How tradies actually rank in Google Maps

When someone searches a trade and a suburb, Google shows a map with three businesses above everything else. That block — the map pack — takes the overwhelming majority of the clicks and calls. Everything below it is an afterthought.

Google has publicly described what decides those three positions: relevance, distance and prominence. Understanding what each one actually means, and which you can influence, is the difference between spending money usefully and spending it on the wrong thing.

Relevance is how well your Google Business Profile matches what was typed. This is the factor most trade businesses under-invest in, and it is almost entirely within your control.

Google reads your primary category first, then your secondary categories, then your individual service listings, then your business description and posts. A profile with the category 'Electrician' and nothing else is telling Google one thing about itself. A profile that also lists switchboard upgrades, EV charger installation and Level 2 metering work as separate services is telling it ten.

• Primary category carries the most weight — choosing the wrong one caps everything else.
• Each service should be listed individually, with its own written description.
• The business description is read, but matters far less than categories and services.
• Keyword stuffing your business name violates Google's guidelines and risks suspension.

Distance is the physical gap between the searcher and your business location. It is weighted heavily, and there is no optimisation that overrides it. A plumber based in Penrith will not consistently outrank Parramatta-based plumbers for searches made in Parramatta, no matter how good the profile is.

This has a practical consequence most trades get wrong: adding twenty suburbs to your service area does not make you rank in twenty suburbs. Service areas tell Google where you will travel. They do not move your pin.

What you can do is understand your realistic radius and rank comprehensively inside it. That is precisely what geo-grid tracking measures — visibility at multiple points across a suburb rather than one abstract 'position'.

Prominence is Google's read on how established and trusted your business is. Reviews are the most visible input: how many, how recent, how detailed, and whether you reply. Mentions of your business name, address and phone number across other Australian directories contribute. So does your website's own authority.

Recency matters more than most people expect. A profile with fifteen reviews from the last six months typically performs better than one with sixty reviews from three years ago. Review generation is not a one-off campaign — it is an ongoing process or it decays.

The order of operations for a trade business is consistent: fix relevance first because it is fastest and fully controllable, build prominence continuously because it compounds, and accept distance as a constraint that shapes which suburbs are realistic targets.

The website sits underneath all of this. It supports relevance and prominence, and it converts the visit into a phone call — but on its own it will not put you in the map pack.