Your ranking isn't a number. It's a map.
Seven modules for the map pack — geo-grid rank tracking across the whole service area, plus the profile, photos, reviews, citations and competitor intel that decide where in that area a client shows up at all.
Anonymize the client name before publishing. A grid with real spread is more persuasive than an all-green one.
An average position is the one number that hides the answer.
Map pack results move with the searcher. A business can hold the top three at its own address and disappear four miles out — which is exactly where the client wonders why the phone isn't ringing. Report the average and you've told them nothing they can act on.
And the fixes almost never live on the website. A page can be well built, well written and backed by excellent reviews, and still lose because the profile is filed under a broad category with nothing specialist behind it. Most agencies spend their time on the site because that's the part they know how to bill for.
One business. Forty-nine different rankings.
The grid scans the same keyword from points across the service area and reports what a searcher standing there would actually see. Strong at the pin, weakening with distance — and the shape of that fall-off is the whole local SEO conversation.
Illustrative grid. The average says 15.6 — the map says they own their own street and nothing else.
Seven modules, three jobs.
What Google knows about the business, where that actually puts them on the map, and who they're losing to.
Job 01
What Google knows
The profile itself — categories and services, the photo library, the review corpus, and whether the business details agree with themselves everywhere else on the web.
4 modulesJob 02
Where it puts them
Position across the whole service area rather than at one address, and what people actually do when they find the profile.
2 modulesJob 03
Who's beating them
The businesses holding the pack in the squares where your client doesn't, and what they have that the client hasn't.
1 moduleThe profile is doing more of the work than the site.
Categories decide what a business is eligible to rank for at all. Photos and reviews decide whether Google treats it as active and trusted. Citations decide whether the same business appears to exist consistently across the rest of the web.
None of it is difficult. All of it is maintenance, which is why at fifteen clients it silently stops happening.
- Categories, services and description on the Business Profile
- Photo library — how many, how recent, and of what
- Reviews as both a ranking signal and a source of customer language
- Citation consistency across the directories that still matter
Categories, services and the profile fields that decide what a business can rank for.
PhotosThe photo library — count, recency and subject, audited against what the profile needs.
ReviewsVolume, rating and what customers actually say — a ranking signal and a copy source.
CitationsWhether the business details agree with themselves everywhere else on the web.
Where they show, and what happens next.
The grid tells you where a client is visible. Profile performance tells you what people did when they found it — the calls, the direction requests, the messages, the clicks through to the site.
Together they answer the question a local business owner actually asks, which is never "what's my ranking" but always "why isn't the phone ringing."
- Position sampled across the service area, not at one address
- Scans kept over time, so improvement is visible as the map filling in
- Calls, messages, direction requests and website clicks from the profile
- Both feed the rank diagnosis as the geographic and prominence signals
Somebody is holding the squares your client isn't.
In local, the competition isn't abstract. It's a specific set of businesses appearing in the pack where your client doesn't — usually with more reviews, more categories stacked, or simply more history at that address. Knowing which ones, and what they have, is what turns a heatmap from a diagnosis into a plan.
All seven modules are on every plan. Plans differ only in how many clients you run.
Every one of these is an input to the diagnosis.
On its own, a heatmap is a picture and a review count is a number. Read together with Search Console and the live site, they become a reason — which is the job the rank diagnosis does, and why it won't run until these are connected.
Relevance
Categories and services
What the business is eligible to appear for at all — and the most common critical finding in a diagnosis.
Prominence
Reviews, photos and citations
The signals that say this is a real, active business that other places on the web agree exists.
Distance
The grid
The one factor nobody controls, which is exactly why the other two have to be right.
What feeds it, and where the work goes.
- Google Business Profile
- Live data
- Avatars
- Who it's for
- USP
- The description
Feeds Local SEO
Local SEO, answered straight.
Why does a grid matter more than a rank number?
Isn't local SEO mostly about the website?
How is this different from the SEO system?
Does it post to the profile for me?
How many clients can I track?
Every plan includes every module.
There are no feature gates. Plans differ only in how many clients you run and how much you generate for them.