Why is a competitor with terrible reviews above me on Google Maps?

Because Maps is not ranking who is best. It is answering the question “near me”, and your review score is only a small part of what it uses.

Google says it weighs three things: relevance, distance and prominence. Read that as how well your profile matches what was typed, how close you are, and how well known the business appears to be overall. Reviews sit inside the third one, alongside everything else written about you anywhere.

This is the most infuriating thing in local search. The frustration is reasonable. It is also mechanical rather than personal, so it is something you can work with.

Distance is doing more than you think

Map results move with whoever is searching. Somebody standing outside your competitor’s door gets your competitor. Somebody standing outside yours gets you.

There is no single position to hold. Check your ranking from your own desk and you see the most flattering result you will ever get. Check it from the other side of town and you see close to the worst.

You cannot move your premises. What this does mean is worth holding on to. The people who can reach you conveniently are probably already seeing you. The searches you are losing are often ones that were never going to turn into work.

Relevance: their category may be more accurate than yours

Every profile has one primary category, and it does more work than all the extra categories put together.

A firm listed as “solicitor” and one listed as “divorce lawyer” are answering different questions. Someone searches the second. You chose the first. The more specific profile wins on relevance, whatever the stars say.

Open your own profile and read the primary category rather than assuming it. These get set once, years ago, often by whoever built the site, and never looked at again.

The business name with the service in it

“Canterbury Emergency Plumber Ltd” will match a search for an emergency plumber in Canterbury better than your surname will. That is not clever marketing. It is usually against Google’s rules. The name on a profile is supposed to be the real name on the sign, not a description of the service.

When it genuinely is their registered trading name, it is allowed. That is a real advantage, and not one you can copy without changing your own name.

When it is not, the route is to report it rather than to imitate it. Open their profile, choose “Suggest an edit”, and propose the real name. It takes two minutes. Sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. It is the only approach here that carries no risk to your own listing.

What reviews are actually doing

They are not doing nothing. They just are not doing what it feels like they should.

Reviews feed into prominence, which is the third factor. They help. What they do not reliably do is overcome a result that is closer or more precisely matched. Steady recent ones tend to count for more than a high average frozen three years ago.

Where they earn their keep hardest is after the ranking. Two profiles appear, one has 40 recent reviews and one has 3 from 2021, and the human chooses. You may be losing the position and still winning the call.

What you can safely do

Two of the three factors are partly yours to move. Relevance is the quickest. All of this is within the rules and none of it risks your listing.

• Set the primary category to the thing you most want to be found for, and use the extra categories for the rest
• Fill in the services list properly, in the words customers use
• Keep the name, address and phone identical on the profile and on your site, down to the abbreviations
• Add photos occasionally. A profile that is maintained looks alive to Google and to the person choosing
• Ask for reviews steadily rather than in bursts, and reply to them
• Set your service areas honestly if you travel to customers

What not to do

Do not put keywords in your own name. It is the most common cause of a suspension, and getting a suspended profile back takes weeks of not being on the map at all. The upside is not worth it.

Do not create a second listing for the same business at a different address, or use a virtual office you do not work from. Both are checked, and both can take down the listing you already have.

Do not buy reviews. They get filtered, and the pattern is easier to spot than people think.