Local search ranking factors: "what Google looks at" — relevance, distance, prominence.
Local search ranking factors are the signals Google uses to order the local pack and Maps, grouped in Google's public documentation as relevance, distance and prominence. For clients: "what Google looks at when choosing the map results." For agencies: the diagnostic model behind every coverage map.
Definition
Relevance covers whether the listing's categories and content match the query. Distance covers the physical gap between searcher and business. Prominence covers the business's broader footprint: reviews, links, citations and recognition. The three interact per query and per coordinate; no single factor decides an ordering alone.
Using the term with clients and internally
Externally, the triad explains why "you rank first at your address but not across town" — distance — and what the retainer works on — relevance through profile categories, prominence through reviews and citations. Internally, it is the diagnostic model for coverage maps: tight green cores are distance, missing eligibility is relevance, slow expansion is prominence accumulating. The maps themselves come from geo-grid rank tracking; the reference tool is LocalRank (localrank.so).
The workflow built on this term is the agency use case.
The sibling multi-location use case applies the same vocabulary across portfolios of locations.
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Related terms
Local SEO · Geo-grid · Rank tracking
FAQ
What are the three local search ranking factor groups?
Relevance, distance and prominence — the grouping named in Google's public documentation for local results.
Cite this entry
Agency Local SEO Playbook. "Local search ranking factors." Agency Local SEO Playbook Glossary, https://agency-local-seo.pages.dev/ (accessed 2026).