Local rank tracking: see where you really appear.
You search for your own business and get a different answer every time. On your phone you are third, at a customer’s house you are nowhere, and a friend across town sees someone else entirely. That is not your imagination. Local results change with the searcher’s location. Rank tracking shows where you actually appear across the area you serve, and reporting turns that into decisions rather than charts.
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Why checking from your phone misleads.
- You see yourself near the top when you search from home or the yard.
- Customers a few miles away say they could not find you.
- Your results seem to move from one day to the next.
- You have had reports before that showed rankings for phrases nobody searches.
- You cannot tell whether anything you have done is making a difference.
Location is built into local search.
Google says its local results depend mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, and distance is measured from where the person searching is. The same search made from two streets a mile apart can return a different Map Pack. Searching from your own phone mostly shows how you rank where you are standing, which is usually close to your base, where you are likely to be strongest.
Google can also tailor results to the person searching, so a single search is never a complete picture of how customers see you.
The same search, from many points at once.
Grid rank tracking runs a search from a set of points laid out across your area, for example a grid covering a city, and records where your business appears from each one. The result is a map: strong near your base, weaker further out, and sometimes missing in parts of the area you most want to reach.
AKVelora uses this kind of grid tracking on its own Google Business Profile. Run with the same keyword, grid size and centre each time, it shows how visibility changes over weeks and months, rather than how one search happened to look on one afternoon.
The shape of the map depends on the area. Across a dense city like Cardiff, visibility can fade within a few districts. In a valley borough like Rhondda Cynon Taf, it can change from one valley to the next. In a mixed town and countryside area like the Vale of Glamorgan, the pattern can look quite different again.
Built around decisions.
Map visibility
Grid results for the searches that matter to your business, compared with the starting benchmark and the last report.
Profile activity
Calls, website clicks and direction requests that Google reports for your Business Profile.
Website search data
From Google Search Console: which searches show your pages, how often, and how often people click.
Enquiries
Form enquiries from your website, with their source and landing page where tracking is set up.
What changed
The work done since the last report, in plain language, so changes in the numbers can be connected to something.
What happens next
The next priorities, and anything that needs a decision from you.
No vanity numbers.
Reports do not pad themselves with rankings for phrases nobody searches, “visibility scores” without explanation, or traffic that never turns into a phone call. If something is not moving, the report says so, and says what is being done about it.
What tracking does not do
Tracking measures. On its own it does not improve anything. Its job is to show whether the profile, review and page work is having an effect, and where to focus next. No ranking or date is promised.
A few details and some access.
The searches you care about most, the area you want to be visible across, and access to your Google Business Profile performance data and Google Search Console. If you track calls or bookings yourself, sharing the totals makes the picture more complete.
Want to see where you really appear?
The free audit includes where you stand against the businesses above you, alongside your profile, website, listings and reviews.
Trends, not single results.
Progress is judged by trends over time: whether the area where you appear in the Map Pack is growing, whether profile calls and website enquiries are rising, and whether your pages are appearing for more of the right searches. A single good or bad week means little. Results are always compared like for like, with the same keyword, grid and centre, so changes in the method are not mistaken for changes in visibility.
What the tracking measures.
Google Business Profile optimisation
The profile work that most directly affects where you appear on the map.
Read more →Google review strategy
A steady flow of genuine reviews, one of the signals behind prominence.
Read more →Local SEO audit
A free five-point check to set the starting point.
Read more →Tracking and reporting are part of ongoing monthly work. See how pricing works, the full list of services, or get in touch.
Common questions.
Why do i rank differently for my customers than for me?
Because local results depend partly on where the searcher is. You usually search from near your base, where you are strongest. Customers further away may see a different set of businesses.
How often are rankings checked?
Often enough to see trends, usually monthly, using the same settings each time so the results can be compared fairly.
Can i see the tracking myself?
Yes. Reports include the grid results, and the underlying data can be shared.
Will tracking improve my rankings?
No. Tracking measures. The improvements come from the profile, review, listing and page work it helps to guide.
See where you really show up.
The free audit checks your profile, website, listings, reviews and the businesses above you, and gives you three fixes to start with.
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