Geo-grid rank tracking explained in plain English

If someone tells you that you rank number two for 'plumber Blacktown', ask them: number two where? Local rankings change street by street. There is no single position.

Google personalises local results by the searcher's location. Someone searching from one side of a suburb sees a different map pack than someone three kilometres away. So a 'ranking' measured from one arbitrary point tells you almost nothing about your real visibility.

This is not a technicality. It's the reason businesses can be told they rank well while the phone stays quiet.

A geo-grid runs the same search from many separate points laid out across your service area — a grid of pins spread over the suburbs you cover. At each point it records where you appear in the map results.

The output is a heatmap. Dark squares are places you rank at the top. Light squares are places you are invisible. You can see your reach falling off with distance, and you can see which neighbouring suburbs you have no presence in at all.

• Each grid point is a real search from a real coordinate.
• The grid is re-run monthly, so change over time is visible.
• Different keywords produce different maps — 'blocked drain' and 'hot water' rarely look the same.

A grid that's strong near your pin and fades quickly means proximity is your limit — the fix is targeting suburbs inside your realistic radius rather than fighting for distant ones.

A grid that's patchy even close to home usually means relevance problems: wrong category, missing service listings, or a competitor with far more recent reviews.

A grid that improves everywhere over three months means prominence is building. That's the pattern you want to see.

We run a grid before we start, so there's an honest baseline, and again each month. It's the core of the monthly report — not a vanity number, but a map you can point at.