Relevance, distance and popularity: what Google actually says decides local ranking

Google’s own help page says local results are “mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity”. Relevance is how well your Business Profile matches what someone is searching for. Distance is how far your business is from the customer who is searching. Popularity, which the same page goes on to call prominence, is how well known your business is, informed by things like how many websites link to you and how many reviews you have. Everything useful in local SEO is a way of improving one of those three, and Google adds one line that should end a lot of sales calls: “There’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.”

This post is the map section of the whole-of-SEO video, written up with Google’s page open in front of me. I am quoting the page rather than an agency’s version because the wording matters. Google hedges. It says “can help” and “more likely”. It does not say “will rank”, and neither should anyone selling you local SEO.

What does Google actually say decides local ranking?

The page is titled “Tips to improve your local ranking on Google”, and its headline sentence is short: “Local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity.” Note the word mainly. Google is describing the main ingredients, not publishing the recipe.

One oddity worth clearing up first. The headline sentence says popularity, and the section explaining the third factor is headed prominence. It is the same factor under two names, and I will use both, as Google does.

Under those three headings Google gives one plain sentence each:

• Relevance “is how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for.” Google adds that providing complete and detailed business information helps it better understand your business and match it to relevant searches.
• Distance “refers to how far each business is from the customer who’s searching.” If a customer does not share where they are, Google uses what it knows about their location.
• Prominence “means how well-known a business is.” Prominent places are more likely to show up in search results, and the factor is also based on information like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have. Google’s exact words: “More reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.” Can help. Not will.

Then the improvement tips, which are unglamorous: verify your business, keep your business information up to date, respond to reviews, add photos and videos, and, for eligible retailers, add in-store products. Google says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up in local search results, that responding to reviews shows customers you value their feedback, and that photos and videos show customers what you offer and tell the story of your business.

That is the whole page: three factors, a handful of tips, and a sentence saying nobody can buy their way in. Everything below is what those factors mean when you run a business in Leeds.

What makes a business relevant?

Relevance is whether you are the thing being searched for. If someone searches for a dentist, a dentist is relevant and a bicycle shop is not. If someone searches for console repair, a shop that actually repairs consoles, as JorTech does, is more relevant than one that only sells phone cases.

Picture framing makes the point better. Someone in north Leeds searches for a framer. AS Frames, a framing workshop on Potternewton Lane in Chapel Allerton that also cuts glass to size and prints, is relevant. A gift shop with a shelf of ready-made frames is a weaker match.

Google reads relevance from your business information, and you control all of it:

1. Your categories. Google’s tips on keeping information complete include telling it what kind of business you are, which you do through the category. The primary category is the single clearest statement of what the business is. Pick the one that describes the business, not the one you wish described it.
2. Your services. The services listed on the profile, and the services that have pages on your site, tell Google which specific questions you can answer. A framer who lists glass cut to size is a match for a search that a framer who lists only “framing” is not.
3. The words on your site. Google’s definition talks about the profile, but the profile does not live alone. The website it links to is the fuller description of what you do, and if that site never uses the words customers use, the profile is doing the job by itself.

The test for relevance is plain: could a stranger read your profile and your homepage and say, in one sentence, what you do and for whom? If not, your business is not yet understandable, and relevance is about being understood.

What does distance mean for a shop versus a service-area business?

Distance is the factor you control least, and that is by design. Google says distance is how far each business is from the customer who is searching, and that if the customer does not share where they are, it uses what it knows about their location. So local SEO is not “put the town name on the website”. Physical geography matters.

Take AK Barbers in LS5. Someone in Kirkstall who types “barbers near me” is a few streets away, and distance works in their favour. Someone typing the same words on the other side of Leeds is not, and that is the system doing its job. The searcher wants the nearest chair.

