Google's published ranking factors
Three factors. One sentence Google repeats that almost no agency quotes.
- Three factors only: Relevance, Distance, Prominence. Published by Google, unchanged in 5 years.
- The line nobody quotes: "There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google."
- What the renovation moves: Relevance (description, categories, services, products, photos). Distance is geographic. Prominence is slow.
- Why honest "we don't sell rankings": it is itself the moat. Most competitors imply or directly promise positions.
"There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google."
1 · Relevance
How well the profile matches the search query. Complete, detailed info wins. This is what the renovation touches.
2 · Distance
How far the shop is from the searcher. Geographic. Renovation cannot move this.
3 · Prominence
How well-known the business is. Reviews and ratings feed it. Slow. We coach the review workflow.
The three factors, verbatim
Google publishes its local search ranking model on one help page that has barely changed in five years. There are exactly three factors. Quoting them verbatim:
1. Relevance
Relevance refers to how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for. Add complete and detailed business information to help Google better understand your business and match your profile to relevant searches.
2. Distance
Distance considers how far each business is from the customer who's searching. Google calculates distance based on what's known about the searcher's location.
3. Prominence
Prominence refers to how well-known a business is. Some places are more prominent in the offline world, and search results try to reflect this in local ranking. Prominence is also based on information that Google has about a business, from across the web, like links, articles, and directories. Google review count and review score factor into local search ranking. More reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking.
The sentence that ends every honest pitch
There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.
Google states this directly on the same page. Any agency that promises a ranking position, a map-pack slot, or a guaranteed top-three placement is contradicting Google's own published rules. We do not. The 14-day guarantee is operational (delivery on time, full refund if late), not positional.
What this means for the renovation
Every lever we touch maps to one of the three factors:
- Relevance is what description, categories, services, products, and photos all serve. The audit is built around making the profile match the queries the shop wants to surface for.
- Distance is geographic and not something the renovation moves. We can clean service-area boundaries but cannot relocate the shop.
- Prominence is the slow factor. Reviews and ratings feed it. We coach the review-generation workflow but never promise a count change inside the 14 days.
Why this page lives in the funnel doc, not the FAQ
Almost every competitor we surveyed (see Competitive landscape) implies or directly states a ranking promise. The honest "we don't sell rankings, we sell a finished profile" stance is itself a moat. Burying it in an FAQ buries the strongest authority signal we have. It belongs in the open.
Source
- https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091 · Google Business Profile Help, "Improve your local ranking on Google." This is the canonical source for the three factors and the no-pay-for-ranking statement.