Service areas, and why you rank in one place and not another

What distance does

Google states that local ranking rests on relevance, distance and prominence. Relevance and prominence can be worked on. Distance is the physical gap between the business and the person searching, or the area they searched, and no amount of work moves premises.

The consequence is that there is no such thing as a business's position in the local map. There is only its position at a point. Move the point and the answer changes.

What a service area is, and is not

A service-area business can set the places it serves on its profile. This tells Google and customers where the business will travel. It does not create proximity, and it does not make the business rank across everywhere it lists. A plumber in Swords who lists the whole county still competes against businesses physically closer to each searcher in the county.

The honest approach is to list the area actually served. Over-claiming produces two problems: guideline exposure, and enquiries from places the business will not profitably travel to.

Measuring it properly

The right measurement is a grid: check the position at many points across the service area and look at the shape of the result. A business usually sees a strong core near its premises fading with distance, and the useful questions are how far the core extends, whether it is growing, and whether there are pockets where a competitor dominates.

This is why the second of the seven questions is about measurement. A supplier reporting a single number is either not measuring across the area or is reporting the flattering point.

What this means when comparing trades

It also explains why the demand table cannot tell any individual business what it will get. Two plumbers with identical work and identical suppliers will see different results because they are in different places, and the one nearer the population weight of the search will do better for reasons neither of them controls.

What can be done about distance

Very little directly, and honest options are limited to genuinely operating from an additional location, which is a business decision rather than a marketing one and is covered in one location or many. Creating listings at addresses a business does not occupy is the version of this that gets profiles suspended, and it is dealt with in listings spam.