Checking your law firm's Google Maps ranking.

Searching your own firm's name and seeing yourself at the top is not a ranking check. It's the least reliable test available, and it's the one nearly everybody runs.

The reason is simple once you see it: there is no single position. Your firm ranks differently depending on where the person searching happens to be standing. Here's what that means and how to check properly.

The short answer

You don't have a Google Maps ranking. You have a different ranking in every neighbourhood.

Google names three things that decide local results: relevance, distance and prominence. Distance means how far each business is from the person searching — so the answer changes as they move. Two miles east and you're a different result.

That's why the check has to sample lots of locations, not one. And it's why a competitor who says they "rank first for personal injury lawyer" is telling you something almost meaningless without saying first from where.

Why your own search lies to you

Two things distort it, and both work in your favour, which is what makes it dangerous.

You're near your own office. You search from the desk. Distance is a named factor. Of course you're first — nobody is closer to your office than you are.

Google knows it's you. Your history, your account, your device. Even signed out, Google's own explanation notes that when someone doesn't share a location, it uses what it knows about where they are.

Incognito doesn't fix it. It drops your history. It does not move your body. You're still at your desk, which was the bigger problem.

So the reassuring result you get on a Tuesday morning tells you what a person standing in your office would see. Very few clients are standing in your office.

How to check it properly

Sample a grid of points across the area you actually serve, and record your position at each one.

That's the whole method. Tools exist that automate it — they search from dozens of simulated locations across a map and give you back a grid of numbers, green where you're top three and red where you're nowhere. Any of them will do; the technique matters more than the brand.

Doing it by hand works too if you'd rather not pay. Pick eight places across your service area — the courthouse, the hospital, the two suburbs you get cases from, a neighbouring town — and check your position for each of your main searches from each of them.

What you get back is the honest picture, and it's usually humbling in a specific way: strong in a tight circle around the office, falling off faster than expected, and one direction where you're invisible that you assumed you covered.

Track the same points every quarter. One reading is a snapshot. Four is a trend, and a trend is the only thing that tells you whether what you changed did anything.

What actually moves it

Of Google's three factors, one is fixed and two are yours.

Distance is not negotiable. Your office is where it is. This is the whole reason firms are tempted by rented addresses in other cities — and why that particular shortcut doesn't work. You can't buy proximity, and trying gets the profile suspended.

Relevance is the cheapest thing you're not doing. Categories, services, practice areas, hours, a description that names what you actually do. A profile that says "Attorney" and nothing else is asking Google to guess. Fill in every field — it's an afternoon and it's free.

Prominence is the long one. How well known you are: reviews, mentions, links, coverage, the volume and quality of what exists about your firm online. This is where reviews earn their reputation, and where the compounding happens.

And one you can rule out entirely. Google states there's no way to request or pay for better local ranking. So when somebody offers guaranteed map pack placement, they're describing something that isn't for sale — which tells you what the rest of the pitch is worth.

Three things that quietly cap you

Before you spend anything on prominence, rule these out. Each one is free to fix and each one holds a profile down no matter what else you do.

A duplicate listing. Old office, a partner who created one years ago, a listing generated when the firm changed names. Two profiles for one firm split the signals between them and neither ranks like one would. Search your firm name and your old addresses, and get duplicates merged or removed.

The wrong primary category. Your primary category does more work than the rest combined, and "Lawyer" is not the same as "Personal injury attorney" to a system deciding whether you match the search. Pick the one that names what you want to be called about, and add the others as secondary.

Details that disagree across the web. Suite number on one listing, missing on another. An old phone number on a directory you forgot. A tracking number where the real one belongs. Each disagreement makes it a little harder for Google to be confident all those listings are the same firm.

None of this is glamorous and all of it is free. Firms routinely skip it to buy something instead, then wonder why the something didn't work.

What to do with the grid

Read the shape, not the average. A single number across your whole area hides everything useful.

If you're strong close in and weak further out, that's normal and it's a prominence problem — you need to be better known before distance stops deciding.

If you're weak even near the office, something is wrong with the profile itself. Missing categories, a mismatched address, duplicate listings competing with each other. Fix that before spending anything.

If one direction is dead and it's where your clients come from, that's the argument for pages about your work in those specific places — and, if the caseload justifies it, eventually a real second office, which is the only legitimate route to a second profile.

Then change one thing, wait a quarter, and run the same grid again. Keep what moved the map, drop what didn't, and refine it from there — local rankings move slowly enough that patience is a strategy and impatience is how firms end up buying an address.

Questions about local rankings