Someone is above you in the map pack and you want to know what they are doing. Almost all of it is visible if you go and look.
The comparison
Open their profile and yours side by side and fill this in honestly.
- Review count. Theirs versus yours. The most common answer on the whole list.
- Average rating. Note both. A 4.6 with 200 reviews beats a 5.0 with 11.
- Date of their most recent review. This one matters more than people realise. A profile adding reviews weekly looks alive.
- Whether they reply to reviews. And whether the replies sound like a person.
- Primary category. Shown under their business name. If it differs from yours, that is a finding.
- How many services they list.
- Photo count and how recent.
- Distance from the searcher. Are they simply closer to where you are searching from?
If it is reviews
Work out the gap and how fast they are adding them. If they are on 90 and gaining four a month, and you are on 20, you need a sustained programme rather than a push.
Four or five a month, every month, closes most gaps inside a year and the gap narrows the whole way. There is no shortcut that survives.
If it is the category
Easiest fix on the list. If the three above you all share a primary category and yours is different, change yours to match, assuming it genuinely describes you. Give it two to three weeks and do not change anything else in the meantime.
If it is distance
The hardest one and the most common after reviews. If they are based in the suburb you are searching from and you are fifteen kilometres away, you are not going to beat them there on profile work.
Accept it and work out where you can win. Run the same comparison from your own suburb and you will usually find a completely different picture.
If you cannot see any difference
Then it is probably website strength or local links, both of which are less visible. Check whether they have service pages for the thing you are both chasing and you do not.
It can also be that you are reading a personalised result. Check from an incognito window, from several locations, before concluding anything.
What not to do
- Do not report their listing out of frustration. If it genuinely breaches the guidelines, report it. If it does not, you have wasted your time.
- Do not copy their business name. Keyword-stuffed names get suspended and you do not want to inherit that.
- Do not buy reviews to close the gap. That is how you lose the listing you have.
- Do not change six things at once. You will not know what worked.
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