Local SEO Ranking Factors

Google publishes three local ranking factors — relevance, distance and prominence — and nothing about how they are weighted. What follows is our working model, built from a decade of watching UK profiles move, and it is deliberately opinionated. Where we say something is a strong signal it is because we have seen changing it move a grid.

The two result types

Local SEO targets two places on the results page, and they do not rank identically.

• The local pack / Google Maps. Ranks the Business Profile. Driven by profile signals, proximity, reviews and prominence. Your website contributes but is not required.
• Local organic. The normal results under the map for a local query. Ranks web pages. Driven by on-page content, links and site quality, with a local twist from your NAP, schema and profile association.

Most of this chapter is about the pack, because that is where the calls come from.

Local pack factors, roughly in order of weight

1. Primary category

The strongest single signal. It defines the set of searches your profile is eligible for. Changing "Contractor" to "Roofing contractor" can take a profile from invisible to the pack for roofing terms within a fortnight. Test by looking at which category the current pack members share; Google's category list has more than 4,000 entries and the right one is often more specific than you expect.

2. Proximity to the searcher

Immovable, but misunderstood. Google uses the searcher's actual location for "near me" and implicit local searches, and the centroid of the named place for "dentist Croydon". A business on the edge of a town competes on different terms from one in the centre. This is why grid tracking matters and why a single rank number lies.

3. Review signals

Count, average rating, recency and velocity together. In most UK markets the pack members have more reviews than the businesses outside it, and the ones at the top have received them steadily. Review text also adds relevance: reviews that mention a service and a place help for that combination.

4. Secondary categories and services

Each secondary category expands eligibility. Services with descriptions match long-tail searches. Profiles with thirty services out-rank ones with five for the searches those services describe.

5. Business name

Words in the name are a relevance signal, which is why keyword-stuffed names work briefly — and why Google suspends them. Use your real name. If your real name happens to contain a service word, that is legitimately yours.

6. Landing page relevance and authority

The page the profile links to. Its title, headings and content, and the links pointing at it. Linking the profile to a dedicated location page rather than the homepage often helps multi-service or multi-location businesses.

7. Citations and NAP consistency

Confirmation signals. Inconsistent data suppresses; consistent data on the right sources supports. Diminishing returns after the first thirty or so relevant sources.

8. Links to the website

Domain authority still feeds prominence. Local links — press, associations, sponsorships — appear to count more than their raw metrics suggest.

9. Profile completeness and activity

Photos, posts, Q&A, attributes, hours accuracy. Individually minor; together they are the difference between two otherwise-equal profiles, and they drive the behavioural signals below.

10. Behavioural signals

Click-through from the pack, calls, direction requests, time on the profile, brand searches. Google does not confirm these, but profiles that convert well hold rankings better than ones that don't, and we treat them as real.

Negative factors

• Policy breaches: keyword names, fake addresses, ineligible categories. Result: suspension, not a lower rank.
• Duplicate profiles for the same business splitting reviews and confusing Google.
• Review filtering: bursts, reviews from the business's own network, reviews from accounts with no history. Google quietly removes them and may flag the profile.
• Inaccurate data: closed branches still live, wrong hours, wrong pin.
• Low-quality or irrelevant photos, and stock imagery.

Local organic factors

For the results under the map, think ordinary SEO with a local layer:

• A page that targets the service + location combination in the title, H1 and body
• Genuine, specific content: what you do, for whom, where, with evidence
• NAP on the page and LocalBusiness schema
• Internal links from the homepage and from related service pages
• External links, with local ones weighted well
• Site quality: speed, mobile, no thin doorway pages dragging the domain down

What changed recently

• AI Overviews and AI Mode increasingly summarise local options and draw on profile attributes, review text and website content. Complete, specific profiles are being quoted; vague ones are not.
• Video verification is now standard for new UK profiles and re-verification is triggered by more edits than before. Make big changes gradually.
• Review enforcement has tightened on the Google side and, from April 2025, on the legal side under the DMCC Act.
• Openness signals: profiles marked temporarily closed or with wrong hours drop hard during the hours they appear closed.

How to use this

Work down the list. Category and profile fundamentals first (weeks 1–2), reviews and landing page next (weeks 3–6), citations and links after that. Measure on a grid, monthly, and stop guessing. Or let us run the audit and hand you the priority order for your specific market.

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Part of the complete UK local SEO guide.