For a shop, then, distance is your address, and the work is to make sure the address is right, verified and identical everywhere. For a service-area business, a mobile mechanic, a cleaner, a plumber, there is no shopfront for a customer to walk to, but the business is still based somewhere, and the honest version of distance is the area you genuinely cover. Describe that area accurately on the profile and on the site. Do not claim a city you visit twice a year. Distance does not reward the widest claim; it rewards being close to the person asking.

What is popularity built from?

Popularity is where local SEO starts overlapping with the rest of SEO. Google says prominence is how well known a business is, and that the factor is based on information like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have. So your website matters. Your reputation matters. Other websites matter. Your reviews matter. And the information Google receives from across the web can matter.

In practice popularity is built from four sources:

• Links from other websites. A supplier, a local paper, a trade body, a customer’s blog. Each is a third party saying you are worth pointing at.
• Reviews. Google’s words are that more reviews and positive ratings “can help”. The honest reading is that reviews are one input, earned steadily and never bought. The reviews page covers the compliant way to ask, and the longer guide on getting more Google reviews covers the rules.
• Your wider presence. Directories, social profiles, mentions. Each place the business appears consistently is another piece of corroboration that you are who you say you are.
• Your Business Profile itself. Google’s tips, verify, keep information complete and accurate, respond to reviews, add photos and videos, add products where eligible, are the parts of prominence you can do this afternoon. The Google Business Profile optimisation service exists for owners who would rather it were done for them, and the full profile guide walks through every field.

Do not confuse “complete profile” with “Google now owes me position one”. It does not. A complete profile makes your business easier to understand. It does not give you a guaranteed ranking, and Google explicitly says there is no way to request or pay for one.

Why does NAP consistency still matter?

NAP is name, address and phone number, and the principle is simple: your business information should be accurate and coherent everywhere it appears.

The failure is familiar. Your website says one phone number. A directory says another. Your Business Profile says something else. An old page has an old address. A social profile has a fourth version. You have created unnecessary confusion, and confusion works against relevance, because Google is less sure what you are, and against distance, because Google is less sure where you are.

But do not fall into the superstition that every comma, abbreviation and full stop must be identical on every site or the whole thing collapses. “Ltd” against “Limited” is not the problem. The important thing is accuracy and consistency of the underlying business information: the same name, the same address, the same number, and old versions retired.

When does a town page earn its place?

Local SEO matrix pages are the part of the map that can be extremely powerful and extremely badly abused. They live on your website, but they exist to serve the map, so they belong here.

Imagine you provide phone repair and you serve Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield and Huddersfield. You might naturally have pages around real service areas. The trap is to create /phone-repair-leeds, /phone-repair-bradford, /phone-repair-wakefield and /phone-repair-huddersfield, copy the same page four times and change the town name. That is not a strategy. That is a page factory, and it is exactly the doorway, thin-content problem you should be avoiding.

The question is not “can I make a page for this town?” The question is “does this town genuinely deserve a useful page?” Maybe it does: if you genuinely operate there, if customers actually use the service there, if you can give real examples, explain availability, show relevant work and answer local questions. Then the page has a reason to exist. A legitimate local architecture can be service by location, but every intersection has to earn its existence.

Back to the framer. AS Frames posts prints and restored photos anywhere in the UK, so a page about printing by post has earned its place. A page about framing in a town where nobody has ever brought a picture in has not.

What should you actually do this week?

Read the three factors as a checklist. For relevance, fix the primary category, list the services you really offer, and make sure the site uses the words customers use. For distance, verify the address and describe the true service area. For popularity, respond to every review, add photos, and start earning links and mentions from real third parties. Then leave the guaranteed-position-one people alone, because Google has already said what their promise is worth.

If you want a quick read on the website half of this, the Site Score runs on screen in about twenty seconds, using Google Lighthouse, with no email required. Where the map sits among the twelve kinds of SEO is set out in the SEO playbook.

This is one part of the whole-of-SEO video, “Not Who’s Best. Who’s Visible.”, which is coming. The map is the second of its five places; the companion page at /watch/the-whole-of-seo has the full outline and will carry the recording when it is published.