How it works
Getting found on Google: what actually counts, and what does not
Google publishes the three local ranking factors. Two you cannot change, the third you can, and almost everyone leaves it half done.
· 4 min read
Google says how it works itself. It is written in its public help pages, and it takes five minutes to read. Almost nobody does, and pays somebody meanwhile to tell them a different version.
There are three factors behind local ranking, and Google calls them relevance, distance and prominence. Two of them you cannot change. The third one you can, it is sorted out in an afternoon and costs nothing: and it is the one almost everyone leaves half done.
First look at where you stand today
Open Google in a private window. Search for your trade plus your town: "hairdresser Lugano", "restaurant Bern", "optician Chur".
Look at the first three results. Are you in there? And if you are, what shows up: the right opening hours, the right number, photos from now or from three years ago?
What you see in those three results is your actual situation. The rest of this piece is there to explain it.
The three factors, and how much you can touch them
Distance, in Google's words, "refers to how far each business is from the customer who's searching". You cannot do anything about it. If somebody is searching from the other side of the canton, for that search you do not exist, and that is fine: they were not your customer.
Prominence "means how well-known a business is". You build it over years, with the sites that link to you and with the reviews. Google is explicit here too: "More reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking." It is not a lever you pull tomorrow.
Relevance "is how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for". That one, yes. It depends on how complete and current what you wrote is, and it is sorted out in an afternoon.
Two out of three are outside your control or painfully slow. The third is within reach, and it is the one left half done: opening hours without the exceptions, the wrong category, no photos, the old number.
Something worth knowing before you sign anything
Google puts it like this: "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google."
There is no price list for being first on the map. If somebody offers you that, either they are talking about paid ads, which are a different thing and are recognisable because they say "Sponsored" above them, or they are selling you something that does not exist.
What the website has to do with it
The profile says who you are. The website is where the person who found you decides whether to book.
Those are two different jobs, and the second one is the measurable one: somebody looks for you, finds you, opens the website, and there they either book in thirty seconds or close it. If booking means calling you while you are at the counter with another customer, you lost them after you had already won them.
That is why the website and the bookings are not two different suppliers. They are the same sentence, cut in half.
What it costs to put that in place is a separate calculation, and we broke it down line by line: the three lines every quote is made of.
What moves nothing
- Stuffing the business name with keywords. Your name is not "Hairdresser Lugano Centre Best Price". The name is the name, and the real one is also the one people search for.
- A beautiful site that does not say where you are. If the address, hours and phone number on the site do not match the ones on the profile, there are two versions of you and neither is convincing.
- Waiting. Prominence grows on its own, but it starts from what you put in.
What to do this week
An afternoon, not a project:
- Open your profile on Google and check category, address, phone, website. Are those the current ones?
- Add the special hours: public holidays, closures, the week you shut in summer. That is the one thing that sends people to a locked door.
- Upload recent photos, your own, not the ones from the opening.
- Reply to reviews, all of them, even the one-line ones.
- Check that the profile and the website say the same thing.
If after those five things you are still invisible, the problem is not the profile: it is that you have nowhere to send the people who find you.
In short
You can change exactly one of the three, and it costs nothing: telling Google, in full and without mistakes, who you are and when you are open.
What costs is the next piece. Having somewhere the person who found you can book without calling.