
- More reviews and positive ratings can help.
- You can’t pay for a better local ranking.
Documented but vague
- Links, articles and directories feed prominence.
- Your web results position feeds in too.
Folklore, treat with caution
- Exact percentage weightings for each factor.
- Precise rules on review recency, velocity or reply rate.
- Any guaranteed route to “position one”.
Google itself says it keeps the details of its algorithm confidential, so that the ranking system is as fair as possible. That’s the honest reason nobody outside Google can give you a definitive list. What an agency or an article can give you is a sensible reading of the evidence and a good order of work.
What to fix first: a priority order
If you only have a few hours a month, here is where we’d spend them.
- Claim and complete your Google Business Profile. Categories, hours, services, description, photos, address or service area. This is the cheapest improvement available.
- Make your name, address and phone number identical everywhere. Your site, your profile, social pages and the directories that matter in your trade.
- Build a review habit. Aim for a steady trickle rather than a burst, because it’s easier to sustain and looks natural.
- Give every core service its own page on your website, naming the towns you serve, with clear contact details.
- Make the site fast and easy on a phone. If you’re on WordPress, keeping it updated and secure is part of this.
- Collect a few genuine local links. Associations, suppliers, local press, sponsorships.
- Check the results monthly. Search your main services from a few nearby postcodes and see who appears.
Notice what is absent: gimmicks. Nothing on this list needs a trick, and all of it compounds.
A worked example
Take a made-up joinery firm in Belper. Its profile lists “carpenter” as the only category, has three photos from 2021 and a website with one page called “Services”. It gets a couple of reviews a year.
After a tidy-up, the primary category becomes the one that matches its best-paying work, with sensible secondary ones. The profile gets fresh photos of recent kitchens, accurate opening hours and a plain description. The website gets separate pages for fitted kitchens, bespoke staircases and restoration, each naming Belper and nearby towns. The owner starts texting a review link after each finished job.
None of that is exotic. Each step makes the business easier for Google to understand (relevance) and easier to trust (prominence). Distance stays where it was, and it doesn’t need to change.
Our view
We get asked a lot which single factor matters most, and we understand why. When you run a business, you’d like a lever to pull.
The honest answer is that local ranking is the sum of lots of small, unglamorous things done consistently. A profile that’s complete, a website that works properly on a phone, reviews that keep arriving, and details that match everywhere. Most of the businesses we meet aren’t held back by a clever missing trick. They’re held back by a manual bottleneck: nobody has the time to keep it all up.
That is why we don’t treat a website as a one-off project. Our approach is ongoing optimisation, with unlimited content changes and a local Derbyshire team you can actually talk to. And because leads arrive by phone, WhatsApp and email, we built SmartFlowCRM so those enquiries land in one place instead of getting lost.
If you’d like the work taken off your plate, we’re happy to do it, and to explain every step in plain English.
Chris
How we can help
If you’d rather hand this over, our local SEO service starts from £150 per month, and it covers the profile, on-page and local visibility work described above. You can read more about local SEO services in Derbyshire and across the UK too.
If your website is the weak link, our web design plans start at £120 per month (Starter), with Growth at £170 and Smart at £560 per month. And once the enquiries start arriving, our CRM plans, Silver at £130 and Gold at £260 per month, keep WhatsApp and email leads in one place.
If you run more than one site or branch, we’ve also written a practical UK guide to multi-location local SEO.
FAQ
What are the three primary ranking factors for local SEO?
According to Google, they are relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance is how well your profile matches the search, distance is how far you are from the searcher, and prominence is how well known you are, based on things like links and reviews.
Can I pay Google to rank higher in the local pack?
No. Google says there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Paid adverts exist separately and are labelled as such, but the map listings you earn come from the quality and completeness of your information.
Do reviews really affect local rankings?
Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking. It hasn’t published how much weight things like recency or reply rate carry, so aim for a steady flow of genuine reviews and reply to them all.
Does my website matter if I already have a Business Profile?
Yes. Google’s documentation notes that your position in web results is also a factor in local ranking. A fast, clear site with a page per service and area supports both your profile and your ordinary search listings.
How long does it take to improve local rankings?
Small fixes, such as completing your profile, can show an effect fairly quickly. Reviews, links and website content build over months, so we’d judge progress monthly rather than weekly.
Sources
- Google Business Profile Help: tips to improve your local ranking on Google
- Google Lat Long: how local search ranking works (2010)
- Search Engine Land: Google documents Google My Business local ranking factors (2016)
Recommended
- Multi-location local SEO: a practical UK guide
- How Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) works for small businesses
Related reading: Online reputation management for SMEs · Local SEO checklist for small businesses · Google Business Profile optimisation
